Your digital content is the foundation of your inbound marketing strategy. You optimize it so people find it easily when they turn to a search engine to research a problem. You share it via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to make good and sure it is reaching as many potential customers as possible. Through your content, you position your brand as a leader. You demonstrate your expertise. Your content should offer people useful and valuable information. But it can and should be playing a more proactive role in your marketing. Your content should pave the way for you to develop a detailed and easily segmented database of prospects willing to receive further information from your business.
What is your content? It is more than your website and blog. Those are the top layers of your inbound marketing content. They attract people and engage them. Your website and blog are introductions to your brand. Once people meet your brand, they decide if they want more of what you are offering. And the next thing they want usually isn’t your product or service. It’s more content.
Your website and blog should feature some calls to action. Sure, go ahead and include calls to action that are special offers on your products, but you need something asking visitors to take a smaller step too. Many won’t be ready to make a purchase right away, especially in B2B marketing. So you should include calls to action that simply offer them more valuable content than what you are giving away. You aren’t selling this content, but you do want something in return. Ask visitors to provide a bit of information about themselves to download that ebook or participate in that webinar. Don’t look for too much at once. This is only one step in a process that leads them through your sales funnel.
As you gather this information, it is included in your database of prospects. First, it might be just a name and email address. Let people know you’ll be sending them a newsletter unless they opt-out. With your newsletter, you can send more calls to action. And people will need to provide a little more information to get that premium content, perhaps their job title or location. As you gather this information, you are building a picture of who each prospect is. This helps you understand what they need and how you can help them. You can send targeted content to specific subsets of people on your database, giving them more detailed information that directly addresses their concerns.
Content is king, but a good database is essential too. You can’t sell effectively if you don’t know who your customers are.
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