Talking to new people is hard. 

You want to make a good impression, but that’s easier said than done. It can feel like a struggle to keep the conversation going. Chances are you can remember a time when you’ve lost someone’s attention.

It’s a sinking feeling.

• It doesn’t only happen in personal life.
• It happens in business as well. 
• Particularly in conversations with potential customers.

With so much content out there, it can feel impossible to earn your customers’ attention.

Like in real life, you want to seem unique and worth getting to know. After all, your content needs to excite and engage your audience. Otherwise, you’ll never keep them around long enough to buy from you.

So, what can you do? Well, there’s a surefire way you can use your content to attract the right audience and close those sales.

This article will show you how to do that step by step. You’ll learn highly effective B2B content strategies that you can use in your content to start conversations with your audience to gain their trust, business, and loyalty.

That way, your audience will come to you instead. In a sense, you’ll become the life of the party.

Let’s get started.

Use Content To Drive Conversations And Build Relationships

There’s a lot of content flooding the internet. That can make it a bit confusing to know how to use your content. Plenty of businesses seem like they’re doing it right, but that’s not always the case.

You may think you need to pepper your content with all the keywords to get your audience’s attention. It might be tempting to blast your prospects with flashy content to pique their interest. After all, it looks like it works for others.

These tactics may get you short bursts of engagement...

But it won’t last. 

It won’t hold their interest in the long term. Those prospects will take a look and realize there’s no substance.

To turn prospects into customers, you need to be strategic with your content.

Your content should focus on nurturing your audience. Meaning it should provide useful and actionable material to help grow their business.

It should also prove your brand’s expertise. The more knowledgeable you are about your audience’s problems, the more you’ll earn their trust. 

In other words, your content speaks for your business. It’s used to build a long-term relationship with your customers.

With strategic content, you can craft a sales narrative for your customers to follow. Without it, you won’t make much of an impact on prospects.

For example, imagine your business supplies bananas to other small businesses. You could notify your audience about potential problems and educate them on solutions. 

You could create a blog post about daily difficulties, like a lack of focus and energy, and stress from work. Then you could show an infographic that explains how bananas improve employee performance. 

This infographic might compare employees who eat bananas and those who don’t. It could also show how the employees that eat bananas are more successful than those that don’t.

You could also share videos about how to incorporate bananas into a diet. This free and useful information can keep your audience’s attention and earn their trust.

Establish yourself as a fun and quirky business and your audience will be more likely to choose you. Now you will have new customers. Congratulations!

You see, if you're smart with your content, you can control the conversation with your audience. You can then position your brand as an influencer in their buying decision. If all goes well, you can turn your cold prospects into purchasing customers.

Read on to find out how to foster a loyal customer base.

Understand Your Audience

You can make sales conversations easier by understanding who your customers are first. In fact, this step is essential.

This is the first thing you should do before you can start personalizing your content for them.

If you start personalizing content without knowing your audience, it won't reach them. It’ll be a waste of time, money, and resources. So try to conduct proper research about your audience and create a client portfolio.

You need to figure out what exactly their wants, needs, and preferences are. To help you out, try answering these questions:

• Who are my customers?
  • Use Google, Twitter, and email analytics to check the demographic of your audience.
• What are their challenges, pain points, and problems?
  • What’s getting in the way of their business’ success?
• What do they want and need?
  • What would help them grow their business?
• What motivates their decisions and behaviors?
  • How do they tend to act and why?

Once you have these answers, you’ll be able to provide the right kinds of content that your audience wants to see. These types of content will attract them toward your business. And it will entice them to rely on you as a source of helpful information.

But remember, a relationship is a two-way street. It’s important to not only talk to your audience but also listen to what they need.

Try contacting them, either face-to-face, through email, or over the phone. Get their input on:

• What their most pressing needs are.
• What they’re struggling with now.
• What they want to see more of from you.

Ask and ye shall receive. By listening to your audience, you can start giving them what they want. That attention to care will help you build their trust in you as a reliable and dependable business.

Learn how to do proper audience research here.

Focus On The Funnel

Now you have a better idea of who your audience is. Next, focus on catering to your audience’s purchasing experience and expectations.

A great way to do this is by understanding the customer’s journey. The stages are:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration
• Purchase
• Post-purchase

This is the map for your sales conversation. 

Your content can’t only relate to your audience’s wants. It also needs to match each stage of their purchasing journey. 

When customers access the right content at the right time, it’ll lead them further down your sales funnel. 

In other words, your sales funnel helps you design a high-converting content strategy.

Here’s a brief explanation of the sales funnel and the goals of each stage:

1. Top of Funnel: Awareness
   • Attract the audience’s attention
   • Make them aware of the problem
   • Introduce your product, service, or brand
2. Middle of Funnel: Consideration
   • Generate leads
   • Nurture leads
   • Educate them about solutions
3. Bottom of Funnel: Decision
   • Drive sales
   • Make it easy for the customer to buy from you
   • Support customers

The goals of each stage explain why certain content works better in different stages. 

For example, if you want to boost your product, service, or brand awareness, you can’t rely on sales pages.

After all, nobody will buy from you if they’re not even aware of what’s missing, right?

The goals of each stage help you decide which content will drive your customer down your funnel.

If you provide useful content to your audience, they'll appreciate your authority. Plus, they’ll be more likely to keep interacting with your business.

Remember, your content should position your business as a solution to a problem. 

So focus on building a trusting relationship with the audience through your content. And make it easier for them to address their challenges at each stage of the funnel.

Learn how to improve sales funnel conversions here.

Top Of The Funnel

One of the main functions of the top of the funnel is to make your audience aware of a problem they may be having.

This is also your chance to start a conversation with them. 

Chances are they’re not even aware that their business needs help yet, let alone ready to buy anything from you yet. So try introducing the issues they might face.

Let’s go back to the banana supplying business example. Say your business wants to supply bananas to small businesses. How can you use content to attract their attention?

You could share an infographic illustrating how employees who eat bananas perform better.

You can also write blog posts that address why employees tend to underperform during the day. These reasons can range from fatigue and hunger, to stress. You can also provide advice about the ways bananas help combat these daily slumps at the end of your posts.

You could also appear on a podcast and talk about how bananas can help businesses grow and succeed. And you can promote your banana supplying business at the end of the episode.

Even though most of your audience isn’t ready to buy, it’s still a good idea to suggest your business as a solution.

Some of the most effective types of content at this stage are:

• Blog posts
• How-to videos
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Reports

Again, this stage isn’t about closing the sale. It’s where your audience learns about the gaps in their business and what they could be doing better. 

Setting the stage with the right content will help you position your business as a solution.

Middle Of The Funnel

In the middle of the funnel, your content should educate the audience about solutions.

Instead of being cold prospects, your audience is warmer at this stage. 

They’re convinced that something is wrong or needs improvement in their business. So they’re more willing to research for solutions. And they’re more open to suggestions. 

One of those options is your business. This stage is where you can show how your business best solves your audience’s problems.

Let’s say the CEO and other decision-makers of a small business have seen your content. They've accepted that their business performance is not as high as it could be.

Now they’re interested in finding ways to fix this problem. But how? And how can they incorporate a solution into their business?

Which kinds of content should you provide so they don’t lose interest and move to your competition?

Well, you could release reports on the effects of bananas on employee performance.  You can show how bananas provide energy boosts and lower employees’ stress levels.

You can also provide a case study about how your bananas have helped companies grow and succeed. You can also show how your bananas benefit CEOs and employees. They could have maximized productivity levels, reached business goals, and increased revenue.

Again, your main goal here is to keep your audience interested in your brand. And stop them from going over to your competitors.

Some of the most effective kinds of content at this stage are:

• White papers
• Case studies
• Webinars
• Video demos
• Product samples

The middle of the funnel is also the stage where you turn prospects into leads.

Your audience is still not ready to buy at this point. That’s too much of a commitment at this stage. But the fact that they’re researching at this point means they are more willing to take some sort of action.

They might be willing to provide their email address to access useful information.

For your audience to receive more content, have them fill out a lead form with their email address. 

Once they’re on your mailing list, you can provide even more helpful and actionable material for them. Content that casual website visitors aren’t able to access. 

Your focus here is to make your audience want to find out more about how your business can solve their problems. It's important to provide content that demonstrates your business’ value to them.

Bottom Of The Funnel

The main goal at the bottom of the funnel is to convert your qualified leads into paying customers.

At this point, your audience understands the problem they’re having and wants to solve it. They’ve done all the research about possible solutions. And they’ve narrowed your business, as well as a few of your competitors. 

Since they’re so close to buying, what kinds of content can you create to close the sale with them?

Imagine the banana supplier example from above. The CEO and team have to decide between your company and a few others. 

At this stage, it’s crucial to make your customers act right away. They’ve made it down your funnel. But if you give them more time to deliberate, they may decide to go with a competitor instead. 

In this situation, to entice your customer to act fast, provide a discount for a short time. For example, if they sign up for your service now, they can receive 10% off their yearly subscription. If they wait, then they will have to pay full price.

It’s a delicate balance: you want to give them the incentive to buy now, but you don’t want to be pushy as well. 

Some of the most effective kinds of content to use at this stage are:

• Free trials
• Live demos
• Consultations
• Training
• Testimonials
• Discounts

Your audience might buy from you sooner if you address their concerns before they voice them.

This is why it’s so important to understand your audience’s behaviors and motivations.  If you can address their concerns right away, they'll see that you understand what they think and feel. 

This will make you come off as a more trustworthy business who cares about its customers. 

To get started, try to answer the following questions:

• What are my audience’s concerns?
  • What if it doesn’t work?
  • What if this is a waste of money?
  • What if other businesses have a better offer?
• Why would they object to buying my product or service?
  • It’s too expensive
  • It looks too time-consuming to learn to use 
  • It looks too complicated to use
• How can I address their concerns? 
  • Show why their investment will be worth it with specific results from past customers
  • Provide a chart that compares the price, benefits, and features of you and your competitors.
  • Show testimonials.
  • Address their concerns by providing testimonials of customers who recommend your product.

Your testimonials should show how others had the same objections before they bought. Testimonials should also show how you helped a business grow and succeed.

Empty and general praise won’t move anyone. If your testimonies are in-depth, it's easier for your customer to imagine the results. Hence, your testimonies will be more influential in their decision to buy from you.

The key thing to do is to make them feel confident in their decision to buy from you. Your content should make it easy for customers to imagine all the benefits they'll gain.

Pick The Right KPIs

To see if your content handles sales conversations well, you need to measure progress. 

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are the metrics you use to gauge whether you meet goals. 

These metrics focus on measuring your company’s long-term performance. Like each stage of the sales funnel has different goals, choose the right KPIs for each stage as well.

Some examples of KPIs for each stage of the funnel are:

• Top of the Funnel
  • Website traffic
    • How many visitors are there on your website?
  • Organic click-through rates
    • How many people find your website through search engines?
  • Shares, comments, and engagement on socials.
    • How many shares, likes, comments, subscribers, or followers are on your social media pages?
• Middle of the Funnel
  • Landing page conversion rate
    • How many people are converting through your landing pages?
  • Conversions by content
    • How many people are converting through your different kinds of content?
  • Email sign-ups
    • How many people sign up for your mailing list?
• Bottom of the funnel
  • Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
    • How much money does it cost to generate customers?
  • Sales close rate 
    • Of your qualified leads, how many sales do you close?
  • Return on investment (ROI)
    • How much money in profit does your business make?

To figure out which KPIs you should use, try figuring out what you want to measure? For example, do you want to measure business growth, consumer interest, customer retention? 

It’s also important to be specific with your goals. Don’t say, “I want to increase my email subscribers.” Say, “I want to get x number of email subscribers by the next quarter. ” 

Once you know what your goals are, you can determine the right metrics to measure your progress.

Choosing the right KPIs for each step of the funnel helps you measure your progress.

As you can see, measuring website traffic won’t give you an accurate picture of how much revenue you make.

The right KPIs help you make sure your content is effective at each step of your sales funnel.

They will also help you track how effective your content is at hitting your targets. 

Having these KPIs in place will help you know where to tweak your strategy as needed.

Learn how to improve conversion rates with better copywriting here.

Control The Conversation With Your Content

Now you know how to use your content to drive the sales conversation with your customer. Again, it’s not obvious. There’s so much content online that it can be difficult to know what you need to do.

The good news is, you’ll see real results once you use a strategy with your content. 

Keeping your audience’s purchasing experience and expectations in mind is crucial. It gives you a map of the kinds of content you need to create and when to offer it.

The right content at the right time will bring awareness to your audience. It’ll inform them of problems they may be having. It’ll also show how your business can help solve those problems.

Your content will even be able to educate and convert your audience into qualified leads. If all goes well, it turns them into paying customers. That means you don’t have to waste your time, money, and effort on content that doesn’t work.

Instead, your content will help you gain your audience’s trust, business, and even loyalty. You’ll be able to create more strong and lasting connections with your audience...

Helping you generate and maintain a happy, loyal customer base.

P.S. Marketers and B2B business leaders...

Could your organization benefit from dramatically shorter sales cycles, more qualified leads, and higher on-page conversions? 🤔

If you're looking to improve the performance of your sales pages, emails, or ads... I may be able to move the needle in a big way. 

Using my proven “Neuro-Response” copywriting method, I've generated over $2.7 billion in revenue for over 224 of the largest B2B companies in America.

This behavioral-science inspired system taps into lesser-known hidden psychological triggers that target multiple decision-making regions of your prospects’ brains...

In a way that elevates their desire, makes them primed to be more receptive to sales messaging, and gets them to move forward.

Averaging across over 1,124+ projects, my copywriting drives a 55% increase in on-page conversion rates, an 84% increase in quality sales-qualified leads, and a 27% decrease in customer acquisition costs compared to existing controls.

If any of this sounds interesting to you...

Click HERE to learn more and find out if I’m the right fit to help.