How Can Content Marketing Operate as a Sales Touchpoint?
Touchpoints can be defined as any interaction your company has with prospects or customers. So how can you use content marketing in relation to touchpoints? The number of interactions required to actually obtain a customer can range from a single interaction within seconds to many separate interactions over the course of months to years. Either way, these interactions cost money to create. Using your social media efforts to support or replace these touchpoints can mitigate some of the costs, while also building content for your website, creating authority, and more.
Touchpoints can be, well, touchy subjects. Whenever you are creating potential interactions, be sure to craft them to be appropriate for your subject, positive experiences, beneficial to moving them through the cycle, and valuable. Content marketing can help your interactions:
- Target your potential customers in the position they are in the purchase cycle
- Walk the fine line between staying top-of-mind and being an annoyance
Crafting Your Content Marketing Appropriately
Content marketing provides a unique channel for touchpoints in that it allows you to target potential customers at various stages in the purchase process. While your current blog post, which provides an in-depth review of the intricacies of your product may fall on deaf ears to a someone early in the cycle, it may be exactly what someone further along in the process needs. A bit of planning will allow you to create your next post with the missed target in mind, moving them through those early stages, where they’re just getting to know your brand. By creating a variety of content, your social media efforts can reach a much broader range of customers along the cycle than any print campaign ever could.
Be Noticed Without Being Annoying
We’ve discussed how content marketing can help with your SEO efforts and create authority for your brand, but it can also walk the thin line between being noticeable and being annoying. It can act as a passive means of nudging your potential clients through the purchase cycle. While your emails, calls, or other marketing strategies may make aggressive contact with potential customers, it’s your content marketing efforts that can serve as gentle reminders that you exist.
A regular schedule of content, which, as discussed earlier speaks to customers throughout the cycle, can keep your business top-of-mind without interruption of their regular activities. By consistently posting blogs, social media posts, or providing other valuable content through marketing activities, you create a relationship with those on the receiving end. By using a variety of media, you can be sure to reach users where they spend their time. This consistency can lead to anticipation of your next post, your next insight, or the next educational opportunity provided by your blog. As your consumer moves through the purchase process, their need for this type of information also moves through a cycle, but being there, consistently, creates the relationship that they’re more likely to turn to with a purchase.
The Purchase Isn’t the End
Content Marketing doesn’t stop when your customer makes a purchase. If their product experience is positive, your continued content marketing efforts will help maintain them as your customers. You can even use your social media to help them become brand ambassadors. Word of mouth and user testimonials are some of the strongest forces in the advertising world. Don’t let opportunities pass you by.
Content Marketing is just one tool in your advertising arsenal. Maintaining consistency, using a variety of channels, and providing insightful and valuable content to customers at all stages will help your business succeed. If you need a little guidance, a thorough evaluation, or someone to just handle it for you, Naka can do that. Schedule a review with us today.
