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At the top of the sales funnel, blogs and social posts work well to introduce prospects to you and your company. Now, in the middle of the sales funnel, when folks are evaluating their print needs and considering whether you’re the right company for them, you need to develop more engaging, encouraging content.   But here you’re faced with a dilemma.   You are now required to have two pretty different sets of content — one set to introduce yourself, and an entirely different set of content designed to encourage further engagement and consideration. And these two sets of content — which must be distributed concurrently to keep things going — can span a wide range, from general blogs and posts on the one hand, to deep-dive case studies, expert guides, white papers, email blasts, and even webcasts and live Facebook interactions.   You might soon lose control of knowing what’s effective content, why, and for whom it’s intended.   Don’t worry. An automated approach to content organization …

Content marketing is your friend. Your blogs, social posts, and other forms of information help illustrate your knowledge of the printing business, while offering tips and best practices to inform your potential customers.   The top of the sales funnel is the time to introduce yourself to prospects by offering resources, answers, and insights. But those folks who’ve responded positively to your initial content — perhaps they’ve commented on a blog, visited your website, or downloaded a piece of content — can now be considered “mid-funnel” prospects. They’re evaluating their print options, and doing additional research on whether you’re the right company for them.   Your own content should reflect this new reality, to increase their engagement with you and your company, and lead them further toward becoming a paying customer.    Why are the mid-funnel considerations of prospects so important, and why customize your content marketing outreach accordingly? Because it works!   According …

Marketing to prospective customers in the middle of the sales funnel is all about encouraging folks to engage with you a little more, to move them closer to conversion.   In a previous blog , we discussed key approaches to encourage this engagement, a process called demand generation. In this phase, you’ve been making available to your prospects useful, unbiased content for free, chatting with commentators on your blog or social channels, and in other ways feeding pertinent stuff to those who seem interested.   But think about it. That’s just you reaching out to them. So far it’s just a one-way street. Your next, necessary step is to encourage these prospects to reach out to you. If you can do that, it will identify warmer leads, and really empower this next stage of your marketing efforts.   Let’s examine “calls to action,” which we’ll shorten here to just CTA. If you can get your prospects to actually reach out to you (instead of the other way around), you’ll now have a live …

In previous blogs in this marketing series, we’ve focused on the “top of the sales funnel,” deploying those tactics that attract new visitors to your website. These are folks who perhaps have searched for some particular product or need, or maybe viewed one of your blogs, but are brand-new to what you have to offer.   Now it’s time to move these first-time visitors who have just become aware of your existence a bit further down the sales funnel, to what is known as the middle of the sales funnel, where you’ll nurture them and turn their awareness into interest.   One key component of mid-funnel marketing is demand generation. It identifies prospects who are first-time site visitors, perhaps who have commented on your blog or social posts, or even downloaded a piece of content, and guides them toward further engagement with your messages.   Key Approaches to Demand Gen   Let’s consider a few tactics to create demand for your products and services in the middle of the sales funnel, to …

What’s the one simple trick you need to know in order to grab someone’s attention? It’s a tool you can use right before you bring in your main message…and it will help your clients focus more on what you’re saying. First take a minute to think about what you pay attention to and what you don’t give time towards. You’ll come to see, we’re more apt to pay attention when we feel we’re learning information that will matter to us.  Imagine you’re watching TV news, and the Anchor says “Coming up next…a story about visiting your Doctor.” Would you listen?  What if the Anchor said “Coming up next…the number one thing you need to know before your next Doctor’s visit.” Does that intrigue you more? The difference is now there’s wording to suggest you’re missing out on key information if you don’t listen to what’s coming next. And therein lies the simple trick! It’s called Flagging.  A Flag is a verbal cue that signals you to pay attention. Almost like planting a flag in the ground to alert you …