INBOUND ACCELERATOR

Content is an integral component of your marketing strategy, and it is essential that you develop content that is mean to meet the needs of your prospects, leads and customers at each stage of the sales or marketing funnel. That means you need everything from top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content that will attract traffic to your website through the middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) content that nurtures leads and the bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content that helps close the deal.

Reaching B2B buyers requires creating content that speaks to specific pain points and challenges. That means not only targeting specific buyer personas, but also creating content with different stages of the sales funnel, or buyers’ journey, in mind.

When times are lean—and 2020 and 2021 are turning into lean times for many marketing programs—it is essential to make the most of what you already have.

Creating marketing campaigns and the content that fuels them is simpler when you have a roadmap to follow or a template to guide your planning. A content marketing funnel (also called a sales funnel) provides the perfect way to think through your strategy from building awareness to closing the deal.

If you have been following my 15 Lessons From 15 Years series of blog posts (this is post #11), you may remember that when I discussed the key steps to successful marketing in the healthcare IT arena, I said that integrating PR and marketing was essential.

In fact, it is so important for all industries, not just that one, that I felt I needed to revisit the concept and walk you through the steps we follow to ensure that all communications create a cohesive message and focus on reaching the same corporate goals.

Very few things in life, despite their labeling are truly “one size fits all.” More often, attempts to make one thing fit all possible users, the end result is more of a “one size almost fits most, but isn’t really a good fit for anyone.”

When it comes to inbound marketing content and offers, that same rule of thumb applies. If you try to create just one piece of content or one offer, and expect it to appeal to all of your customer personas, regardless of what stage of the buying cycle the individual is in, chances are the content or offer will fall flat for just about everyone.

As you craft each inbound marketing campaign, some of the most challenging content to get right is the middle of the funnel material. What will be useful for those newly-acquired leads who are actively researching solutions, but still a ways from making an actual decision?

It’s time to start your next inbound marketing campaign. How will you fill the top of the funnel?

Awareness level content is designed to attract potential customers or clients to your website by addressing the questions and needs they are searching online.

Calls-to-action are those magical little buttons that start the action to turn visitors into leads or move leads further down the sales funnel. CTAs are the in-text calls to “click here,” “read more” or “download now.”

We’ve said that it is important to write blog posts for readers. (See here.) But that brings up a key question: Who are your readers? And who do you want to have as readers?