Right Content, Right Time

Gordon Plutsky Director Of Marketing & Research King Fish Media

Online lead generation has become one of the larger lines in the CMO’s budget. New business is, of course, the lifeblood of any growing company (and often how its salespeople are compensated). However, focusing solely on feeding the opening of the sales funnel with raw leads is not an efficient process for generating results. The challenge is how to further qualify and nurture your leads through conversion. This is where the right content is crucial.

Backing that notion, IDG Connect just completed some eye-opening research on how IT buyers view content and use it in their decision-making process. While this study is based on technology products/services, it lends insight into how B2B decision-making is made at a high level.

The study asked buyers how much importance/weight they give to three sources of information--vendor content, social/peer content, and independent editorial content--in making a purchase decision, now and in two years. The current breakdown stands at 29% social/peer, 35% vendor, and 36% third party. In two years, it will be dead even for all three sources. It is remarkable that savvy IT buyers will hold peer and vendor content in the same equally important and believable esteem as traditional third-party editorial. As a marketer, you can never forget that while you can help influence what third party sites and social media channels are saying about your brand, you don’t control it. However, you do have complete control over the content you create (and when you present that--more about that soon), which should be the focal point of your lead-generation campaigns.

Let’s look at the implications for your marketing and lead-generation plans moving forward. As always, it is critical for your company to produce high-quality, authoritative content for your Web site and other digital formats. After all, buyers are looking to you for information that helps them make decisions. Additionally, it is increasingly important to foster social communities among your customers and prospects. You should be listening to what they are saying about your company, and encouraging brand advocates to recommend and evangelize your products. The influence now held by the social world makes it incumbent on you to influence the influencers--which is likely why running traditional interruptive type advertising is less effective when running in editorial environments that are declining in influence.

Instead, creating your own content and using it to generate inbound leads could be a better use of your marketing budget (limited) or not. In addition to having content on your Web site, you can also push it out through your own social media channels, broadcast Webcasts, and virtual shows, and syndicate it with media and lead-generation companies. All of these actions should bring you inbound leads.

Another major finding from the IDG study is about how buyers consume different formats and types of information along the buying-decision continuum: Earlier in the buying process (general education, business case development) they may want to use more general and broad-based content sources to learn about the products and category. As they move closer to making a product purchase, their needs shift to more detailed materials containing technical information that helps them make a final decision. This means you need to have varied types of information and formats of content to provide to buyers as they move from the gathering information stage to shortlist creation to decision making.

Taking this information a step further, you can structure your lead process to gather more information about prospects and further qualify them in terms of their budget level/authority and how close they are to a final decision. Having this insight allows you to nurture the lead with the right content for their current location in the buying-decision cycle.

So, for example, if you identify a lead as being early in the process, then you can offer Webcasts and virtual shows that educate and provide a broad understanding of your solution in the context of your industry. As you further qualify the lead, you can offer whitepapers or higher-level Webcasts that build trust and affinity with your company while further educating your prospect.

The key here is to give prospects relevant content that helps them make a considered decision instead of going for the hard sell. Too often prospects are turned off by a salesperson asking for the order when they are still early in the sales process. Conversely, when a prospect is down to his final decision, he wants authoritative content, not a mug with your logo on it or a free lunch.

In summary, you can increase the overall effectiveness of your lead generation and conversion by further qualifying leads and nurturing them with appropriate content to build trust and help the prospect make a decision. An added bonus is that you have created a relationship rather than conducted a transaction. Relationships often lead to a long-term and hopefully profitable customer.