How to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy for Faster and Sustainable Lead Nurturing

They say Content is King, and it’s true. Content marketing is a rapidly growing channel with new digital platforms emerging now and then. It offers the perfect amount of freedom for marketers to optimize their strategies to meet the dynamic needs of the business.

Focusing on content marketing, you’re able to build an ever-growing inventory of useful, unique, and relevant content in the form of blogs, videos, infographics, case studies, etc. for your target audience. This content will not only help you improve your website visibility on Google’s SERPs and boost brand awareness, but it will also provide you with a collection of resources that you can use to nurture your leads.

Lead nurturing in content marketing

While lead generation is the process of capturing the interest and generating curiosity around a product or service to bring in potential new customers, a study by MarketingSherpa found 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales.

You have a great website, you’re creating great content in various platforms that are driving traffic to your website, and your lead generation is on track. But sadly, visitors aren’t converting.

In B2B, the buying decision is crucial. Before making the purchase, the buyer wants to thoroughly research their available options. It usually takes time to make the decision. So brands must nurture the leads during this period until they’re ready to buy.

Here are the four main areas of lead nurturing and how you can optimize each one:

1. Content mapping

In a buyer’s journey, there are three crucial stages:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Purchase

And you must have content plan in place that caters to the leads in each of these three stages. So while curating new content, you should always be mindful about which stage of a buyer’s journey the content will be most suitable and help your leads to move forward to the next stage.

For example, in the awareness stage, content should shape their perspective and educate them about the area of interest. In the second stage, you should share insights about the problem areas and how your product/service helps. Finally, you then want to educate them about the unique features and offer them insights into your product.

2. Personalized and recommended content

The content you use to nurture leads should speak directly to your audience. You need to understand your buyer personas and deliver personalized content to them. The demographics, location, business size, budget constraints, needs, and purchase timeline, should be at your disposal.

Try to maintain a conversational tone in all your communications, targeted ads, blogs, and emails. A little personalization, such as recommending content based on previous interests and activity or addressing their specific problems, will go a long way.

3. Email to serve content

The best and most effective means for lead nurturing is through email, especially in B2B marketing. This is because emails have the power to drive targeted and active engagement at a high rate. The content you’re trying to feed your potential buyer lands directly in their inbox, drastically reducing their chances of missing out. Your brand gets direct visibility.

It also becomes easier to segment your audience in email nurturing, allowing you to push the most relevant and helpful content. Before you launch an email campaign, make sure you have your content inventory ready. You can’t just rely on one form of content; you should have all sorts of content types at your disposal, including blogs, videos, ebooks, podcasts and infographics, to name a few. The more diverse your content is, the more engaging your emails will be.

Here are a few pointers to help you make the most of your email lead nurturing campaign:

• Be sure that your receivers have opted in to receive emails from you while filling out a form on the website or subscribing to your newsletter or downloading resources.
• If you want to nurture your leads effectively, you must have visually appealing, clear, and strong call-to-actions in the email.
• Aim to establish two-way communication and allow your audience to respond quickly to your emails.
• Keep the content simple, short, and very engaging.
• Timing and frequency are crucial. Different businesses have different needs, and naturally, the strategy will differ accordingly. A new lead won’t want to receive too many emails at the beginning, whereas a lead that has made contact multiple times would likely be more interested in receiving more emails from you. At any point, you don’t want to bombard their inbox but nurture them with a proper lead nurturing sequence.

4. Marketing automation

A tiny percentage of your marketing qualified leads (MQLs) will actually convert into sales qualified leads (SQLs). Ideally, you want a large number of MQLs to improve the possibility for a high number of conversions. This is where marketing automation comes in.

In a perfect world, you would have an all-inclusive platform. A platform that has a built-in CRM, a great lead scoring system, marketing automation workflows, and most importantly, a contact management system.

The good news is that there are a lot of options to consider, from global CRM and marketing automation leaders like Hubspot to new and innovative ventures like LeadSquared. Make sure you understand your requirements first before purchasing a platform. Try out a couple of free demos before jumping into a long-term commitment.