Once you’ve captured that attention and people start to consider that a priority, they’re going to come further down the funnel. They want to evaluate. That’s where you need to have content that establishes differentiation.
Lucas Welch is VP of Corporate Marketing at Highspot, a sales enablement platform that empowers companies to elevate customer conversations that drive strategic growth. Welch leads Highspot’s global brand programs to essentially uplift the customer experience.
In 2020, Highspot received the 4th best medium-sized workplace reward in the U.S. from Fortune. Forrester named Highspot a leader in sales content solutions.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Welch shares how brands can create the perfect curated mix of content while staying aligned with their mission.
Compelling Content (1:46)
There’s certainly a movement towards consumable, easy-to-access content but it still tells a story. It still has a cohesive narrative through it.
According to a Venngage Marketing Survey, 91% of audiences prefer visual content over traditional formats. Video will account for a projected 82% of all internet traffic by 2021. That’s why most brand content created today focuses on dynamic and custom branded imagery.
For brands wanting to reach potential customers, it’s important to create content that shows how a product or service can make your life better. To do that, it should be in digestible content.
For example, businesses looking to drive engagement with longer-form content need to wrap that in consumable bites, Welsh says. This could include everything from basic infographics to animations and video. That said, when it comes to visuals for SEO purposes, video is already optimized for search. This is based on people’s tendencies to watch content rather than read it.
Sales Funnel Messaging (2:55)
Whatever the challenge is that your technology and your services may solve, you want to create urgency around that being a priority for the prospects and the personas that you’re targeting.
Creating and optimizing content for all stages of a sales funnel is key to a successful marketing strategy. All top funnel content should be informative and authoritative. Accordingly, by creating content that plays into each stage of a sales funnel, it is easier to track results and optimize ROI.
Content Types (3:50)
I think 70-30 feels comfortable and certainly puts us in a position to be seen as an advisor who’s offering to help the buyer make decisions. Hopefully those decisions come our way, but we also simply want to help the process and clarify the market.
Highspot aims for a 70%-30% mix of educational to promotional content. They share best practices, success patterns, and thought leadership roughly 70% of the time. The other 30% of the time, Highspot shares promotional content. This can include events, keynotes, product launches and demo invitations.
According to new research, consumers are 131% more likely to buy from a brand immediately after they consume educational content. But since consumers control when, where, and how they interact with brands, it’s imperative to listen to their customers.
Grounded Mission (6:17)
You always want to ground whatever your mission is in reality because no objective, no goal that doesn’t have metrics associated with it, can tell if you are doing well or not.
A brand’s mission defines and upholds what they stand for as a company. There are measurable benefits to aligning a brand’s success, performance, and productivity with a mission statement.
Welch believes that a brand’s mission must be something that can be measured in order to “understand what’s working and what’s not and how you can do more of what’s working and learn from what’s not and evolve.” Moreover, brands need to use both qualitative and quantitative measurements to truly know how they’re doing.
What I’m reading (9:44)
It’s a wonderful full-circle example of someone who was originally ostracized, brought into the community, and then becomes the voice that can actually help other organizations find their way when they may have gotten lost.
Dapper Dan Made in Harlem is the New York Times bestseller based on the life of an influential designer Dapper Dan. It has been described as a masterclass on how to create an industry disrupting brand with grit, determination, and flair.
Welch gives his key takeaway from the book: “The initial reaction [of the fashion industry] was, stay out of our business. Eventually Gucci had the vision to partner with him, saying you can actually make us better. At the end of the day, you still have to generate revenue that we haven’t been able to tap into. So help us.”
For more information on Highspot, check out their website and follow them on LinkedIn and Twitter at @Highspot. To stay up to date with Welch, follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.