These days, the customer journey involves a lot of self-service. We do our own research, read reviews of products and decide which ones are real vs. paid and make a decision alone.
This is a big shift from hand selling, where a human greets a customer and educates them on different options.
This post is a suggestion of how marketers can infuse the presale steps of the sales funnel with that same human touch.
Even though eCommerce doesn’t allow for the same personal engagement as in person selling does, there are ways to educate customers on your brand. One of the best ways to do this is involves content marketing and marketing automation.
Content marketing is a great way to bring customer service into the early stages of the customer journey. Instead of addressing customer needs reactively, content marketing enables you to make prospects feel seen and catered to before they’ve ever made a purchase.
The most efficient, cost-effective way to replicate that feeling is through digital marketing, leveraging personalized, relevant content that focuses on helping subscribers understand the products they’re looking at and gauge which ones will add the most value to their lives.
Educational content like email newsletters, infographics, social media posts, webinars, white papers, and blog posts all add value to consumers’ lives and serve their needs.
The more you deepen your prospects’ understanding and build their confidence about their options, the more you increase brand awareness and differentiate yourself in the market.
The wonderful thing about content marketing is that it’s scalable. Especially when you combine it with a great marketing automation system.
Personalization is made so much easier when there is readily available customer data mobilised in your CRM. Segmentation makes targeting specific audiences by industry, age, location, or other demographic a much easier process.
Automation infuses email marketing with scalability and flexibility. Just add new prospects to a segment or tweak your messaging in one place. Then that whole email campaign is ready to go, while helping you stay consistent in your customer touchpoints.
For example, email drip campaigns are a great way to improve your lead generation through content strategy.
You can segment your prospects according to where they are in the sales cycle and any relevant demographic details, then target the content of your emails to serve their unique interests and solve any pain points.
Not only does the automation functionality help you personalize your content, but it also relieves your marketing team of the burden of repetitive tasks and basic marketing processes. This frees them up to focus on the strategy side, performing A/B tests, and tweaking the follow-up approach according to the metrics that matter most.
Sharing high-quality content that educates and adds value to your target audience at the very beginning of your sales process is a tried and true strategy for lead generation.
Savvy Business Gals are experts in marketing automation and content marketing. For assistance with all your marketing needs visit our services page to see how we can help. Alternatively, you can book in for a Free 30 Minute Discovery Call today!