Leveraging Content & Social Media to Move Leads Through the Sales Cycle

As with most industries, service providers need to make changes in order to provide a better customer experience. Designated content allows you to leverage your established brand, reputation and core strengths while educating and providing resources and services to current and potential customers.

You can differentiate your business from the competition by building relationships through educational means, tailoring content toward your potential clients’ pain points and offering custom solutions that represent your core competencies.

Content creation is one of the largest components of any solid marketing strategy. Videos, infographics, articles and whitepapers tailored to your business’s areas of expertise drive thought leadership and enable sales.

More importantly, content effectively bridges the gap between your customers and your business. If approached strategically, this genuine, personal brand voice will resonate with your audience not just today, but in the years to come.

How to go about producing content

Many businesses have an in-house content production team to develop content from inception to refresh. But creating content from scratch with research, writing and design has its financial and efficiency drawbacks.

When it isn’t feasible or timely to produce original content, you can outsource content creation and management, which can be an incredibly lucrative strategy. It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel with every new blog post. Leveraging freelancers, agencies and technology can help with that.

Strategic content that reveals your brand’s key differentiators and highlights the value-add proposition can be relatively easy to create. Keep these things in mind when deciding what to educate your audience on, which form of content to develop, and how to offer it to your current and potential customers.

Using technology and social media for content creation

Online tools and services can be great assets in your content marketing strategy for everything from creation to syndication. Martech tools such as Google Analytics and Marketo, and a content delivery network, can assist you with finding content to curate, producing content, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)/website localization services, and managing content and internal communications.

Another benefit of these tools is that they often integrate into your current customer relationship management system to organize, automate and synchronize prospecting, sales and marketing, customer service and technical support.

In addition, social platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram present opportunities to connect with current followers, as well as to reach potential customers. Social media can help you promote your solution offerings for a more effective business strategy. Utilizing other media outlets efficiently with synchronized, targeted campaigns can be an exceptionally beneficial use of your content.

Making content relevant

Content can be an excellent way to reach net new leads through an educational approach. If a potential lead reaches your website to learn about a particular subject, it’s a natural move to seek out your services directly from that piece of content — offered at no cost or through a site membership.

Modern technology allows you to develop your brand in new and exciting ways, but it can only take you so far. Tools need to be combined with personalized content in order to deliver emotive and engaging strategies, build relationships, establish loyalty and educate potential customers. This will enable you to increase customer retention, meet customer needs and ultimately close the sales cycle with purchase agreements.

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This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.