Content Design for Nurturing Insights

You've gone out and gotten yourself some great technology to power your nurturing efforts. Software like Marketo, Manticore, Eloqua, Genoo, Genius, or VTrenz (to name a few).

You set up your marketing campaigns and segment your lists and start nurturing those leads you've been collecting from your website, microsites(or landing pages), webinars and trade shows. You know every time one of them downloads a resource or clicks on a link in your emails. You can track their activities as they traverse your website.

In fact, you've got data coming out the wazoo!

But what does it all mean? How can you get the insights that actually help you define levels of interest well enough to get even more in tune with your leads' priorities and buying stages?

When you're monitoring lead behavior virtually, you've got to rely on reaction, response and initiation activities as a gauge. You don't get to see facial expressions, slouches or even high fives or joyous excitement at a light-bulb moment. You know, the parts of communication that make up for almost half of our in-person conversational interpretations.

Not to worry, you have tools at your disposal that can help you get the most out of your virtual interactions. With the technology, adding, changing and linking content together can help you determine hot vs. luke warm vs. a bit chilly. Knowing who to focus effort on is a huge contributor to shortening sales cycles and engaging leads who are "opportunity prone."

Here's the important point. One click or download does not make an opportunity. Five or more clicks on related subject matter in a close time period just might.

When you're designing your content flow, make sure you have a series of resources devoted to a problem/solution scenario. Whatever the topic, the way you measure virtual interest is the willingness of the person to keep learning more.

Make sure your content is connected with recognizable extension value. That means that it should be obvious that if they found great value in the article they just read they might be interested in downloading this white paper. The white paper should include links back to your website for more "must have" information that appeals to someone truly interested in solving the problem you're addressing. And, once they return, sign them up for a webinar on the same topic or give them a link to a podcast.

Scoring systems are evolving as we all discover what's truly effective in marketing communication metrics. I'm suggesting that we add a dimension that identifies interest level.

Consider two examples:

In the first - a person clicks on an email link, visits the landing page, downloads a white paper, visits your about us page and briefly visits a few other random web pages.

In the second - a person clicks on an email link, visits the landing page, downloads a white paper, re-visits the site using the link embedded in the white paper, reads that article, and signs up for a webinar on the subject matter.

I'd have inside sales make a qualifying call after the webinar for the second one.

I'd continue to monitor the first one and watch to see if they express interest through any extension opportunities.

The point is that how you design your content flow can play a huge role in helping you gain actionable insights about your leads through their virtual behavior. It will be an iterative process. The more you monitor, the more you'll learn. (this also helps with segmenting)

By closing the loop with sales and applying their feedback against your website visitor behavior profiles you'll begin to see patterns emerge that define how people act during progressive buying stages.

Designing content flow is a valuable step toward improving your nurturing outcomes.

Comments

[Fred Yee]

Hi Ardath,

I enjoyed your article and cannot agree with it more. We deal with brochure sites all the time, that have poor navigation, conversion points and calls to actions. Flashy but don't give prospects what they want easily, and don't ask for contact info (or want the prospect's first born info).

Worse yet, they then complain that even though they have traffic, they don't get inquiries...Which makes it hard for them to nurture because they don't have contact info.

BTW, I work for one of the marketing automation companies that make this easy and on auto-pilot - ActiveConversion. We've been around awhile. Check us out!

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your comment. I'm glad you enjoyed the post. And thanks for letting me know about your company. I love that statement by one of your customers - "...like an x-ray machine for a website."

What a great metaphor.

Ardath