Bad content marketing is like a bad date. Imagine a handsome guy sitting down next to a beautiful lady at a bar and saying, “Hey beautiful, if you act now you can be my wife by this time tomorrow.” How successful do you think the guy would be? Are you asking your cold leads to buy from you before you’ve earned their trust and proven your value?
Conversely, good content marketing is like a good date. Buying from a company with good content marketing feels easy and natural, never pressured or hurried. To practice good content marketing, guide your prospects gently through the customer lifecycle, building credibility, trust and perceived value gradually, so that they never feel like they’re the target of a sales job.
Hallmarks of effective content marketing
Think of each content marketing step as a micro-transaction. Good content marketing makes buyers feel like it is virtually effortless to buy from you. Your content marketing starts prospect relationships with minimal commitment required. As prospects gain more interest, your content marketing escalates the relationship one step at a time, gently escorting your prospect along the road to becoming a paying customer.
Once the relationship has grown to maturity, buying from you becomes little more than just a small step up from the relationship your prospect already has with your company. To align your content marketing with your customer lifecycle, just think of content as steps on a staircase. Measure the height of each content step by the amount of commitment your prospects must make and the amount of value your content must provide.
The first content your prospects encounter should mirror the first step on a staircase, requiring minimal commitment from the prospect. But that first content step should also lead to the second content step, which should require only a little bit more commitment and lead to the third step and so on.
Think of each content marketing step as a micro-transaction. The prospect commits something of value to the relationship and your content provides something of value in return.
At first, prospects won’t be willing to offer much, because they don’t believe your claims, they don’t trust you yet, and they’re not even sure they care about what you’re offering. So start with a simple content marketing microtransaction that asks them to commit to something easy for them to give up, and return the favour by giving them content they value substantially more than what they must give up.
As one content marketing micro-transaction leads to the next, gradually increase the commitment they must make to get to the next step, but also increase the value of the content you offer, always making sure that they feel the commitment they made was well worthwhile.
Getting commitment
Here are some examples of gradually escalating commitments to ask for from your prospects in return for your valuable content:
- Spending time and attention
- Clicking a web link
- Providing contact information
- Replying to an email
- Taking a phone call
- Meeting in person
- Providing billing information
- Paying money
- Agreeing to a yearly contract
- Providing valuable content of their own.
Deliver value
Here are some examples of the value your content marketing can deliver while gradually ramping up the relationship with your prospects:
- Entertainment
- Educational information
- Useful information
- Demos
- Freemium product use
- Low-cost introductory products
- Advanced add-on product features
- Full featured products
- Volume discounted pricing
- Sense of importance
- Influence over future product direction
