How to Use Content Marketing Funnels For Science Consumers
Scientists - regardless of their discipline - are using the internet for their research or for their own professional interest.
Broadly speaking, scientists are online for two reasons. They are looking to solve a scientific problem they have, or they are trying to stay on top of current trends and the latest news.
And just like most other people online, their search for relevant content often starts with a search engine or via social media. Therefore, if your business is looking to reach these scientists, you need to do two things: produce relevant content and put it in places that scientists will be looking.
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With a properly planned and executed content marketing strategy, you can use this inbound marketing strategy to get more views for your content, convert them into leads, which can result in sales for the products or service you offer. In this article, I will discuss how you set up a basic marketing funnel by creating content, generating traffic and how you can convert them to leads - asking scientists to submit their personal information so that you can directly market to them further.
CREATING CONTENT
The start of any marketing funnel requires content. If you don’t have content, you give scientists absolutely no reason to interact with your brand and you simply won’t get any traffic. However, there are plenty of opportunities to create a range of different content. For example, you could write blog posts, start a podcast or record videos. If you are looking for more ideas for different content or want to see some industry-specific examples, you can check out my other article about real examples of scientific content marketing.
But when it comes to deciding on a topic for your content, you can consider two avenues for ideas - content that you think people would enjoy to read, or content you know scientists are already looking for. For example, content you think people may enjoy reading usually means news-type content or interesting facts. The below example is a typical news-type from Phys.org.
Alternatively, you can take an SEO approach - you can find keywords that people are already searching for - and provide content that meets these searches, such as answering problems that they need solving, or how-to type content. The below article is a perfect example of an article written to answer a common analytical chemistry problem associated with HPLC from Chromatography Today.
You don’t need to choose one content type over the other; it is perfectly fine to do both. However, you need to keep in mind that the content you do produce is vaguely similar to your business industry. If you produce content that is not relevant to you, you have little chance in converting your visitors. Once you have your content, you need to start generating traffic and visits to your content.
GENERATING TRAFFIC
If you have written content to target known keywords, you are likely to start generating traffic from scientists who are using search engines. The benefit of this approach is that your content should continue to generate more and more visitors long after you have published your content - although this isn’t guaranteed. Your next approach to generating visitors to your content is via social sharing. Through your business social media accounts, you should share content to people that are already following you. This will ensure that at least some of your visitors will view your content and increases the chance of them sharing your content to their own networks.
Not only can you share it through your own accounts, you can also share it in relevant groups, such as on Facebook or LinkedIn. You can even ask any colleagues or relevant industry figures that you have a relationship with to share your content even further.
Another important aspect to consider, is how you share your content. When sharing a link, you should ensure that you share the link with a relevant caption and photo. Depending on the content you have created, photos and descriptions may automatically generate, but don’t rely on this. For example, if you are sharing content on twitter, ensure that you make the most of the character limit, and use hashtags to expand your reach.
With LinkedIn, write a longer caption that engages your audience. You can even share a few paragraphs, or an interesting quote to entice visitors to read your content. Make sure that you take a few extra minutes to show you care about the audience you want to attract and make it as enticing as possible that makes people want to read it.
CONVERTING TRAFFIC TO LEADS OR SALES
If you’ve followed the two previous steps; created good-quality content and shared it with a high-quality audience, you stand the best chance of converting your audience. But first, you need to decide on how you are going to convert your audience. The most basic - and easiest method - is to offer visitors the chance to join your mailing list. A perfect example is the subscribe form below on this very blog, where you can sign up to read more articles like this one from Orientation Marketing Insights.
Alternatively, you can offer some sort of incentive in exchange for an email address. An example of this could be an ebook to an industry-leading report, or a financial incentive such as a free product or discount if you are selling consumables or equipment to scientists.
There is no right or wrong solution for your conversion method, but you should probably test a few different options and see what converts best. However, sometimes some consumers are just not willing to commit their personal details, regardless of how well they view your content. And just because they don’t interact then, doesn’t mean they are gone for good. If you have set up tracking of visitors through cookies, you can re-target these customers.
Retargeting allows you to place ads or banners in front of these scientists on other sites that allow ads. Although this method requires some up-front monetary investment, you can target these scientists with unique, targeted landing pages, that are designed solely to convert. This doesn’t guarantee you will convert every visitor with retargeting, but sometimes helps give a nudge to scientists that will convert with a bit of persuasion!
OPTIMISING YOUR MARKETING FUNNEL
A marketing funnel is a simple process in principle - create, promote and convert. However, it is simply not feasible for every scientist that sees your content will want to convert. You can’t just set up a marketing funnel and leave it. You need to constantly review and update it for it to be most effective.
You need to understand metrics such as how many people see your content, whether they visit your content and how long they spend viewing it and finally whether they commit their details to your marketing funnel. You should be able to measure what channels perform best (and worst), what content types perform best and your best performing conversion methods. Constantly test and improve on your marketing funnel; provide the best content you can, test promotion methods and make it as obvious (and easy) for scientists to convert!
CONCLUSION
Scientists are real people and they spend just as much time online as professionals in any other industry. Ultimately, they are looking for content that is useful or interesting to them. If you can generate the content and do your best to ensure they see it, you have every chance of converting them as a lead.
Once you can convince scientists to leave their personal details, they are giving you permission to provide them with more content. You have every right to try and sell them your products or services, but do it carefully. Use the analogy; if you wouldn’t say it to them in real life, don’t say it via email. Don’t be pushy or aggressive, but play the long game - provide value and inform.
Guest contributor: Patrick Wareing https://patrickwareing.com
