You’ve got Inbound Marketing leads. What next?

Your Inbound Marketing is going well, you’ve increased your web visitors, targeted prospects through social media, promoted helpful and compelling content via best-practise landing pages. What should you do next?

Build a relationship Your leads are people who raised their hands as individuals with an interest in a specific problem you can solve and enough interest in your brand to both visit your site and exchange their details for your content. So what next? The buyer’s journey What content you use is all about where your potential buyer is. Above is a really simple example that captures the key elements.

Awareness This is the top of the funnel. The awareness stage is all about helping your potential customers to understand that they have a need that must be fulfilled. They have a problem and now they need helpful information to help them diagnose the potential causes. Your blog is a great asset in attracting buyers at the awareness stage. Other content, such as whitepapers, checklists, infographics and eBooks can be useful too.

Consideration This is middle of the funnel. Your potential customer knows the source of their problem, has an idea of the different solutions, and is considering their options. At this stage, the buyer wants to educate themselves on their choices. You’re still being helpful with content, but you’re more focused on making them consider your product or service as a solution to their problem. Testimonials, case studies, product comparisons, data sheets, demo videos and webinars are all powerful content options here.

Decision This is bottom of the funnel. The buyer here is looking to make a decision. You want to support that with purchasing guides, comparison charts, ROI calculators, checklists and webinars. And don’t forget, you’ll probably want to include your sales team too. The buyer will want to speak to someone. The great thing about generating a lead through inbound marketing is that you’ll be able to brief your sales team on exactly what your prospect has been downloading, so when they call, they’ll have a good idea of the prospect’s interests.