Sales content oftentimes takes one of two tones: it is either too pushy or completely devoid of any and all emotion. With content rising supreme as one of the best ways to reach your prospective buyers, it is important to get it right and ensure that it fits your audience’s needs at every stage in the sales journey. This blog post highlights four tips that will help you create buyer-focused content that reaches your target audience and beyond.
Identify the Needs of your Audience
The entire process of marketing is based on understanding the needs of your audience. From there you are able to map out campaigns and create content that appeals to readers and will convince your audience members to buy your product or use your service. If you rely heavily on data to determine who your target audience is as opposed to who your audience is, building buyer personas will help you figure out where the two align. Creating buyer personas will also help you to keep track of the individual needs, pain points and issues that affect your various audience members, ensuring that you send the right content to the right member.
Use the Sales Process as a Resource
More often than not, sales and marketing departments experience minimal interaction. However, both can benefit from buyer feedback and insights, which can be used to create content. Buyer feedback will help both sales and marketing understand the needs and purchase requirements of each buyer and will shed light on how buyers are searching for information and make their purchasing decisions. Without sales, there would be no need for marketing and without marketing, there would be no sales.
Create Content that Corresponds to the Sales Funnel
There are two reasons that sales content is created, and both correspond to the sales funnel. The first reason is that there is an internal need for the content, meaning that it is needed to prepare sales reps for interactions with prospective clients. The other reason is external and comes into play during client-facing interactions. The sales funnel comes into play for both types and it is crucial to thoroughly understand what stages your respective buyers are at, and what information they are seeking.
Tools like web analytics and CRM systems can help you find out what information they are looking for by showing you bounce rates on certain pages, content with low engagement or frequently asked questions. Utilizing this knowledge, you can create external content with a specific outcome in mind, although the underlying goal should be to move the buyer to the next stage of their journey. On the flip side, internal content focuses more on early-stage buyers. Your content should reflect this and should showcase your product or service and any associated benefits. Much of the research that is conducted during the first stages of the sales funnel is done on a mobile interface, so when it comes to internal content format is key.
Always Keep your Buyer’s Journey in Mind
While it is true that no two buyers have the same journey, their paths are often similarly based on what your company is offering. When you understand the general path that your potential customers take, it allows you to create content that is more focused and effective. This is another point where reaching out to buyers past and present for feedback is helpful. Once you have established a loose understanding of your buyers’ journey, it’s time to dig deep and uncover what questions are being asked at the various stages. From here you can decide which format works best at each stage, with whitepapers, blog posts, and infographics being some of the most popular. You should also consider how your buyers are receiving your content, whether it is by email, social media or through one-on-one interaction.
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