The last entry in this series on B2B Marketing and Sales Funnel content described the messaging and marketing vehicles best suited to meeting the funnel’s Awareness stage objectives, especially in connection with high-cost and -value B2B products and services.
As I discussed in my last post, creating Awareness for your offering among prospects and customers in today’s crowded markets not only requires consistent messaging but also an array of marketing and communications channels, ranging from traditional publicity and print advertising through social media, organic SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click) advertising, and SEM (search engine marketing).
Moving prospects from the Awareness to the Consideration stage is just as challenging but different, since the objective here is to propel prospects beyond mere acknowledgement of a company’s offering to recognizing it as a potential solution to a problem and, as such, a candidate for purchase. Whereas Awareness stage content can be relatively straightforward and declarative (e.g., “At Company X, we sell XX”), Consideration stage content must not only be informative but also both engaging and compelling because its goal is to get prospects to decide that a company is a credible supplier and its offerings worth investigating.
Consideration stage marketing content should be broadly educational and its messaging should conveying the benefits of a company’s offering while also establishing the company as a thought or practice leader in its sector. As described in my earlier Awareness-stage post, such dual-messaging is integral to marketing high-cost B2B solutions since their sale entails the endorsement of specifiers, who are typically focused on a solution’s’ utility, as well as the approval of managerial decision makers, who are usually concerned with the supplier’s reputation.
Consideration-stage content may be packaged in a wide variety of formats, from white papers, e-books, brochures, and conference presentations to podcasts, online videos, and interactive tutorials. What’s crucial is that the selected marketing channels and vehicles appeal to the target audience (e.g., podcasts for younger end-users versus white papers, brochures, and executive summaries for managers) and that they present sufficient content to be persuasive. Convincing prospects that a high-cost B2B offering and its supplier are worth consideration can require a lot of facts and supporting background data, which the selected marketing channels and vehicles must be capable of communicating effectively.
As with almost all Marketing and Sales Funnel marketing content, whose objective is to move the prospect from one funnel stage to the next until he or she converts into a customer by making a purchase, Consideration-stage content must include a call to action. The objective of all marketing content in the funnel is to transfer the prospect from one stage to the next until he or she converts into a customer by making a purchase.
As with all Marketing and Sales Funnel content, the objective of which is to move prospects from one funnel stage to the next until they convert to customers, Consideration-stage content must include a call to action. The likelihood of conversion is greatly increased when every stage engages prospects, and the best way to ensure their ongoing engagement is by offering them information that is relevant to their business environment and that addresses their professional challenges.
Please look for my next post, which will discuss the best types of content messaging and marketing vehicles to get your company’s offerings through the Marketing and Sales Funnel’s Preference stage to the funnel’s ultimate objective and culmination, the offering’s Purchase.
Please see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this series on content for the Marketing and Sales Funnel at GF&Z’s blog “Perspectives in Global B2B Marketing,” on www.globalmarcomm.com.
Ronald-Stéphane Gilbért, Global and Content Marketing Practice Director— Gilbért, Flossmann & Zhang Worldwide, Cleveland
Contact GF&Z at solutions@globalmarcomm.com for more information on optimizing your content for the Marketing and Sales Funnel.