Content marketing has become the backbone of the sales process. And for good reason. The average B2B buyer consumes 13 pieces of branded content per month before deciding on a purchase.¹ Producing the right content marketing assets has never been more influential on pipeline revenue.
Building a lead engine that creates new business opportunities and nurtures the digital relationship does not have to be complicated. However, it does require a rhythm – consistently executed over time – to produce the desired results.
As a digital marketing agency, we like to practice what we preach. Especially when it comes to walking our talk.
We recommend three simple things that you can do right now to increase your website visitors and build a digital relationship. When we implemented these steps, our engaged visitors grew by 250% in a single year.
1. Offer a high-value gated asset to grow (and love) your list
Your collection of opt-in email addresses is your pool of potential buyers. You need to love that list! Treat everyone on that email list as an individual who wants to know your expert knowledge and who wants to be kept informed. Be transparent when people download your content and let them know you are going to continue to send them high-value information, offers and exclusive invitations. They can always unsubscribe if they do not find value, (and that is okay) but if your content does create engagement, expect to build trusted relationships with your audience, at scale.
2. Consistently publish and amplify educational blogs
Publishing quality content is an ongoing challenge for most marketers. The upside is that blogging grows your traffic and influences the buyers’ journey for known and unknown visitors to your website. In other words: totally worth it.
Create a regular rhythm of educative content on your website, optimized for SEO. Share blog posts in your nurture emails and on your social media channels to raise your visibility and thought-leadership positioning. Consider other methods of content such as video or podcasts. Meet your digital relationships where they are on their journey.
The New Customer Buying Journey
Your email communications can introduce the right assets to the people on your list, based on where they are in their journey.
3. Communicate regularly, sell rarely
Email marketing builds relationships and trust at scale. At MMS, we rarely sell to our list. We aim to provide valuable information that will help inform and empower digital marketing strategies. Pointing our email communications to blog posts and other forms of content on our website boosts traffic and conversions, but more importantly, it builds a digital relationship.
By attracting the right people and offering them great content that will help them make the right business decisions, we build trust. Ultimately some of those people will want to buy from us.
That’s it – if you do these three things consistently, you will have an awesome lead generation machine.
If you are interested in learning more about implementing these suggestions, we would be happy to help