How to Develop a Content Selling Strategy
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 7:50 am
Selling content - strengthening relationships with interested potential customers.
What is content selling?
Content selling is a form of marketing that engages audiences once they enter the sales funnel. The brand's goal is to convert interested prospects into buyers through engaging and often educational content. For example, if a customer signs up for a newsletter after visiting a website, you can offer them different types of content to encourage them to buy.
Content can come in a number of forms, including a blog post or a marketing email. It can address problems, explain how to use a product, and upsell or cross-sell other products in the portfolio. Selling content builds relationships with potential or past customers and keeps the brand fresh in their minds.
Content Selling vs. Content Marketing: What's the Difference?
While both content selling and content marketing focus on creating content that engages an audience, they take slightly different approaches. Here’s how they differ:
Audience
Content marketing casts a wide net to attract current customers, potential customers, and those who know little to nothing about the brand. Content selling focuses solely on potential and current customers. If the vatican city b2b leads goal of content marketing is to attract people into the sales funnel, then content selling is to move them through the funnel.
Content Topics
Content marketing and content selling use different types of content, including blog posts, social media posts, emails, white papers, and infographics. However, the focus of the content varies.
For example, content marketing often aims to introduce a brand to a completely new audience. They don’t have brand recognition, so you can share content about the company’s values or mission to introduce them to the brand.
Selling content aims to persuade an interested audience that is already familiar with the brand to make a purchase. Selling content topics may include more detailed product information, comparison infographics, and answers to frequently asked questions.
Goals
Content marketing aims to increase brand awareness and expertise in a given area, which increases the chances that ideal customers will find the brand.
The goal of selling content is to attract customers. Once a person shows interest in your brand, every subsequent interaction with them is an opportunity to nudge them toward making a purchase. The content you create must be compelling, personalized, and powerful enough to build trust and interest.
How to Create a Content Selling Strategy
While every content selling strategy is specific and nuanced, there are key elements that will help form the basis of your strategy:
1. Understand your target audience
Knowing your audience is a vital part of any business model. If you know your audience’s habits, you can tailor your content and delivery to achieve maximum impact. Analyze your data to learn what topics resonate with them most and where they prefer to engage with you. Review or create buyer personas, then focus on your target audience’s pain points, needs, likes, and motivators to create content that will move them to action.
2. Study the marketing funnel
Use past sales and traffic data to create an up-to-date customer journey map. Ask yourself:
How many interactions does it take on average to make a sale?
At what point in the journey do visitors typically leave your site?
Are there any ways to speed up or simplify the ordering process?
Much of content selling is about delivering quality content at the right time and overcoming – or anticipating – moments of customer hesitation or curiosity.
3. Create content
Content selling can take many forms, depending on what attracts your audience and where in the sales funnel they need a little nudge:
The top of the funnel
At this stage, they are aware of the brand and may be interested in it, but they want to learn more about what you offer. To attract your audience, publish informative blog posts, information about what the brand looks like, or funny social media posts about the brand values.
Middle of the funnel
Potential customers are currently considering products or services, but they need more information before they make a final decision.
Consider creating:
Infographics for comparing the characteristics of different products
Frequently asked questions pages with detailed answers to frequently asked questions
Recommendation surveys
Customer Testimonials Landing Page
The lower part of the funnel
The person at the bottom of the funnel has made a purchase decision and needs help completing the checkout, or they've purchased from you before and need a reason to come back. It's time to fine-tune your CTA buttons, abandonment emails, and shipping information so visitors don't have a reason not to click "Buy."
Providing quality content is a way to make customers feel like valued members of a brand's community, even if they haven't officially joined it yet.
4. Maximize the usefulness of your content
Once you have a finished blog post and fresh graphics, use various channels (social media, email marketing, and blog posts) to share this new material and reach your target audience.
5. Automate Wherever You Can
To make content selling effective at scale, use customer relationship management (CRM) software or artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate these interactions whenever possible. These tools allow you to create personalized marketing flows and send customized emails at predetermined intervals once someone takes a specific action—like signing up for a newsletter or abandoning their cart before completing a purchase.
This same CRM software can analyze the results of your strategy, allowing you to adjust your approach over time.
Conclusion
The goal of content selling is to use high-quality user-generated content to persuade customers who have already shown interest in your brand, such as by signing up for a newsletter, clicking on an ad, or placing a product in a shopping cart, to make a purchase.
What is content selling?
Content selling is a form of marketing that engages audiences once they enter the sales funnel. The brand's goal is to convert interested prospects into buyers through engaging and often educational content. For example, if a customer signs up for a newsletter after visiting a website, you can offer them different types of content to encourage them to buy.
Content can come in a number of forms, including a blog post or a marketing email. It can address problems, explain how to use a product, and upsell or cross-sell other products in the portfolio. Selling content builds relationships with potential or past customers and keeps the brand fresh in their minds.
Content Selling vs. Content Marketing: What's the Difference?
While both content selling and content marketing focus on creating content that engages an audience, they take slightly different approaches. Here’s how they differ:
Audience
Content marketing casts a wide net to attract current customers, potential customers, and those who know little to nothing about the brand. Content selling focuses solely on potential and current customers. If the vatican city b2b leads goal of content marketing is to attract people into the sales funnel, then content selling is to move them through the funnel.
Content Topics
Content marketing and content selling use different types of content, including blog posts, social media posts, emails, white papers, and infographics. However, the focus of the content varies.
For example, content marketing often aims to introduce a brand to a completely new audience. They don’t have brand recognition, so you can share content about the company’s values or mission to introduce them to the brand.
Selling content aims to persuade an interested audience that is already familiar with the brand to make a purchase. Selling content topics may include more detailed product information, comparison infographics, and answers to frequently asked questions.
Goals
Content marketing aims to increase brand awareness and expertise in a given area, which increases the chances that ideal customers will find the brand.
The goal of selling content is to attract customers. Once a person shows interest in your brand, every subsequent interaction with them is an opportunity to nudge them toward making a purchase. The content you create must be compelling, personalized, and powerful enough to build trust and interest.
How to Create a Content Selling Strategy
While every content selling strategy is specific and nuanced, there are key elements that will help form the basis of your strategy:
1. Understand your target audience
Knowing your audience is a vital part of any business model. If you know your audience’s habits, you can tailor your content and delivery to achieve maximum impact. Analyze your data to learn what topics resonate with them most and where they prefer to engage with you. Review or create buyer personas, then focus on your target audience’s pain points, needs, likes, and motivators to create content that will move them to action.
2. Study the marketing funnel
Use past sales and traffic data to create an up-to-date customer journey map. Ask yourself:
How many interactions does it take on average to make a sale?
At what point in the journey do visitors typically leave your site?
Are there any ways to speed up or simplify the ordering process?
Much of content selling is about delivering quality content at the right time and overcoming – or anticipating – moments of customer hesitation or curiosity.
3. Create content
Content selling can take many forms, depending on what attracts your audience and where in the sales funnel they need a little nudge:
The top of the funnel
At this stage, they are aware of the brand and may be interested in it, but they want to learn more about what you offer. To attract your audience, publish informative blog posts, information about what the brand looks like, or funny social media posts about the brand values.
Middle of the funnel
Potential customers are currently considering products or services, but they need more information before they make a final decision.
Consider creating:
Infographics for comparing the characteristics of different products
Frequently asked questions pages with detailed answers to frequently asked questions
Recommendation surveys
Customer Testimonials Landing Page
The lower part of the funnel
The person at the bottom of the funnel has made a purchase decision and needs help completing the checkout, or they've purchased from you before and need a reason to come back. It's time to fine-tune your CTA buttons, abandonment emails, and shipping information so visitors don't have a reason not to click "Buy."
Providing quality content is a way to make customers feel like valued members of a brand's community, even if they haven't officially joined it yet.
4. Maximize the usefulness of your content
Once you have a finished blog post and fresh graphics, use various channels (social media, email marketing, and blog posts) to share this new material and reach your target audience.
5. Automate Wherever You Can
To make content selling effective at scale, use customer relationship management (CRM) software or artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate these interactions whenever possible. These tools allow you to create personalized marketing flows and send customized emails at predetermined intervals once someone takes a specific action—like signing up for a newsletter or abandoning their cart before completing a purchase.
This same CRM software can analyze the results of your strategy, allowing you to adjust your approach over time.
Conclusion
The goal of content selling is to use high-quality user-generated content to persuade customers who have already shown interest in your brand, such as by signing up for a newsletter, clicking on an ad, or placing a product in a shopping cart, to make a purchase.