Companies have been using content to promote their products and services for years. Content marketing started to see a resurgence after ad blockers proved that consumers are frustrated with digital advertising pop up ads. Consumers, tired of repeated clicks to close ad windows and feeling the effects of repeated reminders to buy a product, boycotted the ads and made way for a more personalized form of marketing to emerge.
When marketing is customized to consumers’ tastes and simply invites them to click on a link, efforts to engage the consumer are rewarded. As discussed in a recent article appearing in Forbes, content marketing is enjoying a prominent place in B2B efforts to engage consumers.
The opportunity for content marketing to surface as an effective growth strategy occurred not only as a result of the declining appeal of pop-up ads. There were also technological developments, such as analytics, that allow companies to distribute highly-customized content and refine their distribution goals based on consumer behaviors. Its also important to recognize the role of social media in giving companies an opportunity to connect with consumers, building relationships and posting content in inviting and non-invasive ways.
The study profiled in Forbes highlights on a broad scale the impact of content marketing on B2B industry growth. Over the last decade, content marketing has become a primary way to connect with a target audience, and the study shows that on average, an item of content engages consumers for 37 seconds.
The study also found that the distribution method used to get your content out in front of people has a significant impact. Email, assumed by many to already be past its expiration date as a useful marketing tool, instead remains the most effective way to engage consumers with your content.
Why Telemarketing is a Critical Player in Content Distribution
Much like email, B2B telemarketing predates many of the distribution channels used for content marketing. While social media has introduced a valuable new way to link consumers with information and build surface-level, crowded room-type relationships, it has its limitations like all distribution channels.
Like email, telemarketing is often misunderstood as a throwback advertising tool that is no longer relevant. In fact, telemarketing remains one of the most effective ways to connect with your target audience and presents benefits that cannot be achieved with any other distribution method. Here are just a few of the ways that telemarketing presents an ideal tool for communicating your brand message and engaging the buyer:
Highly qualified leads: Telemarketing is unmatched in its ability to deliver qualified leads to your sales team. Through telemarketing, you can drill down to determine the decision-maker in a situation, as well as their timeline for purchase and any obstacles that might impede a decision made in your favor. Immediate feedback received during a telephone conversation gives you key information about the likelihood that the company will buy your product or service. This is a level of insight that cant be duplicated by click-through activity on social media or through email.
A powerful distribution partner: Combining the benefits of multiple distribution methods ensures engagement with your target audience. When you pair telemarketing with social media or email for content distribution, you experience multiplied benefits. For instance, if you post a link to a new blog on social media, youll get important information from analytics on how many people clicked on your blog and potentially engage them in conversation in the comments section.
Adding telemarketing to the mix, you can also find out from your potential buyer whether the topic of the blog solved a problem or introduced other helpful information to your contact. You can receive feedback about other challenges they face and the content formats they find most valuable. Armed with this information, you can develop and refine your content marketing strategy to further engage the buyer.
Content syndication: A content marketing strategys effectiveness is heightened when content is distributed in multiple formats, multiple times. A personal conversation is a great way to enhance the communication of your content. You can engage the potential buyer in a conversation about a challenge they are facing and provide them with a link to a blog or white paper that discusses that very problem. Discussing content in this way reminds the buyer that you are a trusted resource for problem-solving and valuable, highly-relevant information.
Heightened engagement: In any engagement cycle, factors like brand exposure play an important role. When you incorporate telemarketing into your content marketing strategy, you build into the engagement cycle by building a relationship with your potential buyer. Your contact experiences your interest in their challenges, as well as your commitment to produce content that addresses those challenges. One by one, you build relationships that engage the customer and build their loyalty to your company and your product or service. When its time for them to make a purchase, they will be more likely to choose the company that they can connect to personal conversations where their opinion and needs were valued and heard than a company that simply posted content on a social media site.
Personalization, like no other distribution method offers: When you use social media, email or direct mail as a distribution method, you can track how your target audience responds to an extent. You can determine which types of phrases in a call to action lead to increased engagement and whether certain contacts prefer to click on a blog versus an infographic or white paper.
With telemarketing, personalization gets a turbo boost. You wont be forced to pore over analytics, looking for the trends that are likely to increase your website traffic. Instead, you will hear directly from your target audience on what types of content formats and distribution methods are most valuable for their needs. Youll hear about the topics they want to see covered and the challenges that they face in their daily jobs. No level of analytics can quite top the appeal of hearing directly from your target audience about what they value in the content they receive.
To get started on a distribution strategy that delivers the benefits of telemarketing, make an appointment to talk with Blue Valley Telemarketing. At Blue Valley Telemarketing, we help you connect with your target audience in personal ways that grow your business.
Last Updated on September 14, 2023 by Ronen Ben-Dror