The Best Marketing Automation Uses Epic Content
Magnet magnetizes the word ‘Lead’. Business concept.
Marketing automation is much more than slapping together a few email campaigns with clickable content for the recipient to find. Sure, watching the metrics of what triggers a reader to click through is valuable to your marketing strategy. But there is much more that you can accomplish if you deliberately create truly Epic Content in your email campaigns.
Recently, Joe Pulizzi released a book with the title “Epic Content Marketing” and marketers asked him to define it. This article taps into his blog article by the title of “The 6 Principles of Epic Content Marketing” to find insights into effective email marketing.
What is Content Marketing, Anyway???
Today’s buyers are empowered by the internet. They consume great quantities of content every day. Every purchase is researched carefully. Comparisons are made and buyers are proud of how smart they are to have consumed the content needed to make a good decision.
With an information empowered buyer, marketing must include the use of informative content. The way Copyblogger describes it, “Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers….you’re educating people so that they know, like and trust you enough to do business with you.”
When you use email marketing for the purpose of educating your sales leads and current customers, you are content marketing.
What Makes Content Epic?
Content is NOT epic if it is all about your organization, your product features and the benefits of being a customer. Today’s buyer has had enough of such self-aggrandizing content. It can actually be counterproductive and drive potential sales leads away from your company.
Epic content moves the buyer from being only interested in the information you provide into the “know, like and trust” arena of a good customer. What might surprise you is epic content is much more human than what was distributed a decade ago. It is real, vulnerable and unique. It uses a human voice to talk to sales leads in a conversational tone.
Epic Content is Not Academic
Share more than history, facts and figures. Take a point of view and stand tall in your own viewpoint. Your sales leads will see you as more of an expert when you contrast your approach to competitors than when you simply share a factual list of features and benefits.
Epic Content is Not “Salesy”
The internet has changed the buyer’s attitude toward salespeople in many ways. Perhaps the most powerful is their extreme resistance to sales techniques. Trying to close sales leads before they are ready is one of the most sure-fire routes to failure when buyers are armed with internet information.
Instead, the content is effective when it is honest and valuable. Getting to the top of SEO searches is not enough to convert today’s buyers. It is simply too easy to click away if they don’t think what you offer is valuable to their own goals. Sure, their self-interest can sometimes be a little aggravating. But it is reality in today’s world of sales.
Creating epic content is a powerful way to convert a higher percentage of your sales leads into active customers. Take the time to analyze what your sales leads want to learn from you…then provide it to them in easy to consume content in your marketing automation. It will deepen your relationship with them. Expect epic results.