As a kid, I was very shy and terrified of talking to strangers. If I was looking around in a store and a salesperson asked if they could help I would mumble a “No, thank you” with my head down as I continued browsing.
Then, if I did want help, I was too shy to ask for it. I would just hang around until someone offered again. If they didn’t offer, I would just leave without getting what I wanted.
Fortunately, I’ve outgrown that shyness and salespeople no longer have to try to read my mind to determine if it’s too early to approach me, too late, or just right.
Unfortunately, as digital marketers, we still have to guess as to whether it’s time to ask that website visitor for the sale or not.
The good news is, you don’t have to be a mindreader. Nor do you have to leave it entirely up to guesswork.
We can make educated guesses about whether people are ready to buy based on what they’re doing and where they’re going on our websites.
Of course, there are bound to be exceptions to the rule, but by understanding your buyer journey, and creating content for each stage of that journey, you can improve your chances of converting most of the leads who find their way to a particular piece of content by ensuring you pair it with the right call to action.
Table of Contents
Cold Leads
Cold leads are the people who have no idea who you are, what you do, or why they should care. They might not even understand the services you offer, much less know to look for someone who offers them.
To go back to the analogy of my super-awkward self shopping in malls (remember when malls were a thing?) cold leads are the people passing by your shop window. They may or may not stop to look at your window display, depending on what’s there, but they have yet to make it inside your store. What they see in your window display will determine whether they walk in.
Some examples of “window display” content include:
Social Media Posts
Social media posts are a great way to get in front of people who have never heard of you before, but to make sure they’re getting beyond your followers who already know you, your posts have to check some boxes:
- Stop the scroll: They have to grab people’s attention long enough to get them to pay attention to the content you worked so hard to create before putting it up on social media.
- Shareable: If your followers don’t share your content with their followers, your content will never get beyond the people who already know you. To grow your audience, you need content worth sharing.
- Discoverable: A growing number of people (especially younger people) are searching for information on social media rather than using Google or Bing. That means your social media content also needs to contain the keywords people are using to look for that information. Strategic use of hashtags can also be a great way to grow your audience by getting in front of people who are following that hashtag.
Guest Blog Posts
Writing blog posts for someone else’s website is a great way to get in front of people who have no idea who you are.
Ideally, you should write posts for a website in an industry that is adjacent to yours to ensure the audience will care about what you have to say.
If the focus of the website is an industry entirely separate from yours, no one will care.
If it’s a direct competitor of yours, they likely won’t want to publish your content for fear you’ll take clients away from them.
Informational Blog Posts and Videos
Informational blog posts and videos are a great way to capture cold leads, especially when they answer “how to” or “what is/are” questions. Those are the questions people tend to ask in the early stages of the buyer journey, and if your website ranks at or near the top of those searches, they can click through to your website to get the answers they need.
If you work in an industry with a long buyer journey, it can be frustrating to spend all that time and energy creating content for people who aren’t ready to buy yet. But, if you capture those leads early and put in the work to nurture and educate them, then, when they are ready to buy, they’ll be ready to buy from you because they’ll see you as the expert in your industry.
Warm Leads
Warm leads are the people who are aware of your brand and what you do, but they’re not ready to buy, yet. The trick with these leads is staying top of mind until they are ready to buy.
If you provide professional services or work in a B2B industry, creating content for warm leads is your chance to, not only nurture those leads, but educate them about what you do, the kinds of problems you solve for your clients, and when is a good time to call you.
The kinds of content you should be creating for your warm leads include:
Social Media Posts
While social media posts can be a great way to grow your audience, they’re also a great way to stay top of mind with the people who are already following you on social media.
It’s OK to switch up your social media posts so you have some posts aimed at cold leads, other posts aimed at warm leads, and still others aimed at hot leads. In fact, it’s more than OK — it’s all part of a comprehensive social media strategy.
Pro tip: just because someone is following you on social media doesn’t mean they’re going to see your posts. One way to encourage the algorithm to show them your posts is to engage with their posts. So, if you have some cold leads you’re trying to warm up, or some warm leads you’re trying to win over, bookmark their social media profiles and schedule some time each day to check in on them and engage with their new posts. Not only will they see that you’re engaging with their posts, but it will also encourage the algorithm to show them your posts.
Newsletters
Newsletters can be shared with people who are not your subscribers, but the main goal of a newsletter is to keep warm leads engaged and stay top of mind until they work with you.
I have gotten more than a few clients who saw me speak at an event or attended one of my webinars, then subscribed to my newsletter and called me months later when they were ready to hire me.
Not only was my newsletter a great way to stay top of mind, but the content in those emails educated them about the value I provide so I didn’t have to try to convince them of my worth once we were on the phone. In fact, at least one of them upsold themselves by citing something I had written in one of my blog posts. It was one of the easiest sales I’ve ever made.
Webinars
I love webinars because I have fun leading them, and they can be repurposed endlessly.
If you have an upcoming webinar, you can promote it on your blog, your social media channels, and your newsletter.
You can record it and share the recording all over so people can still learn from it, even if they couldn’t make it live.
But I think the most value webinars provide is the opportunity to engage with your audience in real time. The people who do show up can ask questions, which gives you an opportunity to spot gaps in your content and get an idea as to what interests your audience. I have also found it a great place to gauge each attendee’s interest level. You can tell by the kinds of questions they ask whether someone is thinking of hiring you, and if they are, you can make a point to follow up with them more directly via email or phone number.
Webinars are also a great way to build your email list. In the form people have to fill out to register for your webinar, provide a box for them to check if they are interested in subscribing to your newsletter. Make sure the form is connected to your newsletter provider so anyone who checks the “Yes” box automatically gets added to your list.
Hot Leads
Finally! They’re ready to buy! Or they’re very close to being to ready to buy.
Now you just have to convince them you’re the one they want to work with.
For most professional service providers and those of us working in the B2B space, whether we make the sale will probably be determined by a phone call or a meeting, either in person or over Zoom.
But a lot of buyers still look for certain types of content before they make a buying decision, especially if they’re trying to decide between two or more different brands. They might compare offerings, prices, and testimonials, which means all that information needs to be on your website.
Sales Pages
You’ve created all this content and had all these meetings, now it’s up to your sales page to close the deal (or at least get someone to pick up the phone and call you so you can close the deal.)
I wrote a whole other blog post about how to write sales pages that convert, so I won’t repeat myself here. I will say that your sales page is probably your most critical piece of content, so you want to make sure to answer all your prospect’s questions without overloading them with too much information or too many options. It’s a tricky balance to get right, which is why I always recommend hiring a professional.
Explanatory Blog Posts and Videos
One of my favorite marketing videos was made by Saddleback Leather explaining how to make a knockoff of their briefcase. At first, it seems insane to tell someone how to make a knockoff of their product.
But in the process of showing how their knockoffs are made vs how they make their briefcases, they demonstrated the superiority of their product.
Videos that show how to use a product are also great for the final stages of the buyer journey. People who might be on the fence if they don’t understand a product, are much more likely to buy when they see how it works and how it can make their lives better.
Don’t make someone work to visualize what it will be like when they get your product/services. Show them. It makes the outcome real for them and requires them to do no work to see how it will make their lives better.
FAQ Pages
I mentioned in my post about writing the perfect sales page that you need an FAQ section on your sales page to help overcome objections prospects might have that prevent them from reaching out to you.
Depending on the nature of your business, it might make sense for you to have a separate page on your website devoted to answering frequently asked questions. It’s something people will look for if they have a lot of questions about your offerings. Even if they don’t have a lot of questions, they might be drawn to an FAQ page if they don’t know which services page they should start with.
Rather than overcoming specific objections about one of your services, a page devoted to answering frequently asked questions will address the generic FAQs you tend to hear when chatting about your business at a networking event or a cocktail party.
Contact Pages
The contact page of a website is usually the kind of thing that gets tacked on as an afterthought. Business owners and web developers know they need one, but it’s usually nothing more than a static page with either a form to fill out and/or the basic contact information: phone, email address, maybe a physical address.
It’s true that most people will make their way to your contact page once they’ve decided to reach out, so the content on that page doesn’t need to be persuasive.
It does mean the contact page needs to be very, very easy to find from anywhere on the website. That means it needs to be in your website’s menu, visible at the top and/or bottom of every page. Those are the first two places people look when looking for a specific page on a website.
Don’t bury it in the “About” section or at the bottom of a dropdown menu. It should always be visible and easy to get to.
At the same time, you don’t want to put a link to your contact page as your call to action at the end of every blog post. Especially if you provide professional services or work in a B2B industry, going straight from blog post to Contact Us is a lot like proposing on the first date. Most people reading your blogs are nowhere near that stage, and by making that the only call to action, you’ll turn them off.
Depending on the blog post and your buyer journey, a better call to action might be inviting them to read another blog post on a related topic, or attending a webinar on a similar topic, or subscribing to your newsletter.
Invite them to get more content from you, either directly or via social media, like this:
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