Brand & Capture

Your customers are fond of you for a reason: You help them solve a problem. Something you sell makes a positive contribution to their lives. Think aboout it for a second: By virtue of your very existence, others are better off. That's no small feat.

I have some news to share. You may want to sit down for this one. Here it is…sales and marketing departments aren’t always on the same page. You’re shocked, right? Probably not, unless you are the sales and marketing department, or one of the few companies where these two, often opposing forces, exist in harmony.

I don't often blog about SEO because I'm not an expert, but I do understand the big picture. The fact is, if your content isn't good, relevant and shared widely, your chances of showing up in a search are greatly diminished. Many of our clients still think that if you optimize your pages carefully with keywords, you have a good chance of ranking on page #1 of Google or Bing. Well, it's true that if you don't optimize your content for strategic keywords, you hurt your chances of being found via search. But there's a lot more to the story these days. Here are some key roles that your content plays in determining your search visibility.

Lead nurturing campaigns require a strong content base so you can provide buyers with offers that will move them through your sales funnel. Keeping that marketing content organized can be a challenge. To overcome it, the first thing you should do when launching into lead nurturing and marketing automation is create a marketing content assets list.

Enterprise marketing departments spend a large amount of time and money developing  bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) brochures, product demos and consultation offers. If there’s time left, chances are it’s being used to create middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) case studies and articles that explain how a product or service helped someone who bought it. These product-oriented pieces may have worked on their own a decade ago, but not anymore. Most of that time should instead be spent creating top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) offers—content that powers online marketing automation.

Marketing is smarter than it ever was now that you can create highly segmented lead lists and send behavior-triggered lead nurturing campaigns. To take advantage of this sophisticated marketing automation technology, you need two very important things: buyer personas and content.

What is a buyer persona?

The buyer persona is a representation of the real person who is interested in buying your product or service. This isn’t just a current customer and a sales prospect, as David Meerman Scott notes in this video. These buyer personas are the people that are not even on your radar—the potentials who can turn into customers if you create the right content.

Last week, LinkedIn finally released its long-awaited iPad app. Rather than being just another social connection application, LinkedIn’s entry into the tablet world puts content on top... literally.