Rocket Readings: Is your Content helping you Generate Quality Leads?

Is your Content helping you Generate Quality Leads?:from Sales Force Effectiveness Blog by George de los Reyes
Not surprisingly, after surveying hundreds of marketing leaders, generating quality leads was hands-down their number one goal in 2013. Unfortunately, after interviewing many of them I found that most struggled with how to accomplish their top priority.

Producing Quality Leads

To produce quality leads, you need to first create great content. But having great content isn’t enough. Moving your future customers closer to purchase requires that you offer your content to the right person, at the right time with the right message.
In my last post, I provided four steps to follow to ensure your content resonates with your buyers and successfully moves them closer to purchase. Follow these steps and you will produce quality leads for the sales force:

Develop your Buyer Persona(s)
Inventory your content
Connect your content to your buyer persona(s)
Map your content to the buyer’s journey

We covered the first three already; let’s talk about the final step in the process. (The last chance to get free tools and hands on in-depth information on these steps ends October 31st, sign-up now for our Make The Number Tour HERE.)

The Buyer’s Journey

“Content plays a critical role in every stage of the inbound marketing process, from generating awareness about your company to helping convert leads into customers. But the types of content you should use to achieve each of those goals are often very different from each other, which means you need to ensure that you’re creating content for every stage of the buying cycle.” A Practical Guide to Killer Marketing Content, HubSpot
Content is King… but if you’re not offering it to the right person, at the right time, it’s not effective at moving your buyer further down their path to purchase.
A typical buyer’s journey has three stages: Awareness, Consideration and Engagement. In these stages, the buyer is asking him/herself certain fundamental questions that when answered move them along the buyer’s journey.
Buyers Journey resized 600

The example above is a starting point. Savvy marketing leaders should take the time to understand the questions their buyers are asking themselves along the buyer’s journey.

Mapping your Content to the Buyer’s Journey

Having defined your Buyer’s Journey, you can now begin to map your content to it - by Persona. Using your content inventory, add two more categories for Buyer Persona & Buyer Stage. Begin listing what Buyer Persona and what stage in the buying journey aligns with each piece of content.
Below is the output of a Content Audit we performed for a client for one of their Personas. Notice how we “mapped” the different types of content to the stages in the buyer’s journey. Knowing what content aligned with what stage in the buyer’s journey allowed our client to campaign more effectively.
Content Audit resized 600

Click-thru rates and page views are great, but the one metric for marketing leaders is qualified leads generated. If you want to be successful at not just capturing your buyer’s attention but most importantly helping them progress on their journey to purchase, make sure you define your buyer’s journey and map your content to it.