Content Is Written, Now What?
Once your content is developed, it is time for the next phase. Having taken the first step towards building an online brand you are now in position to turn your content strategy over to phase two and start to see some tangible results. What does phase two consist of?
- Attract Visitors
Without an audience, you have nothing. Astute marketers know engineers and operators are self-directed and the content you can produce will help satisfy their quest for data and information. In practice, you are the one to direct them to solutions for their issues, problems, and questions. Content marketing creates a web presence (doesn’t every company need a solid web presence now that it’s almost 2020) that builds credibility and authority with your data-driven engineering-type audience. In addition to the many SEO benefits of content marketing, it can be used as a means to connect on a level with your target audience that other marketing tactics just can’t achieve.
- Gather Contact Info
Think back to the days when you needed to “mine” for this information and the days of calling through your rolodex of business cards. Hard to believe that those times were only 20 years.
- Additional Interaction
NURTURE! You simply cannot stop or go right to a sales pitch after identifying who is interacting with your content. There are no free dinners. Without the action of continuous contact and influencing, your marketing plan will fall short.
But what tactics work best for the nurturing step? Here are some suggestions:
- A decision guide or tool
The buying of most products in the water and wastewater market is a complex process. You can simplify parts of it for prospects by creating a decision guide.
- A market brief
These engineers and operators you are trying to reach are busy, and it’s hard for them to keep up with everything happening on any given day. A brief summary of an issue and how people are addressing it might be the perfect tactic.
- A video or podcast chat with a customer or expert
Video and audio are opportunities to provoke thought and bring in new perspectives.
- RFQ & Sale
Ah-Ha! We’ve arrived at our goal!But wait it’s not the final destination.There is more work to be done and more money to be made.
- Upsell
KEEP THE COMMUICATION GOING! The messaging around upsell can be a little more direct and bold. Your customer already has an affinity towards your brand so feel free to introduce more sales targeting messaging but remember to keep upsell suggestions targeted based on your audience. Case studies and testimonials are good places to start. Make sure your direct product recommendation is targeted to the needs of each specific customer and what they should be considering. Beware though; too many recommendations may overwhelm the customer. In order to avoid this, make sure each upsell is bringing a legitimate solution to their problems
Image credit: "Just bee.," Simon Matzinger © 2014, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/