Most organizations that invest in digital marketing, do so for one reason - to generate leads. While an inbound marketing or content marketing approach is aimed at attracting potential customers by providing helpful and relevant information, there is an additional inbound marketing tactic that can help you capture new contacts who may have an interest in your services but aren’t quite ready to talk to sales. This blog will explain what premium content is, how to produce it, and why it's a great strategy for any organization executing a content marketing strategy.
What is Premium Content?
Premium content is a downloadable or gated piece of content displayed on your website that typically provides a higher level of value to your audience. While you may already be generating blog or social media content, premium content is typically more in-depth on a particular topic that resonates with your end user. For example, our agency may write a blog explaining the “Buyer’s Journey”. If we were to develop premium content on that topic, we would consider writing a more in-depth guide approaching a Buyer’s Journey Mapping exercise that a website visitor could download and follow. Premium content can come in many different formats, including guides, ebooks, whitepapers, surveys, email masterclasses, etc. Our agency has a library of premium content located on our Resource Page. Feel free to download them!
Premium content isn’t just a longer format version of your traditional content, it should be more helpful and provide more context. Since this content will be gated, or protected by a form that requires an email, it's best practice to ensure that the content you are developing is worth a potential lead giving up their email in exchange. Most people today are very protective of their email addresses, and you want to ensure that you are providing enough value to them to nurture them over time while avoiding spamming behavior that would cause them to unsubscribe.
Premium Content Strategy
So how do you get started with offering premium content? The first step in developing premium content is to ensure you have an ecosystem that supports gathering and storing contact information for those who are downloading your content. We’re a bit biased as a Platinum-Tiered HubSpot Solutions Provider, so our obvious recommendation would be HubSpot Sales and Marketing Hubs. The reason this is the first step is to ensure that you have a plan in place so that you can capture their emails and nurture future prospects into happy customers.
The next step after setting up your CRM includes developing the content itself. Brainstorming topics for Premium Content can be overwhelming, but we have some suggestions that can help. As stated above, developing guides and checklists is a great way to help your prospects step by step through a process that you’ve already created in order to help them prepare. Our agency’s Website Redesign Checklist helps folks who may be considering a website redesign in the future start to plan for the project. This checklist provides a ton of value to someone who hasn’t conducted the process on their own, or it’s been some time. Each of the 10 steps gives a helpful explanation of a key point in the preparation process for a web project. This should provide any business owner, or marketing professional a great tool or reference when getting started.
Similar to our checklist, think about the different ways your business can provide as much value or knowledge about the particular product or service you provide, and start to compile that into a downloadable resource made available to your prospects. Take the time to ensure it’s well-designed, and place it on your website in areas with a call-to-action where a reader might find it helpful (The bottom of a similar service page would be a great place). This is what we call a transitional CTA. For someone who might not be quite ready to talk to a salesperson by filling out a contact form, a transitional CTA offering valuable information (i.e. your premium content) will still capture their information while providing them with more content that is relevant to them. This establishes a mutually beneficial relationship that keeps both you and your potential customer in touch.
The Value of Premium Content
As previously mentioned, developing and deploying premium content can be an extremely valuable digital marketing tactic that revs up lead generation. As people find and download your content, you’ll continually build a list of contacts in your CRM, who likely have an interest or need for your products and services. As you continue to produce content following the inbound marketing methodology, you’ll have the opportunity to stay in front of your audience and nurture them to one day work with you when they are ready.
A separate benefit of a premium content strategy includes positioning your organization or company as a subject matter expert. The abundance of information available to everyone today can make it hard to stand out from your competition. Following this approach, you can develop an entire resource library of extremely valuable content. This not only helps nurture a particular prospect, but it can also improve the chances of them sharing your valuable resources with others who may be interested.
Premium content is one of the best ways to build a receptive audience of prospects who may need your services. When done right, you’ll position your brand as an expert who can help, and your sales team will love you for it. If you have any questions about how you can start generating leads with premium content, don’t hesitate to let us know. However, if you aren’t quite ready to talk to sales, feel free to download our 8-Step Plan for Content Marketing Creation.
