The untapped potential of content marketing is something that many marketing teams and company founders overlook. Many brands and businesses are often confused about the complexity of content marketing. However, once you understand the concept of the buying cycle, it’s like putting on glasses for the first time. As you realise how powerful content can be, making a significant portion of the heavy lifting of lead generation for you.
In the energy industry, it’s easy to fall into the trap of just “featuring” your products or services as a checkbox exercise. You casually express what you have to offer, maybe even share what you wore for Christmas Jumper Day. Chances are, though, that effort doesn’t deliver more than a few meaningless likes – that’s why you’re reading this. So, let’s explore how you can harness the power of your content to better fuel your business growth and objectives.
When considering content ideas, you need to remember the buying cycle, which I like to simplify down to 3 stages for content generation – I call it the D.N.A method – Discovery, Nurture, Action.
Now, typically, companies tend to focus on creating content for the awareness stage – essentially saying, “Hey, look at us!” – and the action stage – proclaiming, “Here’s what we sell.” But with these stages before you, you’re probably already realising you might be missing that all important middle part. Let’s delve into that:
Attracting with the Right Content:
While you might be accustomed to sharing content that shouts, “Here I am, and here’s what I do,” it’s time to think beyond that. To truly captivate your audience, focus on highlighting the problems your business solves. Ensure your discovery content effectively conveys this, grabbing your audience’s attention and establishing an instant connection. For instance, instead of saying, “Hey, we’re AB Fiftyone, and we can help you with your marketing,” consider saying, “Don’t you just hate it when you reach 4 PM on a Friday, and you haven’t posted a thing on social media?” The goal at this stage is to make your ideal clients relate.
Nurturing Through Your Content:
This is the often-overlooked part of the equation. Today, it’s not sufficient enough to provide content solely for discovery and action. Leaving people to fill the nurture gap themselves may lead them to seek information from other sources, potentially costing you the enquiry and sale. Instead, focus on the problems you solve and offer valuable content that explains the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of your solutions. Are you ideal clients looking for sustainability partners to help work towards Net Zero? Be sure to include content around your ESG policies. Or perhaps project up-time is of importance to them. Then you’ll want to create content around how your globally located multi-skilled staff reduce the mobilisation time involved with coordinating single skilled personnel. If you’re looking for more ideas, reach out for a chat.
Selling Through Your Content:
Selling through your content often comes as the default, an easy grab for quick content creation – simply saying, “Buy my thing.” However, you can take it a step further. Don’t just inform people what you offer; tell them why they need it. Incorporate testimonials from satisfied customers, provide demonstrations, and paint a vivid picture of the transformation and end results – essentially, the utopia they’ll experience working with you.
When you apply this 3 step framework to your content ideas, whether it’s social media, blogs/articles or videos you can be sure that you’re covering all the bases and building up a marketing system that directly supports lead generation and your sales team.
To find out more about how you can leverage content marketing in the energy industry and incorporate it into your strategy going forward, get in touch for a chat.
