You’ve heard it before: the key to converting leads and driving new revenue for your business is through buyer-centric content.
Need proof? Consider these stats:
- By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their interactions with the enterprise without interacting with a human.
- 60% to 70% of B2B content created is never used. The most cited reason why is that the topic is irrelevant to the buyer audience.
- 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.
While most marketers believe in the power of buyer-centric content, few actually create it. As a result, up to 70% of their content goes unused.
What’s the best way to ensure your content is buyer-centric? Follow these key steps.
Related Content: The Multi-Channel Distribution Guide [Workbook]
1. Form a Content Board
Before you begin creating your content, gather stakeholders from across your organization at the beginning of the quarter. This group is your “content board” and can provide crucial insight into your customers at every stage of the buying cycle, from awareness through retention.
2. Identify Key Pain Points and Themes
At your content board meeting, ask stakeholders to identify key customer pain points and strategic themes they’d like to see addressed with content. List these out in the meeting.
3. Vote on Themes
When you have a long list of potential content themes, go around the room and ask each stakeholder to vote on the themes most important to them. Highlight the themes that have the most votes. Select one to focus on for the upcoming quarter.
4. Build a Content Pillar
Once you have your theme, you can start to plan a content pillar. A content pillar is a major, meaty piece of content (like an eBook or whitepaper) that tackles your selected theme head-on. This asset is then broken out into many derivative assets that serve your buyers across all digital marketing channels and at every buying stage. Here’s your step-by-step workbook for building a content pillar.
By organizing around your buyer concerns and major company initiatives—rather than channels or marketing tactics—you’ll ensure that each content asset you create is relevant for your readers.
Want to see the results of this approach? Join our upcoming webinar with Kapost customer Five9 as they walk us through how they drove 3X new business using the content pillar approach.