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To give a bit of context this B2B tech company had been in operation for at least 10 years. They sold seven different offers across four different customer segments. Being able to build a Go-to-Marketing content strategy for so many offers, for multiple segments, at the same time proved to be very challenging.
When this is the case our approach is always to focus on the ‘Rule of 1’ and expand into other customer segments. The idea is to focus on one product, for one customer segment, focused on one problem and provide one solution.
Next is with our approach we never go into a client engagement with any preconceived notion of what we should do without doing any sort of due diligence. A lot of that is speaking with all revenue teams that interact with the customer (Marketing, Sales and Customer Success). Also, speaking with customers to fully understand the value our client’s offer delivers for them.
Another challenge they had was the marketing team had their hands really fully trying to execute daily tasks to meet deadlines, which gave them very little time for any in-depth research and analysis to guide their marketing executions.
Here’s the break down of how we worked with their team to deliver a 12.8% increase in conversion rate in 90 days.
To start this article is broken down into two sections:
Section 1 – The process used for gather the data
Section 2 – Building and executing our content strategy
Gathering Data for our Go-to-Market Content Strategy
Step 1: Customer Research
As mentioned, the first thing we always do is speak with the revenue team that interacts with the customer. After speaking with the marketing team we spoke with one of their Customer Success (CS) reps. What we found was that they have some raving fans of a specific customer segment that not only got great results from an offer, but had referred it to several people in their network.
We immediately knew this was the sweet spot we needed to tap into, but we had to be sure it was a viable option.
So we asked the CS rep to set up interviews with their top three raving fans. These were people who met the following three criteria:
Had referred other people to the brand who became customers
The company had generated recurring revenue from them
They had been a customer for one year or more
We interviewed all three to find out what their experience was like working with the brand, why they chose them, their success, their path to discovery, meaning their journey/process that lead to them finding the brand.
Here are the specific questions asked during those interviews in case you want to use same:
How did you first learn about the brand?
Describe your struggle that made you decide to search for a solution
How did the product help overcome that challenge?
Describe that moment that made you say “I have to find help” that made you decide to search for a solution
Walk us through the process step-by-step of searching that eventually lead you to the brand
What was the moment that made you feel this brand was the best choice for you compared to others you had tried?
What was the final outcome after using the product?
Step 2: Created the Case Studies
Based on the stories we heard from the raving fans we decided it would be a good idea to leverage these stories by building case studies for our client, and use them as a part of our content strategy.
We used the SB7 Framework popularized by Donald Miller to create our case studies. They focus on seven different aspects of creating a good story. The video below details more about it.
Step 3: Created Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
The next step was to create an Ideal Client Profile (ICP). This details the traits of their best fit customers, which in this case would be those raving fans. We focused on three areas:
Demographic Info
Age range
Profession
Income level
Location
Gender
Psychographic Info
Buying triggers
Motivations
Fears/Anxieties
Aspirations
Behavioural info
Jobs-to-be-Done (the activity that leads to the result)
Current solution (what were they using prior to our client’s brand)
Current problems (what roadblocks had they encountered why it didn’t work for them)
Alternatives (what other options were they considering)
Building and Executing our Go-to-Market Content Strategy
Here is a visual of the entire execution of our Go-to-Market Content Strategy
Let’s break it down.
Step 4: Identified profitable pipeline channels
Pipeline channels are which specific channels do their most qualified leads come through that eventually become customers, and even more so raving fans. For example, Paid Search, Organic Social, Referrals, etc.
To identify these channels, we looked at the data from existing customers as well as qualified buyers that were already in the pipeline.
What we found was that majority of their most qualified leads came through Paid and Organic Google Search, meaning someone went on Google, typed in specific keywords in the search bar, and our client’s brand came up as an option they clicked.
Step 5: Interviewed qualified leads/buyers
Next step was we sifted through the list of qualified leads who came in over the last 30 days through Google, and set up interviews with them. We asked pretty much the same questions we asked the raving fans with the addition of what specific keywords or search terms did they use when searching that lead to our client’s website.
This gave us a sense of which specific long-tail keywords we should be targeting with this campaign to drive similar qualified leads.
Step 6: Ran Google ads to in-market buyers
Next we ran Google ads to the case studies featuring their three raving fans, which focused on the long-tail keywords we identified.
For visitors that landed on the case studies we also included a call-to-action for them to book a call with a sales rep for those who were interested.
Step 7: Repurpose for Organic and Paid Social
After a 30-day period we realized that we were seeing positive signals to the case studies that let us know that we had a hit.
Things such as increase in web traffic to the homepage, weekly increase in web traffic to the case studies, leads being generated directly from the case studies, increase on time spent on these pages.
As you may have noticed, up until this point this campaign was specifically focused on a bottom-of-funnel execution with the goal being generating qualified leads.
However, we decided to launch a top-of-funnel campaign in parallel on social media focused on driving brand awareness and engagement to extend reach and views of the case studies. We did this by repurposing elements of the case studies into short-form consumable content for social media. This included short video clips, graphics highlighting before and after transformations and carousels.
From this combined execution we were able to increase our client’s conversion rate by 12.8% over that 90-day period and increased web traffic by 125.8%, both leading to an increase in revenue for that period compared to the previous 90-day period.
In Summary
Raving fans are probably one of the most underutilized aspects in a Marketer’s arsenal, yet can have the most profound impact on campaign results. Being able to leverage your best customers’ story, highlighting what makes your offer unique through the value it delivers, is what will help to differentiate your brand from your competitors.
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