The Content Blueprint: Developing One-to-One Relationships

Today’s B2B buyer is no longer dependent on vendors to gather information.  Buyers have more avenues than ever to collect information and educate themselves about the products or services they are looking to purchase.  As part of that buying cycle, they are looking for a one-to-one dialogue with their vendors.  In order to establish this dialogue it is imperative that you deliver  relevant, timely and engaging content that maps to where your buyer is in the purchase process.

However, content doesn’t just happen. In order to ensure you are creating the right content that maps to your ideal buyer persona(s), and to the various stages of their purchase cycle, you must have a process for content development.

The content development process is made up of two key components:

Offer Mapping

Offers presented to prospects should be mapped to their appropriate stage in the buying cycle. Offers will greatly differ from stage to stage. For example, an offer for a first-time responder might be an industry research report, while the offer for a prospect in the final negotiation stage might be an ROI analysis tool.

Delivering the right offers will also vary based on the audience segment to whom you are speaking.  The fact is that most B2B buying decisions involve multiple buyers, each with different roles (some are researchers, some are recommenders, some are decision makers, etc.).  Your offer map must be developed with each of these audience segments in mind.

Content Development

Content can be the “make or break” component for any demand generation, lead nurturing or customer retention campaign.  If content isn’t relevant or timely, you’ll lose the attention of your audience. Subsequently, lead nurturing effectiveness will wane.

To keep the conversation going with your buyers, you must deliver “to-the-point” content that educates, is relevant to their needs, and gives them the ability to take the logical next step in the buying process.  Buyers also want current information, not yesterday’s news. So it’s imperative to keep your content fresh so be creative.  Content can come in the form of collateral, videos, webinars, transcripts, podcasts, or testimonials to name a few.  And it doesn’t have to be originated from your company alone.  Leverage analysts, research firms, partners and other third parties that are reputable within your space.

The process for content development is similar to that of offer mapping:  create a map that lines up content types with each stage of the buying cycle.   Together with your offer map, you’ll now be ready to create the content and have substantive conversations with prospects and customers, that will lead to revenue.

Once your nurturing campaign is in place, you will begin to receive a wealth of prospect data in the form of clicks, conversions, site visits, etc. which leads us to the next component of the Lead Management Framework, Metrics.