Business owners know that bringing in new sales can be extremely challenging and often frustrating. More often than not, a potential prospect never makes it from sales lead to paying customer. There are a number of steps along the path to purchase and prospects can be lost at any one. But it doesn’t have to be this way! At least not in the world of online marketing. Great content generation can help move prospects through your sales funnel more effectively.
In a recent blog post, we discussed the concept of the sales funnel generally:
The sales funnel is a framework or conceptual tool to track potential customer interest through four phases: awareness, interest, decision and action. The image of the funnel represents the fact that at each stage fewer consumers have moved on. For example, while 1,000 potential customers may be aware of your new store, perhaps only 250 will be interested and only 50 will make a decision to purchase something from your store.
In an article for Entrepreneur, Steve Young writes, “Content marketing is a great strategy you can leverage to help increase your sales conversion rate. A recent study by Forrester shows that 82 percent of buyers view at least five pieces of content from a vendor before they become a paying customer.”
But it’s key to remember that different stages of the sales funnel may benefit more from different types of content. As Andrea Lehr writes, “[Content marketing] focuses on earning someone’s attention through engaging content that keeps your brand in the forefront of their minds. Each stage of the funnel can benefit from this sort of approach, because the right content can offer solutions to any individual—from potential prospects to evangelists.”
So, for example, you might have industry-relevant blogs or whitepapers to simply drive traffic to your site – the awareness stage. Then you might have industry comparison data on your site comparing the pros and cons of your product to your competitors or even offer a free trial – the interest/decision stage. Finally, you might have information on differently priced packages and an easy-to-use interface to make a purchase – the action stage.
Great content can be key to driving potential customers to your website, but that’s only the beginning of your sales funnel. Make sure you have quality, well-crafted and focused content to help move your prospects through the funnel to convert them into paying customers.
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About Us
Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We are adept at evaluating and analyzing communication efforts and working with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content, through both on- and offline media to achieve desired results. Our background in business journalism, marketing, PR/media relations and online communications makes us well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st-century marketers.
We serve clients who are looking for help creating content for a wide array of channels—from social media posts to full-length manuscripts, and everything in between. We focus primarily on service-related B2B topics and work with a number of independent consultants interested in building their thought leadership through online channels. For ongoing content management, our first step is to fully understand your goals, objectives and competitive landscape.
Then we’ll conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of your digital presence, compared to competitors, and recommend a communication strategy to achieve your goals. But, we also regularly take on individual projects – white papers, blog posts, contributed articles, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know!
(Strategic Communications is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise through the Wisconsin Department of Administration.)
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Tags: content marketing, creating content, Marketing, marketing content, sales funnel