Three types of content that truly deliver on target needs

Marketers, what are your favorite types of content? Whether you’re into white papers or video, the form your content takes will have a dramatic impact on how your audience processes and acts on its information. Today, we want to talk about three types of content that can truly benefit your targets with actionable, educational insights.

Video Content

Video is great way for B2B marketers to put human faces to their businesses. If done well, video can draw audiences in, encourage sharing and set a brand apart from its competitors.

Earlier this year, Progressive produced a series called Small Business, Big Dreams, which connected established entrepreneurs with those who were just starting out. In the first video, the brand introduced Nini and Bass, two entrepreneurs building a Boston empanada restaurant. They connected them with the team from 5411 Empanadas, an established business in Chicago. Progressive used this and other videos in the series to show the established company sharing advice with the startup, and in turn with all the viewers of the series. In addition to telling a compelling story about entrepreneurship, each video ends with a concrete tip, such as, on hiring, “Where would your ideal hire hang out? Try recruiting at conferences or relevant online groups in your area.” While the videos don’t aim to directly sell Progressive’s insurance products, they position the company as a champion of the small business, and build positive brand associations that will likely lead to future sales.

Webinars

Webinars are the ideal platform for sharing technical knowledge, and many B2B businesses are taking advantage of webinar platforms to offer training and demos to their targets. One such company is Proformative, a professional development provider for corporate finance employees. In addition to offering corporate training packages and paid courses, Proformative offers a selection of free webinars, open to the public, where industry professionals teach valuable lessons about a variety of corporate finance topics.

These free webinar offerings give viewers a taste of Proformative’s larger suite of training tools for corporate clients while demonstrating the company’s expertise and willingness to educate its customers.

White Papers

White papers are an excellent chance to explore a topic of importance to your audience in greater depth than you could in a blog post or through social media. They are also well-suited to evergreen content that will remain relevant in your industry for months or years to come.

At Movéo, we maintain a library of white papers that address questions from “how will the rise in raw content reshape digital marketing?” to “how can I enhance marketing predictability?” For example, in our white paper “Engaging B2B buyers before the buying process: 4 key steps,” B2B marketers can learn how to develop “Brand Empathy,” defined as “the perception that your company deeply understands and cares about a prospect’s business, its challenges/needs and the marketplace in which it operates.”

Do you have questions about the effectiveness of other types of content? We’d love to chat with you. Contact us today.

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Educational vs. promotional content: striking a balance

Content is meant to drive leads and demonstrate your abilities to address customers’ pain points, but to be effective, it must also avoid overt self-promotion. Great content offers value and engages leads, encouraging them to continue through the marketing funnel with the promise of gaining more knowledge along the way. Poor content simply tells those same people “buy from us.”

Are you unsure if your marketing content strikes the right balance between promotion and education? Let’s take a closer look at the differences between the two.

Educational Content

As the name suggests, educational content teaches your prospects something useful and new. In order to fulfill this role, it should contain these two key elements:

• Specific, actionable insights: When you offer valuable information that answers a prospect’s question or proves advantageous to their business operations, you show them that your company is knowledgeable. Actionable insights are always more impactful than vague observations.  
• Niche, valuable information: The best content won’t be found if it’s directly competing with a flood of other materials. The way to set your content apart is to find your content niche: the aspect of your audience’s needs that no one is addressing quite the way you can. Add value by filling this content need.

If you need inspiration for a new educational content campaign, explore what other businesses are doing. One business producing top-notch educational content is Proposify. The company, which offers tools to help agency owners streamline the proposal-creation process, produces a weekly podcast, Agencies Drinking Beer, in which every episode is a conversation with an agency owner about a topic such as managing client expectations or tactics for generating new business. Want another example? Take a look at Solo Practice University’s blog, and its advice for lawyers in business for themselves.

Promotional Content

Content marketing is different from traditional advertising. Promotional content is what results from a business producing marketing content as if it is just a new form of advertising. If your content contains these elements, it’s probably time to revisit your strategy:

• A CTA that isn’t seamlessly incorporated into the content, but rather is the content: There are few prospects who will stay engaged with a piece of content that does nothing more than sell your products and services. Deliver ideas, inspiration, and insights first. Sell second.
• Common industry knowledge branded as your own: If your content marketing offers no new insights to your audience, they’ll assume your services don’t offer anything unique either. To catch your audience’s attention and earn their trust, you have to share something they actually need, and something they can’t get anywhere else.

Overtly promotional content is all too common on platforms like LinkedIn. How often have you started reading a post from a “thought leader” there that started off fine, but by paragraph two turned out to be about nothing more than a few empty reasons why you should buy the author’s book or sign up for their seminar?

Educational content is about giving your leads something valuable in the hope that they will eventually become clients, and promotional content is about telling your leads to become clients, in the hope that they will eventually become clients. Marketers, when you are on the other side of this relationship, which type of content do you prefer to experience?

Want to learn more about smart content marketing strategies? Read our whitepaper, The 5 new laws of content.

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How to identify your audience’s needs and address them in your content

Data-driven insights are key to creating content that converts. As the new marketing value chain reminds us, strategy enlightened by data insights creates predictable, effective marketing leading to sales, engagement and brand loyalty.

Collecting marketing data is the first step in crafting content that addresses your audience’s needs. Analytics can help your marketing team identify pain points and craft content tailored to your target market.

Luckily, gathering actionable data and insights is easier than ever through web analytics tools like Google Analytics and marketing automation software like Act-On and Marketo. Here are some of the ways you can track your audience’s behavior and identify valuable insights about your target market’s needs:

Research the searches that lead people to your site

Use the “Queries” tracker in Google Analytics to explore the search terms that bring users to your website. Do you provide valuable information on the topics your audience is searching for? If your content is mismatched with the queries that lead people to your site, you may need to reassess your SEO strategy to better reach the right audience at the right time. Conversely, if you’re struggling to drive search traffic for terms you want to be known for, you may need to consider adding additional pages and keywords to your site to begin to rank for the keywords you want to target. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner can also reveal information about search volume that will help you identify audience pain points based on the things they search for online.

Track site searches

When visitors use the search function on your site, they are telling you directly what they hope to find — and that they’re unable to quickly find it themselves. Build out content on topics your visitors routinely search for, and ensure that it is placed prominently on your site so users can find it quickly. Site search data is also available in Google Analytics.

Practice social listening

Social networks aren’t just a venue to broadcast your own messages; they are also a place to learn about your audience’s opinions and points of view on an array of topics. “Social listening” is the practice of paying attention to what your audience is talking about online, with the intention of learning rather than engaging. This type of listening can give your marketing team many insights into the interests and needs of your audience, as well as knowledge about the types of marketing messages they most appreciate.

Ask your audience

Direct customer feedback remains one of the best ways to learn what your audience needs. Don’t be afraid to ask current customers about their experiences with your product or service. For example, ask your social media followers what they look for in digital content and the needs they want a provider in your field to fulfill. Do they struggle with topics a thought leader in your organization can address?

Are you ready to apply these insights when crafting your content strategy and ensure that your content truly addresses your target audience’s needs? Read our white paper, The 5 new laws of content, for more content marketing insights.

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Why online content is the best way to engage your target market

What makes online content a better choice for engaging your targets and addressing their needs than traditional advertising?

The simple answer is that content holds value for both marketers and prospects. For marketers, online content allows for direct engagement with members of a target audience, encouraging them to share their contact information in exchange for a download or an offer. With this information in hand, marketers can nurture leads in a more targeted, strategic manner, using data to better tailor content to address the needs of each contact. Essentially, content allows marketers to automate the early phases of the sales process, leaving the sales team free to focus on warmed leads further down the funnel.

For prospects, well-crafted online content offers valuable solutions to their individual needs. Unlike traditional advertising like television ads, which tell people what to buy, marketing content educates prospects, empowers them to do better work and addresses their pain points directly. It builds a relationship that may eventually lead to a sale, but it offers value before any money is exchanged.

But not all content can achieve this. Does yours?

Valuable content vs. valueless content

As we discussed on Monday, content only works if it’s attuned to what buyers need and delivered to them when they need it. Prospects can see right through valueless content, and they will not hand over any of their information in exchange for something that they feel is worthless. Underdeveloped, low-value content will hurt your brand rather than help it.

Content is also wasted if it is not well-targeted and delivered in a timely fashion. When developing your company’s content strategy, address your targets’ needs at every stage of the buying cycle, determine the ideal time to deliver each piece of content to them and automate the process to ensure the right information is given to the right prospects at the right time.

Develop and deliver content strategically

When we partnered with smart grid technology leader Landis+Gyr to create the Future.Ready. campaign, we knew we would need to create a cross-channel content strategy to reach a discerning, fragmented target market. Every piece of content had to be tailored to its medium and audience, but the campaign as a whole also needed to support the overall message about Landis+Gyr’s ability to evolve with customers into the future.

For the campaign, we chose to highlight different aspects of the Landis+Gyr brand message on each channel. For example, a short video introducing smart grid technologies and highlighting their importance was sent to email subscribers, and posted to YouTube and the campaign website. Why video? By putting content in this form, we were able to capture viewers’ attention without demanding too much of their time or expecting them to have an in-depth knowledge of smart grid technology: perfect for those who were interested enough in the topic to make contact but not yet very far in the buying cycle.

Meanwhile, a digital and print magazine provided much more in-depth coverage of specific smart grid topics, addressing the questions and concerns of industry leaders. This was paired with other digital collateral, including white papers, so that those who sought out higher-level information could engage with the campaign in a manner appropriate for their skill set, background knowledge and expertise. At the end of the day, every audience segment received the content that was right for their needs, leading to a year-over-year increase in all leading brand KPIs.

Take a look at some other clients Movéo has partnered with to create impactful marketing campaigns:

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What’s the difference between successful and unsuccessful content?

Content may be king when it comes to marketing, but there’s still confusion about what types of content are valuable, how to create effective content and how to share it with your target audience. Throughout August, we discussed the multitude of ways to improve your customer experience by developing targeted, data-driven strategies to meet the needs of your customers. This month, we’re focusing on the content you need to create to compel them to action.

The best content grows from a desire to meet your target market’s needs, and combines quality creative with data and insights to achieve this goal. So how do you know whether or not your content is poised for success? The answer is surprisingly simple.

Successful content

When your content is doing its job, it drives action, including conversions. But conversions won’t be immediate: content nurtures leads and ultimately ushers them to the sales team by delivering progressively deeper, more targeted information. Successful content can be identified by the engagement it drives, and by whether it entices audience members to explore more of your website. Do your blog’s readers follow links or CTAs to other posts or deeper site pages? How long do they spend viewing your materials?

Downloadable content should drive email signups and entice your audience to share their contact and personal information in return for the value you offer. Content posted on external channels, such as guest pieces on news sites, should drive visitors back to your own site, and hopefully encourage them to become social followers and email subscribers as well.

Remember, your cross-channel content strategy must include pieces that all work together toward a common goal of brand building and audience engagement. The most important measure is not the success of any single piece of content, but rather the success of your cross-channel content strategy as a whole. After engaging with various pieces of content at different touchpoints, do your prospects contact sales? And do they become customers?

Weak content

It’s important to learn to recognize the signs that your content isn’t working. Are you gaining social followers, but none in your target audience? You may need to adjust your content niche and retarget your work. Are you gaining leads that the sales team has trouble closing? You may need to build in more “lower funnel” content to educate prospects and nurture them toward a buying decision before they are handed off to the sales team.

Other signs of weak content that can be easily identified via Google Analytics include a high bounce rate and low amount time spent on your site. If the data shows that your audience visits your content but leaves quickly, you may need to invest in more engaging, higher-quality content, or you may need to work on delivering it to the right people in the right places.

Join us on the blog this month for a deep dive into how to use content to engage your target market, and a look at why great content is the key to breaking through in the crowded online marketplace.

Want to learn more about Movéo? See why clients come to us.

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Brand Names – The Root of Good Brand Architecture

Most companies operate something like this:

1. Invent or develop something the market wants
2. Give it a brand name
3. Get it out there and sell it

There is so much involved with 1) and 3) that 2) can just seem like a natural and straightforward bridge between the two.  You’ve got a great product, the engineers say it’s just what the market needs, so they give it a name.  Marketing begins putting together campaign and sales materials so you can get some revenue in the door.

Do this over and over again, and you have a stable of products with lots and lots and lots of brand names. Add in the wrinkle of M&A activity – adding to your operation products and services that someone else has named – and things get complex quickly.

But are all these names helping customers understand what you have to offer?

They do if you have good Brand Architecture.

Brand architecture is the way in which a company’s corporate brand and product brands relate and support each other. Think of it as signposting for your customers, helping them navigate what you have to offer.   

Many factors contribute to good brand architecture, but it begins with product naming.  Here are a few tips:

• Think from the outside in

Imagine yourself in the customer’s shoes. They want to associate the unfamiliar with something familiar, they want to know what goes with what, how things differ, where they came from.  

Do your product brand names help with those things, or get in the way?

• Keep it simple

Brands – and brand names – cost money.  They have to be thought up, legally cleared, and supported in marketing.  Especially in the B2B world, where budgets are much smaller than in consumer goods, we have to be careful with our spends.

Regardless of how proud we are of our new widget or technology, it may not need a brand name.  Is it really new, or is it something the market will think is very similar to other offerings?  

Customers like descriptive terminology for this reason.  We need brands to be able to distinguish ourselves from the competition, but our company name can do that very well.

Assume I have a company that is known for making great explosives – Dave’s Inc.  I want to sell the coyote from the roadrunner cartoons my brand of dynamite.  I could call it Dave’s Xplodirantic®, or whatever name I could get legally cleared, or I could call it Dave’s Dynamite.  I already have the name Dave’s for my company, and the descriptor tells my customer exactly what they need to know.

• Put like with like

Existing equity is very important – it is much easier to leverage a known brand than to create a new brand from scratch. And of course all your products should help to build your corporate brand.

Let’s assume that I already had Dave’s Xplodirantic® and it was doing really well, outselling Acme Dynamite 10 to 1.  Now I have a new, improved explosive.  My engineers tell me it is revolutionary in what it means to coyote/roadrunner warfare. But is it really, or will my market think it is just an improvement to what they already love?  The best route may be to disappoint my engineers and call it Dave’s Xplodirantic® Plus, or something similar.  This goes for add-ons, too; my customers will much prefer to buy Dave’s Xplodirantic® Blasting Caps to go with it, rather than have to look in the catalogue to figure out that Dave’s Top Hatters® are the blasting caps they need for their Xplodirantic® applications.

• Consolidation: build on your strengths

If you have several different product brands that are poorly differentiated, either through natural growth or through acquisition, it is possible to put them together to be more effective.  Let’s say I buy Acme because they see that I am cornering the coyote/roadrunner market and resistance is futile. Here is what I have for product brands:

Dave’s Dynamite

Acme Dynamite

Dave’s Xplodirantic®

Dave’s Catapults

Acme Catapults

Acme Dynamite is not selling well, so that is collapsed into Dave’s Dynamite, which is getting a halo effect from Dave’s Xplodirantic®, the market leader. But I had launched a line of catapults that is not doing well against Acme’s market leader in that field.  I then collapse my catapult line into the Acme line, perhaps as the budget model to Acme’s high-end technology, but all called Acme Catapults.  Here is where I end up:

Dave’s Dynamite

Dave’s Xplodirantic®

Acme Catapults

• Value edition
• Classic edition

So it is never too late for good brand architecture, but naming is the key. Good brand architecture:

• Is based on a customer’s point-of-view, and requires an outside-in perspective
• Ensures that target audiences understand the breadth and depth of value you offer them
• Transfers and leverages brand equity where appropriate
• Makes your offerings simple and easy to navigate

Want to learn more about how Movéo can help your brand grow? Contact us today.

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Three brands that are delivering great customer experience

According to Regalix’s “State of B2B Customer Experience 2014” survey, 81% of executives rank customer experience among the top priorities of their organizations. To help your organization learn from the best, we’re bringing you a few examples of B2B and healthcare brands that are leading the pack when it comes to making their customers happy.

OverDrive: a website that serves every market segment

Overdrive, a provider of digital audiobooks and e-books, serves organizations in several industries. Their website must speak to both the publishers and the distributors of audiobooks and e-books, and those distributors range from libraries (both corporate and public) to schools and retailers. It’s quite a diverse group.

OverDrive’s website manages to smoothly serve each of these audience segments at once thanks to smart navigation and highly tailored content. Site visitors can easily find the information that is relevant to their specific needs, whether they run an e-retailer or a K-12 school district. OpenDrive presents simple menus that clearly direct visitors through the site, shares examples of how prominent customers in different verticals are using their products and utilizes CTAs that invite visitors from each market segment to contact a sales representative with questions. Overall, the customer experience on the site is a very pleasant one, especially for a company with such a diverse customer base, and it positions OverDrive as a successful, knowledgeable provider.

Sidekick by HubSpot: insightful emails 

Hubspot’s Sidekick tool provides businesses with a way to track engagement on individual emails, as well as providing users with contact profiles directly in their inboxes. It’s particularly useful for sales and communications professionals, and integrates with HubSpot’s suite of business offerings.

Hubspot’s Sidekick-focused email marketing offers cleanly designed, compelling content pieces that users actually want to read. Better yet, the emails are full of actionable insights for Sidekick’s target audience and existing users, such as tips on email subject lines and recommendations on how to guess and check an email address that may not be readily available. Sidekick’s marketing emails remind their recipients to continuing using the service and teach them how to improve their success with it. How do these emails better the customer experience? They’re enjoyable, useful, and easy to engage with. Could your email marketing be more like that?

Caterpillar: content that compels

Construction and mining equipment provider Caterpillar has a strong digital marketing strategy that celebrates Caterpillar customers and their accomplishment. As their digital marketing manager Kevin Espinosa says, Caterpillar designed their digital strategy to do two things: learn what people are saying about their products and distribute valuable information through engaging avenues and real-world stories.

These real-world stories give nods to the successes of Caterpillar customers, inform current prospects about how Caterpillar will support them in their work and strengthen the Caterpillar brand by positioning the company as a customer-centric business. If you’re looking to use content to strengthen your customer experience, follow Caterpillar’s lead. Develop content that tells a story about how you’ve helped customers succeed—not only right after purchase, but also years later as your relationship has grown stronger.

At Movéo, we know that the key to delivering a great customer experience lies in using data and analytics to target the right prospects with the right information at the right time. Curious about how we do it? Take a peek into what we think.

Read more: what we think

Zebra Technologies case study: creating better customer experiences through content

For over 40 years, our client Zebra Technologies has provided innovative products and solutions to businesses around the world, from scannable wristbands that allow hospitals to better track patient data to interactive self-service kiosks for retailers. With so many disparate audiences to reach, Zebra needed to make each customer segment feel well-served by demonstrating an understanding of their needs and a commitment to solving their problems.

When Zebra hired Movéo, it was clear that the focus of our work would be on transforming their “one-size-fits-all” approach into smart, tailored campaigns that could reach multiple market segments simultaneously.

Redefining the customer experience

Movéo developed a customized approach for Zebra’s vertical marketing program to streamline the brand’s different buying cycles, maximize the customer experience and drive revenue growth. This took the form of a three-pronged strategy that focused on:

1. Segment prioritization and marketing mix design
2. Tailoring the most viable product/solution messages for each segment
3. Tailoring each offer to drive maximum response

Movéo considered the buyer’s journey for each Zebra vertical separately, taking a deeper look at the pain points and needs of buyers in each segment. We used these insights to develop new targeted content offerings, including white papers and webinars. Together, all of the content worked to drive Zebra’s reputation as a provider with a deep understanding of its audiences and their unique needs.

To reach prospects, Movéo promoted Zebra’s thought leadership through multi-touch campaigns that made use of tactics like email and and direct mail. This tailored approach resulted in potential buyers receiving the information most relevant to them at the point in their buying cycle when it was most likely to drive engagement. Over time, Movéo continued to optimize the campaign based on the data insights gathered along the way, maximizing Zebra’s return on investment.

Improve the customer experience

The success of the Zebra campaign hinged on our ability to deliver information that was relevant, timely and appealing to prospects in each segment of Zebra’s audience. Before employing Movéo’s tailored, highly customized approach, Zebra was flooding customers across their various verticals with all of their content, only some of which would be applicable to them, or in some cases providing only vague information that could apply to all the segments. By creating tailored materials and a smart approach for distributing them, Movéo enabled Zebra to give prospects in each vertical the most relevant, actionable experience possible.

Instead of asking the audience to sift through marketing messages to find the content that addressed their needs, we cut through the clutter to deliver it to them directly. In September, we’ll be diving into this topic further, so check back next week to learn more.

In the meantime, learn more about how you can strengthen your marketing content with our white paper, The 5 New Laws of Content:

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Is your customer experience creating brand advocates?

A brand advocate is more than a loyal customer: they are a customer so loyal, they’ll go out of their way to tell their colleagues and friends about your product or service. Brand advocates are your best sales tool. They reach people your marketing may not, and they speak to their connections with a trusted voice.

Every business wants to grow its pool of brand advocates, and hands down, the best way to do this is by creating an excellent customer experience. Delight customers at every stage of the buying cycle and in their ongoing relationship with your business, and you are likely to create a vocal tribe of brand advocates.

Make it a priority to instill brand advocacy through every interaction you have with your customers, but especially at these three times:

1) Their first week as your client

When you are building a new customer relationship, it’s crucial to go the extra mile. While the particulars of this interaction will depend on the products or services you offer, every business has the chance to wow new customers in some way.

If someone from your team will meet with clients in person or provide on-site installation support, be sure they are on time and maintain a professional but friendly attitude. Small extra touches like bringing breakfast to your first meeting with a new customer or client can have a huge impact. Whether or not you will meet with them in person, go out of your way to make sure that the customer feels cared for and that they have ample opportunity to ask questions and have them answered.

Ensure your new contact that the customer support or service delivery team will be just as responsive as the sales team, and make good on your promise. Especially during the first weeks of a new relationship, provide highly-responsive, dedicated customer support. Use automated messages to respond to customers promptly when they have a problem and have a customer service representative follow up even on small requests. Surprise your new customers by going above and beyond to keep them informed and satisfied with their purchase.

2) When things go wrong

Never leave your customers waiting for you when they have a problem. Make prompt response to customer complaints a company priority. Reassure the customer that you will address all their concerns, and do so in a reasonable amount of time. Avoid ever speaking to the customer in a confrontational tone, even if they have caused the problem.

And don’t rely on the customer service team alone to address problems. Make responding directly to customers part of your marketing strategy, as well: take time to address complaints in real-time on social media and solicit feedback on how well you responded to their problem. Don’t be afraid to make prompt customer service part of your brand.

3) When they’ve recommended you

Does your business have a system in place for accurately tracking referrals? Are you rewarding those who send you business?

Sometimes, the best way to create brand advocates is to make it clear how much you appreciate referrals and brand advocacy. Offer discounts or perks to those who direct others to your business and drive sales. Make it known that you reward those who contribute to your success.

In the end, it’s all about making customer delight a key element of your brand. Do everything you do, from early-stage marketing to ongoing relationship building with loyal customers, with the aim of creating the best possible customer experience.

At Movéo, we believe in offering our clients the best service possible. Learn more about why clients come to us:

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Photo by Sustainable UMD via Flickr Creative Commons

Three places you’re losing leads (and what to do about it)

Leads are lost throughout the buying cycle, but if you recognize where and why your audience is drifting away, you can do something about it. By making small changes to improve the customer experience and retain leads, you can substantially improve the speed and rate at which leads progress through your marketing funnel. Today on the blog, we’re identifying three stages in the buying cycle where you may be losing a significant number of leads and what you can do to improve in these common problem areas.

1) Early in the buying cycle

Many people will share their information in exchange for your downloadable content or some other offer. Few of them will ever proceed further down the sales funnel. Some were never a good fit for your offering in the first place, but others may have forgotten why they were searching for your content in the first place and simply won’t move forward without more nurturing.

Solve this problem with marketing automation that reminds prospects of your organization and re-engages those who have been inactive. Tailor marketing messages based on the type of content they engaged with originally, how much they engaged with your business before becoming “lost” and how long it has been since they last interacted with your content.

If you deploy marketing automation strategically, your business will see real results. According to the Annuitas Group, “businesses who use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads.” Tailoring the content to your customers’ needs will improve the customer experience and overall engagement rates.

2) Between their inbound engagement and your sales call

In 2011, professors James B. Oldroyd and Kristina McElheran, along with David Elkington, chairman and CEO of InsideSales.com, shared the results of their study in the Harvard Business Review, finding:

Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.

In 2015, plenty of opportunities are still lost when a prospect reaches out to your business, is not contacted promptly by the sales team and fails to qualify as a lead. Keep your marketing funnel from leaking by encouraging the sales team to follow up with prospects when your business is still top-of-mind for them, which is right after they make contact. Your prompt response will improve the customer experience and show that your business is attentive to customer needs.

3)   Anywhere you lack calls-to-action

You may be engaging leads with strong educational content throughout the buying cycle, but if it doesn’t spur your audience to action, what are you gaining? It’s not enough to get prospects on your email list or following you on social media if they aren’t interacting with your content and following it through the marketing funnel.

The best way to create content that converts is to incorporate strong calls-to-action at every stage of the buying cycle. Use design and copy to direct viewers to one or at most two calls-to-action (CTAs) per page or content piece. Make it abundantly clear what you want your audience to do next. CTAs can improve the customer experience by helping content consumers figure out how to act on the information they’ve been given. Without strong CTAs, your content consumers may regularly engage with your content but without any direction: you’ll be wasting an opportunity to lead them where you want them to go.

In what other areas of your marketing do you find leads slipping away? This is a great opportunity to use the data you’ve collected to determine your marketing’s strengths and weaknesses. If these aren’t your trouble spots, investigate where your problems do lie. Then, consider the changes you could make to help engage and delight leads in each of those areas.

Learn more about how Movéo can help your business increase sales productivity with a sales activation program:

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Photo by Europeana EU via Flickr Creative Commons