Nurture paths of content syndication leads
By Eve Kelly, Marketing Executive at Accelera
Content syndication has a reputation for being a great way to generate good leads. According to 71% of marketers, content marketing generates double the leads than other forms of outbound marketing— and at half the cost.
But good leads don’t always convert to sales. Earning revenue from these leads largely depends on how well you nurture them.
When people click to read your content on third-party platforms, they’re showing an interest in the topic, which is not necessarily synonymous with expressing an interest in your product. Nurturing leads makes them familiar with your brand and guides them through your sales funnel.
Here are a few lead nurturing practices to maximise the ROI of your content syndication program:
Narrow Down Your Target Audience
When it comes to content syndication, addressing a broad audience can result in your message getting lost in the noise. It seems counterintuitive but focusing on a smaller audience can give you a higher ROI.
Concentrating on a niche audience allows you to tailor your content to be more relevant to their interests and increases the likelihood of engagement.
So, how do you find the ideal audience?
Use data-driven methods to define targeting criteria and an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Access data from your CRM as well as past sales, historical performance and intent data. This should help you identify accounts with the highest likelihood of becoming potential customers. Defining your ICP can start with these demographics: industry, company size, location, position title, language, etc.
Then, to go a step further, you can look deeper into your ICPs to identify specific pain points that your product or service can address.
Automate CRM Entry
Typographic errors account for a high percentage of CRM data quality issues. Noting a lead’s name as ‘Smuel’ instead of ‘Samuel’ may seem like a minor irritant but it can have quite a large impact. It can lead to record duplication and bring down the overall quality of your customer database.
And of course, if you send an email addressed to ‘Smuel’, the lead isn’t likely to form a favourable impression of your business.
The simplest way to overcome this issue is by automating CRM entry. Automated data extraction tools can retrieve lead details directly from the web and automatically enter them into your CRM systems. In addition to a lower risk of error, this is also more efficient. To get B2B leads, this is usually done by scraping LinkedIn with tools like PhantomBuster or Derrick App.
Make It a Team Effort
If your sales and marketing teams are not satisfied with conversion rates, there’s probably a disconnect between the two teams. Nurturing leads is not one department’s responsibility.
While their roles may be independent, sales and marketing teams must work together to nurture content syndication leads.
It begins with defining the ideal customer profile together and creating cohesive campaigns. You also need shared goals and well-defined metrics to ensure efforts by both teams are directed towards a common target.
For example, the sales team will have valuable insights into customer requirements. These insights can be leveraged by the marketing team to syndicate relevant content at each point of the nurture path.
Leverage technology to support collaboration and streamline communication between the sales and marketing teams. Providing unified access to reports and campaign analytics will also help the teams stay aligned with the same goals.
Implement a Lead Scoring System
Scoring leads is an important step in managing a seamless handoff of leads from marketing to sales teams. A lead must cross a certain score threshold before they can be considered ready to engage with the sales team.
This helps the sales team prioritise leads and keeps qualified leads from slipping through the cracks. To have maximum impact, the sales and marketing team must work together to design a scoring system.
Leads can be scored according to demographics as well as on the basis of their activities and interactions with your business. They may gain points for reading a blog post, watching a product demo, downloading content, etc.
In lead scoring, each activity has different points assigned to it. For example, making a chat inquiry may have higher points compared to attending a webinar. Leads may also be tagged as “hot” or “cold” on the basis of their interactions.
Lead scoring is extremely important because your sales team doesn’t have time to treat every lead in the same way. By having leads labelled as “hot” or “cold”, your sales team can know in advance when leads are more ready to convert and can spend more time emailing them or calling. When cold leads could be put in an automated nurturing cycle to warm them up.
Create a Structured Lead Nurturing Path
Consistency is key to building relationships and bringing leads through a sales funnel, so it’s good to try to avoid leaving new leads unattended for long periods. In fact, it usually takes between 6 to 8 touchpoints to convert a lead. Each interaction should leave the lead with high-quality, relevant content.
Content should provide additional information about your business, create a demand for the product and inform leads of how your products can solve their pain points.
Once you’ve established the required number of touchpoints, you can schedule and automate content distribution. To do this, think of what type of content should be shared at each stage of the nurturing process, as the lead goes through the conversion funnel.
For example, you can send an email with research on how your product solves a common problem 2 days after the initial interaction. On the 5th day, you can send a third email with a product comparison sheet. And so on.
Start Nurturing Leads Immediately
Content syndication leads are different from leads generated by people who visit your website. Having downloaded your content from third-party websites, leads generated through content syndication strategies may not have visited your website yet.
Hence, why funnelling them immediately into a lead nurturing program would be a good idea. A simple welcome email could be ideal to start the nurturing sequence. It may be a little early to promote your products directly. Instead, share content referencing the initial downloaded content. This builds brand awareness and sets the stage for further communication.
It’s also essential to start nurturing syndicated leads directly when they enter your sales funnel. Quickly reaching out to these leads ensures that the content remains fresh in their minds, allowing you to effectively build momentum from their initial interest and guide them towards a purchase.
Map Content To Different Stages Of The Buyer’s Journey
Content can be presented in different formats depending on your objective and the customer’s progress through the sales funnel.
For example, short videos and infographics work well to generate awareness. On the other hand, leads in the consideration phase are more likely to engage with e-books, research papers and guides. Make sure you are using the best content for each stage of your content syndication efforts so that its the most relevant to the consumer. Just as a dense and jargon-heavy research paper isn’t going to appeal to the person browsing for some top level information, a ‘simple guide to’ graphic won’t move someone at the bottom of the funnel any further down your nurture stream.
Put yourself in your target customer’s shoes. Try and think - “what kind of information, and in what format, would I like to see at this point?”.
Personalise Follow-up Messaging
Expecting good results from generic content is unrealistic in today’s world. Regardless of their position in your sales funnel, people expect content that is relevant to their lifestyle, industry, etc.
77% of B2B marketers say that personalisation improves customer relationships. On the other hand, irrelevant content can do more harm than good.
You need to ensure that your messaging addresses the lead’s concerns and pain points while building trust in your company. Acknowledge prior interactions and personalise your follow-up content based on interactions with the lead.
For example, when you send a ‘welcome’ email, make sure it references the content the person engaged with.
To achieve this, you need to connect your automation tool with the syndicated content source so that you can launch automated messaging linked to original content.
For example, let’s say you provide online banking services. If you got the lead from syndicated content about an online budgeting tool, you may want to send them emails about budgeting tips. On the other hand, if the syndicated content was about a credit scoring tool, you can send more content about options for available credit cards that match their score.
Here are a few more tips to make your follow-up messaging more engaging:
Use a personalised greeting
Include educational content related to the initial interaction
Stay focused on one topic
Include testimonials
Make replying or engaging with the content a one-click task for recipients
Monitor and Optimise
Content syndication campaigns aren’t a sprint. They’re better viewed as a marathon.
Research shows that only about 5% of your audience can be considered “in-market” at any given point in time. The remaining 95% may be currently “out-of-market” but still need to be nurtured. This ensures that they remember your company when they’re considering a purchase. Nurturing these lead journeys requires regular monitoring and optimisation.
Use CRM and analytics tools to track engagement and take a data-driven approach to maximise your campaign ROI. Some of the most commonly used metrics that indicate the effectiveness of your content include impressions, downloads, open rates and site visits.
You can also consider other data points like the number of interactions and changes in your pipeline volume.
Taking The Next Step To Improving Your Content Syndication Program
Content syndication is a powerful lead generation tool. By repurposing your content in different formats, you can connect with a larger audience, build brand awareness and attract leads interested in your specialisation.
Partnering with Accelera helps you manage these lead generation campaigns smoothly and get the data-driven insights required to unlock their full potential.
Accelera helps plan, execute and convert leads from a content syndication campaign. Our easy-to-read dashboard with in-depth analytics provides rich insights into performance metrics. This form of regular reporting can optimise outreach and lead conversion throughout a campaign.
Discover more about Accelera to start optimising your content syndication lead generation campaigns.