We’re a month into the second half of 2016. Taking a look back at your goals from 1H, how overwhelmed were you?
There’s definitely been an increase in the expectation that marketers need to deliver more than they have in the past. We’ve set the bar high for ourselves (and that’s not a bad thing), but let’s face it, accomplishing those goals does not happen overnight. We need to strategize, consult with our team and with sales, and draft a new approach to deliver more leads.
This past Monday, our SVP of Marketing, Aaron Dun, was a guest speaker for Demand Gen Report in their Lead Lifecycle Series. He spoke about marketing to the middle of the funnel and how content-enabled campaigns will improve your conversion rates.
Let’s take a look at how he compared approaches and offered advice to boost your conversion rates and find those super MQLs!
The traditional approach…
There’s a traditional approach when it comes to marketing campaigns and generating new names. You send out an ebook, the leads come in, it takes 30-40 days to qualify them (if it’s faster for you, GREAT!), and sales finally has a conversation when they’re considered MQLs.
Here’s a couple questions – why do we continue that process, and why are we waiting so long to qualify them? You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. That’s the definition of insanity.
If the traditional approach takes too long and we end up sending too many unqualified leads to sales, why don’t we try something different?
There’s a better way…
Let’s think of it this way – we don’t want to just send more leads over to sales, we want to send better, more qualified leads.
“But how do I qualify leads earlier in the funnel?”
I’m so glad you asked, curious reader! You accomplish this by having a conversation with your audience.
“But how do I have a conversation with them?”
Another great question! You have a conversation with your audience by using interactive content and encouraging them to actively engage with you. Interactive content is about creating a dialogue with your audience, rather than a monologue.
Remember that ebook we talked about? You can add a piece of interactive content to that campaign to collect valuable data and ask the questions sales would have, just earlier in the lead lifecycle.
Let’s see an example…
Influitive has a great selection of ebooks. In an effort to promote them, they created a personality quiz and included it in a blog post.
The quiz asked questions like, “What’s the first thing you do when you get to the office each morning”, “You’ve returned from a conference and need to present on what you learned. You share:”, and even, “What’s your favourite way to spend your weekend?”
The point of the quiz was to show users who they matched on a marketing team and then pointed them to an ebook that was not only paired with that personality type, but also gave advice for how to use those skills to take their career to the next level. My result was a social butterfly and I was pointed to the ebook: How Hootsuite Grew its Advocate Program Seven-Fold in Less than a Year!
Another result users could get was content king or queen. Those users were directed to the ebook: The Advocate Marketing Playbook. The point is that Influitive used a fun way to capture detailed information about each user, see who downloaded an ebook after the quiz, and were able to qualify or disqualify leads for their sales team.
Influitive got it right because they created something that was engaging, on-brand, and gave their audience something of value.
Next steps…
If you’re ready to shake up the way you market to the middle of the funnel – or to your entire funnel, for that matter – interactive content can help support your campaigns and find you better, more qualified leads. Here are a few tips to get you started…
- Audit your lead funnel
- Identify key sales criteria
- Re-imagine your campaign strategy
As Aaron said in the webinar, “Don’t settle for safe. Push your boundaries and test crazy-ass ideas!” To watch the full webinar and get more tips on creating a content-enabled campaign just click here.
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