I recently came across this article in regards to regulating your use of content when marketing. This certainly applies to technology companies that rely so heavily on filling the white spaces with more information and detail than necessary.
Technology marketing has long followed a pattern of too much information for fear of not providing enough fodder for the engineers and technicians that eventually read your material. Let’s face it, they have heavy consumption habits when it comes to reading material. However, in some cases we can either overload them and miss the opportunity to deliver the key message, or perhaps provide so much information that your prospects will have forgotten most of it.
In any case, Michelle Linn from Savvy B2B marketing points out few starter steps to ensuring you can dole out your message in easy to consume quantities. If you have not already accomplished these steps, you really should start the process as the results of these activities will provide you with content that can be utilized in a a variety of your marketing activities.
Map out the buying cycle for each of your audiences
Sit down with sales, product management and other key stakeholders and map out a typical buying process — for each of your audiences.
Determine what information your prospects need at each stage of the buying cycle and develop content accordingly
Think about the questions your prospect has at each stage of the buying process.
What type of information would help move them to the next step? You may have existing content that you can use for this, or you may be able to revamp existing materials to suit your needs.
Careful, This is the area where we all tend to include too much information!
Have a call to action in every piece
Figure out what next step you want your prospect to take at the end of every piece and make it very easy for them to do. It’s amazing how many marketing pieces fail to do this.
Consider a nurturing program
If you decide to require registration for your offers, think about having a program that systematically nurtures your leads and guides them along the path to purchase. This is kind of like the GPS of marketing: instead of customers raising their when they want to take the next step, you are guiding them along the path, direction by direction.
