When developing your B2B lead generation and nurturing campaigns, creating good content assets takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Here are five things to think about during the planning stages to help you ensure those assets work hard for you.

Know your audience maturity

Create content that is suitable for the audience that your campaign addresses. Don’t risk patronizing experts with basic ‘how-to’ content, but do use this style to attract new prospects who may not know a lot about your industry. Re-use is possible: you can package the same core content up in many different ways for different audiences and get more value from your initial investment.

Keep your campaign content consistent

If someone has engaged with starter-level content, make sure your follow-on assets in the campaign are at the same level. Nurture them slowly and give them options for the next interaction with your brand—they will progress to the more in-depth materials when they are ready.

Give the reader something useful

Always provide the reader with content that has business value. Industry insight, market research, best practices and customer stories all provide useful information and show a depth of understanding that will increase your brand credibility in the eyes of prospects. Sending a product brochure they didn’t ask for won’t generate the downloads you need.

Create an emotional connection

Don’t be afraid to address what your audience wants on a personal level and appeal to their emotional drivers. When marketing to a business, you aren’t talking to a faceless organisation. You are addressing an individual—someone who has challenges and problems to solve in their working lives. A B2B purchase decision still involves emotion, so put some heart into your content to cut through the competing noise.

Promote clearly and honestly

Promote your assets clearly so readers know what they are getting as soon as they request a download. You can’t count it a useful lead if the reader discards the asset as soon as they open it and realise it is not what they expected.

One campaign can’t deliver all things to all people—but if you concentrate on achieving great results from more focused marketing activities, you’ll create meaningful prospect engagements that are built on value and trust, and will ultimately lead to sales.

Posted by John on 25 March 2013