Content creation has been a major focus for brands over the past few years. They realize it’s important to engage leads and create paying customers, but they also know the development of promotional materials can be time consuming. The stat that is constantly thrown around companies is that the average sales person takes upward of 30 hours a month finding and/or putting together customized content for clients.
If you’re a growing company, you’re likely creating a lot of content on a monthly basis – that’s a fact. Many brands, therefore, like to focus their content creation initiatives to ensure their actions truly matter. If you want to put together promotional material in the most efficient way possible, you should look at content based on your company’s needs and proceed from there.
Marketing content can serve a variety of purposes, depending on the channel used and the stage of the sales cycle.
Generally speaking, there are two types of content you need to concern yourself with: content that will get a lead engaged in conversation with you and content that will nurture the conversation once it has been initiated, explains copywriter Sid Smith.
1. Fostering Engagement
The first type of content is promotional material that will get leads talking to you. This collateral will be seen by otherwise unassuming individuals, pique their interest and encourage them to initiate a conversation.
For most brands, this tends to consist of a few different email messages, pieces of social content or maybe a mobile message. It must be tightly focused and highly relevant to get a response from the target. The goal is to get people thinking who may not be aware of a problem they face and aren’t actively seeking a solution.
2. Continuing the Conversation
Once leads have been engaged, it’s up to your content to continue to nurture these prospects until they are ready to finalize the purchase. Not everyone will be prepared to immediately buy, so this type of collateral is crucial to ensuring you don’t lose these leads between the time of first contact and the time they are ready to finalize a purchase.
Nurturing content can take the form of email newsletters, social media messages and mobile collateral as well, but the goal is much different this time around. The goal is to establish a clear and powerful value proposition and position your brand as an industry leader in the process. This type of collateral should also address the buying process and identify potential sticking points, helping leads along the path to conversion.
Creating content is an important part of any successful marketing and sales campaign, but businesses need to know what type of content they need to create and act accordingly.