The 7 Piece Puzzle - how content becomes revenue

In the realm of B2B marketing, our content and corresponding marketing strategies must lead to revenue generation. If they fail to do so, it is crucial to either address the issue promptly or halt the activities altogether. This way, resources, and budget can be redirected to tactics that are proven to drive revenue effectively.

The framework for how content converts to revenue I'm presenting in this post is highly effective and measurable.  I present the solution to converting content to revenue as 7 pieces of a puzzle rather than a linear series of steps because the process is best viewed linearly, but not necessarily executed linearly.  If you put together each piece of the puzzle with the whole in mind, you will generate revenue with your content.  I have employed this framework at more than one global manufacturing company resulting in growth rates of 20% to 30%.  It works.  For every piece of content you intend to create, you should visualize how it will churn through the 7 pieces and end up as revenue.

Caveat:  Basic Content Marketing 101 assumes that you are crafting content that is both pertinent and valuable to your specific audience, enabling them to enhance their performance in their respective roles.  This 7-part framework operates on a crucial foundation. Should you churn out content disguised as educational material but merely serving as product promotion, it will not yield results. Authenticity and relevance are key - without them, your content won't translate into revenue.

Puzzle Piece 1 – The Fundamentals. 

The first fundamental task is to create relevant and useful content.  Your content must do two things to be effective; it must help solve a problem common to your target market AND be created around your unique authentic expertise.

Before diving into this process, it's crucial to have a solid marketing plan in place. Ensuring that you've crafted a well-thought-out marketing strategy tailored to your business and target market is essential for success. Take the time to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and differentiators of your business and audience before moving forward.

The next fundamental element is having the right set of technology at your disposal. Ensuring that you have the necessary tech in place is crucial for the smooth and effective operation and measurement of this process. Having these four essential tools in place is important for achieving success in your content-to-revenue strategy.

1. Website
2. Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform integrated with the MAP
4. Collaboration between the sales and marketing teams on coordinating lead management, defining roles, and establishing clear responsibilities.

From this point on, I’ll assume you have a good content creation machine in place, a written marketing plan, and a robust toolset in place.  Now you are ready to move on to the next piece.

Puzzle Piece 2 - Distribute and Make it Findable.  Content will not significantly drive revenue by just sitting on your website.  I suspect many of those companies who deem their content marketing efforts less than very effective are creating good content, but only parking it on their website hoping for improved SEO.  Don’t get me wrong, good content parked on the website will improve SEO, but it is not enough by itself to measurably affect revenue.

Content distribution must be integral to your marketing strategy and tactics.  The content you create must be used extensively with both outbound and inbound tactics.  Your outbound ads must promote the content and your inbound tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) must promote the content.  Stop promoting your products!  Instead, promote your content!  Promoting content is a far better way to engage with your target audience than telling them about your product or service.

Sorry, but it’s true, your audience perceives your product or service as a commodity.  The sooner you embrace that idea, the sooner you can start generating 20% and 30% growth rates.  Offer your content via all outbound channels where your target audience congregates; emails, print ads, email ads, digital ads, direct mail, social media, etc.  Inbound paid SEM ads should also promote the content.  This idea of promoting content in place of product is sometimes hard for the organization to understand. You are likely to get strong pushback at this point.  This is where the preparation of your organization comes into play.  You must have strong executive support and a content marketing culture or at least a strong understanding in place. Otherwise, your product managers and salespeople will freak out and possibly hinder your content marketing strategy.  They may even force you back to a product-based strategy and back to those dismal growth numbers of 1% to 5%.

Puzzle Piece 3 – The Conversion Point (landing page).  It is imperative that all outbound and inbound activities drive to a custom landing page.  DO NOT send them to a regular web page!  Even more importantly, DO NOT send them to your home page!  Once they take the action step (click or typed URL), they should be directed to a custom-designed landing page.  The landing page must be designed specifically around the offer of the content.  If you send them to one of your regular web pages, you lose, especially if you send them to a product page.  The more relevant you can make the landing page, the better chance you will have at earning their engagement.

You’ll have to make some decisions about how the visitor acquires the content once they are on the landing page.  Will you gate it or offer it with just a click?  The harder it is to get the content, the higher will be your abandonment rate. Conversely, the easier it is, the more broad your reach.  I love to give away content for free without any strings attached because it gets wider exposure and still builds awareness and credibility within your target audience.  The three components of your landing page are:

1. Offer the asset.  This should be perceived as the main function of the landing page.
2. Tell them about your value proposition or what you do.  We want to offer content they find valuable and we want the visitor to connect the goodwill generated by the asset to the brand offering (awareness + credibility).  Present the offering as a side panel, not as the main focal point of the landing page.
3. Make it easy for them to find out more about your company.  You want them to think to themselves, “who is this company giving me this valuable information? I want to know more”.  Always give a visitor the option to ‘raise their hand’ and make a direct connection.

Remember, your outbound ads and your PPC ads should both drive to the landing page.  Do not fill the landing page with product-based information.  The last thing you want is for your visitors to feel like they are victims of a bait-and-switch tactic tricking them by offering valuable information but directing them to a product page.

Puzzle Piece 4 - The Call to Action Step.   Although the CTA is integrated to Piece 3, it is important enough to merit its own section.  This is where the quality of your content matters.  If you have created something that is of interest to your target audience, they will take action to learn more.  You have to tell them what you want them to do!!  In the digital realm, it usually involves a click.  Again, you have to tell them to "click here to get the paper" or "Register here" for example.  Don't leave it up to the reader to figure out what they're supposed to do.  If it isn't really easy, you might lose them.  If you don’t make it clear about what you are offering and how to get it, you’ll lose a great deal of effectiveness. The CTA should be more than an afterthought, it should be strategic.

Puzzle Piece 5 – Qualification. At this point, a person from your target audience has clicked or responded to the CTA in your ad, arrived at your custom landing page, has been delighted to easily obtain a useful and helpful piece of content, put your brand top of their mind, associated value with your brand and associated your company with a particular offering.

They may have explored your website, shared the content via their social media channels, forwarded the email, or even requested a contact action from your sales team.  At this point, it is important to decide what happens next.  Are they a marketing qualified lead (MQL) that is sent over to the sales team for direct action?  Are they sent to a nurturing program? Are they left alone until they see your next great piece of content?  Lead scoring programs are a good way to evaluate a person for qualification. Each of these choices are valid action and will depend on your particular business practices.

Regardless of your business practice, you must consciously decide what happens next.  Your work as a modern marketer is not over at the point of click or download. I suggest only two options:  pass them to sales as an MQL or send them to a nurturing program.  This is where your marketing automation platform is a critical component of the content-to-conversion process.  Throughout the nurturing process, your contacts will receive more great useful information (content) and get to know your company and the associated offerings through regular website visits.  As they visit and interact with the content, you should be measuring that activity ideally with some type of lead scoring program.

The success of the qualification step depends on close alignment between sales and marketing.  There should be an agreement in place specifying the point at which any of these contacts should be considered sales-ready.

Puzzle Piece 6 - Pass the Contact Information to the Sales Pipeline. If your content is educational and you've complied with all the best practices of offers, PPC, landing page, etc., you'll be flooding the top of the funnel and the sales team with qualified leads as well as filling the nurturing funnel with tons of future buyers.  I would like to re-emphasize the importance of collaborating with sales on each campaign.  Sales need to understand what's happening and why it's happening as the leads start flowing into their inboxes. Understanding profile fit, activity, and interest stage is important for Sales to understand so they can continue a relevant conversation.

Step 7 - The Purchase - The final step is, of course, the purchase and, hopefully, many future purchases.  After the contact is passed along to the sales funnel, content can be used to move them along in their decision process toward a positive outcome for your company.  Salespeople should be trained on how to use your 'later funnel stage' content to help close more deals.  Late-stage content is where you talk about your products, case studies, application notes, etc.

Conclusion - These are seven pieces of the puzzle for every piece of content you create. The person may not proceed linearly from Puzzle Piece 1 to Puzzle Piece 7, but each piece will do its part in generating revenue. You should never create content without having a plan for conversion specified. Effective content marketing is heavily interwoven with the marketing strategy and tactics as well as the sales process.  Cultivating your target audience so they become life-long customers is all about RELEVANT engagement.  You want them to place your brand and associated offering top of mind and with a great deal of credibility.  If you can achieve this position in their minds, when the day comes around and they are ready to purchase the thing you are offering, your firm gets the call first.  Competitors who are not using this type of framework may get a call, but they will have minimal credibility and only be used for a price comparison.  This 7 Piece framework makes your firm the winner of market share and accelerated revenue growth rates.