If you’ve been following our blog over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been focusing a lot on marketing and sales automation, especially automated workflows. If you’re just joining us, be sure to check out some of our other posts first:
- Sales and Marketing: The Ultimate Bromance
- What is Sales Automation: A Beginner’s Guide
- How to Create an Automated Workflow
- Build a Lead Nurturing Campaign in Six Easy Steps
And we’re back. The whole idea behind automated workflows, such as lead nurturing or drip campaigns, is that you’re priming your sales pump by educating your audience and answering their questions. By the time you’re ready to hand off leads to your sales team, they should be well-informed and excited to buy. That starts with content that really resonates with your audience.
For Successful Automated Workflows, Follow the Buyer’s Journey
But how do you inform and answer questions? It starts with creating valuable content that meets your audience at whatever stage of the Buyer’s Journey they’re on. In other words, no matter what form your content takes, it needs to be appealing and appropriate. For example, a pricing sheet may work well with a lead in the Decision Stage, but it’s probably too early to put that in front of someone at the Awareness Stage. Vice versa, directing a Decision Stage contact to a How-To blog article might be a little inappropriate.
The Buyer’s Journey is a great way to organize a lot of lead nurturing campaigns and other workflows. It ushers your audience down an epic journey. Leads start off aware that they have a problem, then moving toward considering how to solve that problem, and eventually deciding on the best way to solve it. Here’s a quick example:
- Awareness Stage: “My car tires are worn down”
- Consideration Stage: “I should buy new tires”
- Decision Stage: “I’m going to buy my tires from Joe’s Tire Shop”
Choosing Buyer’s Journey Content for Your Automated Workflows
If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed at having to write or create tons of new content for your automated workflow, don’t worry. There’s a good chance you probably have tons of great content on your site that’s just waiting to be leveraged or repurposed. Think back to what you’re trying to achieve through your automated workflow. For example, if you wanted your leads to ultimately buy a specific product, you’d go back through your current content to find any relevant assets.
A great place to start is by performing a content audit. This helps you take stock of all the content across your site and other platforms—blog articles, Youtube videos, ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, FAQ—you name it! List out all of your content and begin categorizing it by a few key criteria. Some of the criteria we use include: format, topic and of course, Buyer’s Journey stage.
Once you’ve completed your content audit, you can use the criteria you used to organize it to pinpoint the right pieces to use in your automated workflow campaigns. Like we mentioned above, filtering by topic is the easiest step, but then how do you decide where your content fits into the Buyer’s Journey?
Awareness Stage Content
People in the Awareness Stage are looking for answers to their problems, more information, data, insights and opinions. They’re not sure how to solve their problem just yet and are looking for resources that will point them in the right direction.
Depending on your business or industry, you may not spend a lot of time on the Awareness Stage—especially if your product or service is rather niched. However, it’s still a great idea to focus some of your attention on every stage of the Buyer’s Journey.
Awareness Stage content is usually lighter and easy to digest. Blog posts are a great way to tackle this content. They should answer specific questions while not diving too deeply into the topic. Other Awareness Stage content to consider are simple checklists that help a person figure everything they need to know, short how-to style videos that solve simple problems or even opinion pieces from your organization’s subject matter experts.
In terms of your lead nurturing campaign, this content is great for linking or embedding right in the body of your email. It aims to inform and encourage your leads to learn more, but doesn’t pressure them into even thinking about buying anything yet.
Consideration Stage Content
As people learn more and more about their problem, they begin to do some heavier research and ask more informed questions. They are aware of the problem they need to solve and are considering the best way to do it.
Consideration, or Evaluation, Stage content should demonstrate the right solution for your audience’s problem. This is a great place to showcase your organization’s products or services through more technical/specific blog posts, long-form content such as ebooks and case studies that show how others have solved similar problems.
You want to demonstrate to your leads that your organization has the know-how and resources to answer questions and solve specific problems. “If you’re going to buy tires, you should buy them from us. Here’s why.”
Again, don’t be too eager to pressure leads into a sales conversation just yet. As we say in the writing world, “Show, don’t tell.” In other words, give your leads the information they need to make them feel good about choosing you.
Decision Stage Content
As you start to track good engagement with content in the first two stages of the Buyer’s Journey, you’ll get closer to the Decision Stage. This final stop on the Buyer’s Journey is where your marketing qualified leads (MQLs) convert into sales qualified (SQLs). That means they’re ready to buy and it’s up to your sales team to get them across the finish line.
By now, the question your audience has is not if they should buy, but rather from whom. Decision Stage content needs to reflect the fact that your organization is the only choice. The content for this stage should really hook your potential buyers. Things like free trials, demos, consultations, audits, estimates or even coupons are a great way to hand off your leads to your sales team.
Create Content that Excites Your Audience. We'll Show You How!
Creating and curating the perfect content to reach your prospects at any point in the Buyer’s Journey is one step you can take to build a great automated workflow such as a lead nurturing or drip campaign. But there’s so much more! Contact ProFromGo to discover how we can help you tell your brand's unique story to prospects and current customers.
