Integrate Your Content to Keep Prospects Moving Through Your Funnel
It looked promising enough at the beginning.We had just completed a content audit. We cataloged every webinar, video, application note and technical tip we had.I had inherited dozens of assets covering several product lines and applications. With that kind of material to work with, who couldn’t craft a successful campaign? We’d just bundle up a collection of assets (or two or three) to show customers how our products could solve their problems.Well, not exactly.Even with all those assets, I couldn’t pull three pieces together to tell a coherent story.
The right collection of tools for the job
You could have told me to build a house with a hammer, some bricks and a box of screws and gotten the same result.Hammers, bricks and screws are perfectly good tools for building a house, right? Unfortunately, those three alone won’t even get you started.Because they don’t work together.Oh yeah, we had plenty of content. Need an app note? No problem. Hey, should we shoot a video at the next trade show? Of course we should!But the problem was, all of that content was made without a plan. We had plenty of target markets. But no priorities.Plenty of content, but no structure.We had assembled a server-crushing mountain of content to answer fifty short term needs. What we needed was to kick ass on three important business goals.Does this story ring a bell for you? How can you avoid a similar content catastrophe?It starts by understanding your goals, your audience and the questions they will have on the way to buying your product.As you plan your content, look for ways to make pieces work together. Which assets tie directly to others, based on your buyer's journey map? What calls to action can you include to make sure prospects see all of your relevant content?
One of my favorite examples
Malvern Instruments hosted a webinar on rheology. During the webinar, they catalogued all the questions that came up.
They posted the questions along with the answers in a blog post. The blog links back to the original webinar. (Unfortunately, that post is no longer available.)Then they promoted the blog with an engaging social media post.
The beauty of this strategy is that it gives customers many chances to discover the content and ensures that the content answers as many prospect questions as possible.A call to action at the end of the webinar could suggest viewers a download a detailed guide to rheology or even something more product specific.The goal is to keep prospects moving through the funnel without "losing the scent" and running off to a competitor to have their questions answered.