Scaling high-intent conversions, such as demo requests, is a challenge that many revenue teams face. While these conversions have a high success rate, figuring out how to scale them can be difficult, and many strategies fall apart for several reasons.
Scaling these high-intent conversions requires a different playbook, a return to the marketing fundamentals playbook. I find myself talking a lot about making sure your basics are in order, when was the last time you reviewed your persona and how they convert? To achieve this, quality marketing that cannot be measured at every step of the way must be executed regardless. It does require having faith in the process and the time needed even though it might go against everything you've been told. Sometimes you go with your gut, building out your content, your website, your social following without being able to fully measure everything you do. Much like I'm doing here with this brand-new website. I know who can benefit from my services, I've done the keyword research, from experience I know which tactics work and that it takes a lot of hard work before I see organic traffic coming in at a reasonable volume.
The secret to scaling these conversions is providing value, educating the target audience on why they need your category and product, standing out creatively in a sea of noise, and delivering a memorable, quality experience with your brand at every touchpoint. This is Marketing 101.
To ramp up these conversions to the scale needed for growth goals, there are two avenues to invest in: the long-term and the short-term.
The long-term investment involves organic investments, which focus on a content strategy that is channel agnostic. The strategy involves identifying topics to assist your target market and determining how to distribute content on specific channels. Many marketers get distracted by thinking of channels first, but they're just the avenue to distribute the strategy. Channels include podcasts, social media, etc.
For example, you have a great template that you're willing to give away as a middle-of-the-funnel piece of content like I'm doing with my HubSpot portal review guidebook. Once you've done the hard work to create the content, you can 'easily' repurpose this content to use across multiple channels:
- A series of LinkedIn / Twitter / Instagram posts: 'How to review your HubSpot portal, spend one hour each week and tune in to these posts for your weekly reminder. If you would like to complete your entire review now, download the guidebook.'
- A webinar: 'Join me and X in reviewing their HubSpot portal and learn how to do this for your own portal.'
- A Youtube clip: 'Highlights from your webinar teaching people how to review their HubSpot portal.'
- Multiple blog posts: Split the content of your guidebook up into multiple blog posts (which are all promoted with several social media posts each).
You get the idea: repurpose and get as many eyeballs on your content as possible, across multiple channels.
Once you identify your target audience or persona and understand their buyer journey you can start building out your keyword strategy. This keyword strategy will be the base of every piece of content you create. I personally am not a writer but I find that writing articles based on discussions I have with customers on their challenges makes this process a whole lot easier. Your keyword research should be a way to prioritize what you write about but the inspiration for the actual content can come from anywhere - just make sure it fits with your persona and keyword strategy.
The short-term investment involves paid investments, which amplify the reach of your content and messages to the target audience while you wait for long-term strategies to pay off. The content strategy should remain the same. How about 'buying leads'? I'm personally not a big fan and in my years working with SDR teams I haven't seen a great conversion rate on these types of leads. Of course, it's always a volume game and if you have a very large total addressable market and more budget than you can spend on ads, you could try. However, if you are a B2B company with a limited number of target accounts in relevant markets I'd be careful not to burn your reputation and have your contacts hit 'spam' on the emails your team sends out.
I like to view your paid traffic in the early days of ramping up your conversions as renting a house before you have enough saved up to buy a place of your own. Your short-term investment should be focused on driving valuable conversions while you cannot reach them through your owned channels.
The caveat in these two-time investments is that you should focus on the long-term investments independently without executing paid, but you shouldn't focus on short-term investments without the long-term. Wait, what? So your long-term, organic, and owned channels should be your focus regardless of what's happening with your paid channels. Paid is genuinely meant to be an amplifier. Focusing only on the short term is a recipe for stalled and ROI-negative growth, especially at a time when funding is harder to come by and all budgets are being scrutinized.
Scaling high-intent conversions requires quality marketing, which is not a quick hack, regardless of what listicles would like you to believe. It involves a commitment to providing value, educating the target audience, standing out creatively, and delivering a memorable, quality experience with your brand at every touchpoint. By following these fundamentals and investing in both long-term and short-term strategies, revenue teams can successfully scale high-intent conversions and achieve their growth goals.
At HubOps I've chosen to focus on the long-term tactics and making sure your revenue operations machine is functioning as well as it can. I do not forget the importance of a solid paid strategy though and for that, I like to work with trusted partners who specialize in this tactic. Ready to invest in your long-term?