Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Optimizing B2B Leads, Deep Dive #2: Drive Them In
Here's my second "deep dive" into the high points covered in a recent ClickZ article by Bryan Eisenberg. Eisenberg takes the 10,000 foot view...but there is a lot more to be said, deeper down, about content.
The ClickZ article:
Optimizing B2B-Demand Generation
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625240
From these high points, we at The Content Factor can dive deeper into ways you can optimize your content to make lead generation work--and why the content part of the process is so important.
High Point: Drive them in.
Your driving points are your ads, inbound links, emails, and other sources of traffic. Make sure that the text and context of your driving points speaks to the audience--and create multiple driving points for multiple audiences.
Deep Dive: Drive them in by speaking their language.
All too often, businesses (especially B2Bs) get into a trap of speaking their own language to their audience (their potential customers)...when really they need to speak their audience's language. In the ads, inbound links, and emails that drive traffic to your web site, it is imperative that you speak directly to the audience's pain (see Part 1 of this series), in the audience's language.
Here's an example: I cringe when I see the audience for marketing copy described as a "market." Who cares if your technology is "designed to be the highest performing system in the accounting and compliance market?" Or even if it is "best-selling" or a "market leader"? Your potential customers don't think of themselves as your market--they think of themselves as competitors in their own market, with problems to solve.
So use the language of their industry to help them solve their problem: "designed to give accounting and compliance professionals prompt updates as R-1023 laws and local regulations change." (I'm inventing the details but you get the idea.)
The third deep dive is about "bait"--that content piece at the end of the trail that lets you reel them in.
The ClickZ article:
Optimizing B2B-Demand Generation
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625240
From these high points, we at The Content Factor can dive deeper into ways you can optimize your content to make lead generation work--and why the content part of the process is so important.
High Point: Drive them in.
Your driving points are your ads, inbound links, emails, and other sources of traffic. Make sure that the text and context of your driving points speaks to the audience--and create multiple driving points for multiple audiences.
Deep Dive: Drive them in by speaking their language.
All too often, businesses (especially B2Bs) get into a trap of speaking their own language to their audience (their potential customers)...when really they need to speak their audience's language. In the ads, inbound links, and emails that drive traffic to your web site, it is imperative that you speak directly to the audience's pain (see Part 1 of this series), in the audience's language.
Here's an example: I cringe when I see the audience for marketing copy described as a "market." Who cares if your technology is "designed to be the highest performing system in the accounting and compliance market?" Or even if it is "best-selling" or a "market leader"? Your potential customers don't think of themselves as your market--they think of themselves as competitors in their own market, with problems to solve.
So use the language of their industry to help them solve their problem: "designed to give accounting and compliance professionals prompt updates as R-1023 laws and local regulations change." (I'm inventing the details but you get the idea.)
The third deep dive is about "bait"--that content piece at the end of the trail that lets you reel them in.
Labels: business to business (B2B), lead generation
