How to Use Cliffhangers in B2B Marketing Content

During the Broad Reach + Intelligent Lead Nurturing = Increased Revenue webinar I participated in yesterday with Scott Mersy of Genius.com, Brian Carroll of InTouch and Andrew Gaffney of DemandGen Report, I talked about how content can help promote prospect responsiveness.

I presented 3 components that should be incorporated into your content to help you build engagement and progression with your prospects. After all, your content has a job to do, right? If it's not helping your company build pipeline momentum, then it's slacking off.

The 3 components that help drive momentum include:

• Calls to action
• The Takeaway (here's a post I've written about that)
• Cliffhangers

I received a question that we didn't get to during the event about providing some examples for how to use cliffhangers during a B2B complex sale. (See the other Q & A here)

For those of you who didn't attend, a cliffhanger is created when B2B marketers use a serial format for execution of a content program. It's that "to be continued" type of idea. Or "you won't want to miss what's coming" that sets anticipation for more of your valuable content.

Cliffhangers are about planting the the seed for your prospects to expect more of the great stuff you provide that they've come to rely on to help them solve their highest priority issues. It's all about motivating prospects to do something more than passively reading your content.

You want to give prospects every opportunity to tell you just how interested they are in the topic by opting in to be notified when the next installment is released or by bookmarking your site, subscribing to your RSS feed, or whatever other method you make available for them to keep up with your content. Don't just tell them something is coming, make sure you provide a way for them to get it.

Some examples of cliffhanger strategies include:

Series: Think about creating a series. This can be a series of articles, videos, webinars or blog posts based on a theme or topic of interest to your prospects. An example is the series of 3 webinars and eGuides that Genius.com used last summer to present components of marketing automation. Another example is the Buyersphere series of webinars and white papers that Enquiro did last year.
 
Event: Use an article or blog post on a topic of interest to your prospects and include a notice that you have upcoming research or a webinar or other related content coming and invite prospects to opt in for notification  when that content is available.
 
Next Steps: Let’s say you have a 10-step process your prospects find value in. Post an article discussing step 1 and then tell your audience that the next steps will be posted each Tuesday (or whenever) for the next 9 weeks. If possible, invite them to opt in for notification about the  the next installment. 

B2B marketers can incorporate a cliffhanger effect into almost any content if they think about it creatively. It also helps immensely to develop an editorial calendar.

Comments

[Matt]

Ardath,

Very timely topic for me! I've been thinking about putting together some series but I'm struggling to define when a series works vs. when one single piece works. I'm getting some pushback on the series idea in the form of "why make them wait for it?" and frankly I don't have a good response. Any insight or thoughts would be immensely appreciated!

BTW, do you have links or the content from the Genuis & Enquiro series you mentioned? Can't find it on their site and would love to see what they used, if you're willing to share.

-matt

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your comment. It's not so much about "why make them wait" as it is about shorter attention spans and creating the back and forth that helps form the habit of seeking out your information. If they only visit your site once and the buying process is a lengthy one, what will keep them coming back and your company top of mind?

For the Genius series example:
First webinar and ebook is on Lead Scoring You can find both on this page:
http://www.genius.com/resources/MarketingGenius/leadScoring/

The third eBook is also on that page - How to Optimize Lead Nurturing to Pump Up Your Sales Pipeline

The second one was on mapping content to buying stages and can be found here:
http://www.genius.com/resources/MarketingGenius/marketingAutomation/

You'll note that each of the 3 topics is pretty meaty. For those who wanted all of it in one bite, Genius created a pocket guide after all three webinars and eBooks had been completed/released. You can see The Essential Guide to Marketing Automation here:
http://www.genius.com/resources/MarketingGenius/content/ebooks/automationHandbook/

For the Enquiro series:
You can see the series of whitepapers on the Buyersphere here:
http://www.enquiro.com/whitepapers/

Note that they also turned this into a book. You can read about that here:
http://www.enquiro.com/thebuyersphere/

Hope these examples are helpful.
Thanks for asking.
Ardath

[Meredith Smith]

Hi Adarth,

I had a chance to watch your webinar last week, and I definitely liked your strategies on cliffhangers - especially the “series” approach. You definitely have to leave your audience wanting more…just give them enough to wet their appetite so they want to hear from you “sooner rather than later.”

At LeadLife (http://www.leadlife.com) we often have marketers tell us that they feel challenged to effectively nurture their leads because they don’t have enough content – or the time and resources to create it. I recently wrote a blog posting on where marketers can pull content from, and how they can repurpose what they already have (http://www.leadlife.com/blog/?p=400).

Thank you for all your valuable insight, Ardarth, and I look forward to reading more of your posting.

Meredith
LeadLife Solutions