How to Convert More SMBs, Today and Tomorrow

Match your content to the SMB buyer’s journey—every step of the way.

Excerpted from our latest publication, The Definitive Guide to Accelerating the SMB Buyer’s Journey. Download it here.

In a recent post, I wrote about the importance of developing a mission for your content, to make sure you’re delivering what your audience wants and expects. Once you’ve developed that mission, it’s time to correlate that mission with the buyer’s journey. It’s all about having the right content for the right time at every step in the journey. Here are some examples to illustrate what this might look like, and how the approach we’re suggesting might vary by industry.

TOP OF FUNNEL

At the top of the funnel, your goal is to engage the audience and build trust by addressing a wide range of topics related to your mission. This could include business solutions related to your product’s benefits that inform and educate the buyer, including ideas and best practices. It could also include customer stories—real-world examples of what others are doing, and the positive results achieved. The following chart provides just a few examples of what we mean.

MIDDLE OF FUNNEL

At this stage, the goals are to nurture prospects and accelerate their journey toward the close. Your content can become increasingly product-aligned (covered in the section “Aligning Your Content with Your Product’s Benefits” in the full eBook), and you can begin to focus more on specific features and benefits, FAQs, competitive advantages, and so on. This is also a good time to alleviate any concerns they may have about implementing your products or services–for example, resources, downtime, or impact to their business.

BOTTOM OF FUNNEL

The goal of content for the bottom of the funnel is getting people over the finish line—dealing with objections and questions that come up at the end. Most salespeople will tell you that the same four to five objections come up most of the time. Each one of those objections can have corresponding content that addresses these common concerns, hopefully before they surface.

It’s said that “the journey is the reward.” We’ve found that’s true with respect to marketing to small and mid-size businesses, put it in a different sense: if you create content for every stage of the SMB buyer’s journey, both you and they will reap the rewards.

This article was excerpted from our newest publication, The Definitive Guide to Accelerating the SMB Buyer’s Journey. Download it here.

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