At one time, businesses engaged in one-on-one prospecting tactics like telemarketing and cold calling. But, in the internet era, those techniques have become outdated as sales teams have come to realize just how counterproductive they actually are. Buyers no longer answer their phones or doors to strangers, and businesses have gatekeepers that prevent unwanted salespeople from getting past the front desk.

This has led to a push to first introduce customers to a brand before making contact – or better yet – to try and get them to initiate contact with you. Here are a few ways to use content marketing to make those introductions and boost your chances of getting a meeting.

Gather Referrals

When someone thinks about making a purchase or signing up for a new service, often, the first thing they do is ask for referrals. By incentivizing your current customers to recommend you to their friends and colleagues, you can boost your customer base with minimal time or money investment.

Consider putting a substantial referral reward in place to make it worth each current customer’s effort. Determine how much revenue a new customer brings in, and make the reward a percentage of that.

Make it easy for customers to refer you on social media by adding share buttons to your checkout confirmation page, product or service description pages, and blog posts.

Create an Explainer Video

Before you bring prospects over to your website, make sure you’ve explained your product or service in a fun, easy-to-understand format. Explainer videos can serve as a great tool to convert customers, since many internet users prefer watching a video to reading paragraphs of text.

In addition to placing your explainer video prominently on your website, share it across your various social media platforms and conduct a special email campaign around it.

Make sure it displays prominently in search rankings by creating blog posts and sending a press release about it.

Identify Promising Prospects

The email equivalent of cold calling is sending thousands of emails to random contacts on an email list. Businesses have abandoned this practice, as well, as technology has become more advanced.

If you’re using the “spray and pray” approach to email marketing with a list of registered subscribers, then you’re squandering your assets. And if you’re not working with an opt-in list, then you’re not an email marketer at all – you’re a spammer. By segmenting your list and using lead intelligence tools that can pinpoint the best contact person for each offering, you’ll yield better results than mass mailings.

Savvy marketers know how to do this using publicly-available data, previous interactions with on-site content assets and other signals. Just make sure each email contact receives an email that is most likely to convert.

Guest Blog

Guest blogging brings a variety of benefits, including introducing your brand to people who haven’t yet heard about you. Once you’ve identified the right guest post venues, be sure you create content that will provide value to that venue’s readers.

The goal is to establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry, which will naturally draw customers to you, especially if you provide services that require an expertise in a particular niche. Once your post is live, share it across all of your social media platforms.

Hopefully this will lead to the host site sharing it, as well, bringing more exposure to both of you.

Bring Prospects to You

Traditionally, conferences and seminars have been a great way to get the word out about a business. This often requires traveling, though. Look for events nearby that will give you an opportunity to network and gain brand recognition, whether it’s through sponsoring a booth or serving as the keynote speaker.

You can also get wider exposure at minimal expense by hosting webinars on topics that are important to those within your target market. Make sure you publicize your webinar heavily to bring in customers beyond your current audience.

If a business wants to get the word out to a large number of people quickly, the best way to do that is through content marketing.

Individually going from one person to the next to try to make a sale is far more time-intensive than sending tastefully targeted email messages or social media posts. Learn to get the word out to generate viable prospects before launching into a one-on-one sales pitch, and your business will see great results.

The post 5 Content Marketing Techniques That Help Warm Up Cold Prospects appeared first on RELEVANCE.

One of the most effective ways to stand out from the crowd is to establish thought leadership within a specific industry. This is especially true for service-based businesses whose advice is in demand. Your years of expertise give you an edge when building an online presence for your business. Here are a few ways sharing your knowledge can help establish you as a thought leader in your industry and attract customers.

Information Is Better SEO

Sure, you can cram your content with interesting keywords, but if it’s just a marketing message about your great services, customers won’t click. Google likely won’t see it as informative content, either. The best way to attract attention to what you’re doing is to post content that answers questions customers are likely to have. A plumber may notice that a certain percentage of customers need help with basic plumbing issues like unclogging a toilet. A simple blog post can provide content for a search term commonly entered by potential customers.

House renovator Shane Conlan used YouTube to provide advice on how to do basic projects around the house. Called “DIY for Knuckleheads,” Conlan’s YouTube channel has more than 5.4 million hits, introducing him to a large customer base that wouldn’t know of him otherwise. Your channel doesn’t have to go viral to get this kind of attention, though. You can create interesting how-to pieces to share on local Facebook community pages or on your own online platforms. Over time, local customers will share with their own friends and family members, and you’ll find you’re gaining customers.

Timing Is Everything

As Justin Morgan, CEO of Dental Marketing Guy, explains, timing is everything in marketing. Businesses have traditionally blasted mass mailings to their target demographic, first through the postal system and later through email. The goal of these campaigns is to capture the small percent of recipients who just happen to be looking for the services being offered when they receive the mailing.

Thought leaders utilize the power of search engine placement to reach those customers in similar ways. A medical practice could reach local patients by regularly posting blog content about specific medical conditions. Those nearby searching for information on a disease or its symptoms will likely be referred to the blog post by search engines, and they will seek to learn more about the expert who shared the information.

Links Increase Visibility

To ensure its search results remain as useful as possible, Google constantly tweaks its algorithms to recognize information consumers want to read. One way it does this is through promoting sites that have multiple links coming to it from legitimate sources. When a website links to something you’ve posted, chances are the information is something that can be seen as a valuable resource and Google rewards this.

One way to increase inbound links to your site is to stock your blog with content that can be easily cited by others in your industry. But an easier way is to find ways to guest post on external sources that let you link back to your own site. Volunteer to write for publications within your industry in exchange for allowing a link in your bio. You can also ask colleagues to switch guest blog opportunities, which will not only help you with a link, but it will also expose you to each other’s existing audiences.

Building Your Brands

In addition to directly bringing customers over, thought leadership also helps strengthen your brand reputation. Marketing expert Neil Patel states two important questions brands should ask before they offer free advice:

• What solutions are your customers seeking?
• Why is your brand in the best position to advise them?

The underlying goal should be to learn as much as possible about your customers and tailor your content to what they’re most likely to be interested in seeing. This includes creating marketing personas for your customers, as well as soliciting feedback on a regular basis. Over time, you’ll be able to create a marketing strategy that gets results.

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