Creating Content to Fuel The Pipeline

Posted on June 27, 2019

 In the B2B world, content marketing is one of the most essential marketing tactics. This form of marketing includes blogs, social media, videos, and pretty much anything that helps nurture customers so that they can invest in your business. In order to create a successful content marketing strategy, you first need to understand your customer, and set goals for the content you create. In the webinar and description below, we will discuss how content can help to elevate your business.

Hi there! My name is Anne Koepp and I am one of the Content Marketing Specialist at Top Floor. Today we are going to talk about the benefits of content marketing and how to implement it into your marketing strategy

When creating content for your business, you want to focus on engagement. Every customer is different, so you want to ensure that you customize your content according to consumer’s needs. 

A common type of content marketing is blogs, however, it is not the only type. Content marketing takes several forms including eBooks, infographics, social media, and videos.

Step 1: Create a Customer Persona

The first step to developing a content marketing plan is developing customer personas. In order to develop a successful content marketing strategy, you need to understand the customer’s wants and needs so that you can build customer relationships. This is a “chicken and egg” concept because as you start creating content and people start to respond to it, you’ll have a better idea of what your audience responds to. However, there are some tools to help you develop a better content marketing strategy before this point, including historical data and customer inquiries.

Step 2: Create Your Content Strategy

Although content marketing is meant for your customers, there should still be something in it for you as well. That is why it is important to set goals for yourself. At Top Floor, we like to use SMART goals, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based goals. Once you’ve set your goals, then it’s time to create a content calendar to propel yourself towards your goals. 

After creating your calendar, now’s the time to expand on what types of content to create and when, based on your audience’s buying funnel. There are 3 stages to customer’s buying funnel:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion

The awareness stage is when you start recruiting your initial audience. At this stage, try not to be to sales-pitchy, as it will discourage most potential customers from moving onto the next stage. Infographics and blogs are some examples of the types of content to produce at this stage. From your awareness stage, some potential customers will move into the consideration stage. This is the ideal stage to create your Email list. Content ideas at this stage include webinars, eBooks, special offers. 

Finally, once your customer purchases your product or services, they have moved into the conversion stage. Not only do you want to receive a purchase at this stage, but you want to increase overall buyer retention and awareness, as well as further segment your audience. Some content to develop at this stage include video tutorials, instructions. And exclusive offers.

Common Challenges with Content Marketing

There are multiple challenges that may arise when running a content strategy. Some issues include letting old content die, using low-quality content, lack of SEO strategy, natural difficulty in your niche market, forgetting about old content. Again, all these issues can be solved with constant research of your audience and utilizing your content calendars.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what it takes to develop a successful marketing strategy, now’s the time to develop one for yourself! If you’d like to learn more, check out our free eBook: A Marketer’s Guide to a Content Marketing Strategy.