Life Cycle
Next, you need to map out each step for your potential leads. Once you know the personas, you need to start thinking how they would progress through solving their problem. You need to “Walk a mile in their shoes” and start thinking of how to lead your potential client to the conclusion that they need your product or service. Yes, we want to increase leads but they need to be good leads and not just anybody. So you need to be able to gain awareness through blogs or ads and then start educating your leads with valuable content like: eBooks, buyer guides, industry whitepapers, etc. These are created to help your client understand the solutions. Lastly, you need to create a validation piece like a webinar, seminar, or free trial which will prioritize what the most important solution is. That way you can move these marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads.
Research
Researching the correct questions and potential answers are vital to creating great content for each stage of the funnel. Technically you would already have the lead information from them downloading your first piece of content, but that doesn’t mean you are any closer to making a sell. You not only want to collect leads but you want to collect qualified leads. That’s when creating well researched content plays a vital role in moving your lead farther down the sales funnel. You have them interested but now you have to keep them engaged. This is when great research and knowing your buyer persona will improve your quality of leads. Industry trends and timing can also play a key part of when you release your data. You want your content to be original or at least more informational than other content already out there. Think about it this way, nobody would download any content for fantasy football after the football season is over. Also if you create your own research and provide facts or statistics that are original, you will add a level of credibility to your company. If you are struggling to create new, enticing content then think about possibly recreating an old piece of information by adding new relevant information. Just plan out each piece of content and know where it will fall within the funnel.
Conclusion
Creating great content really boils down to a few different aspects. Like I said before, the content needs to be positioned correctly and targeted towards the right crowd in order to make an impact which is why I feel like knowing your buyer persona is the most important part. You must make it all about them. They will be more willing to read the information if it is focused on them, gives them tips/answers to their questions and in some way improves their life. Once this is in place then you need to map out each step along the process. Once you have created the strategy you just need to do the correct research to uncover what information your crowd is looking for each step of the way.
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