Decision-stage content is a vital component of your inbound marketing strategy that shouldn't be overlooked. After all, you’ve worked hard to attract the right kind of website traffic to your site and converted them into leads using helpful content; you may have even nurtured your leads with middle-of-the-funnel or consideration-stage content, moving them further on their path to purchase. It would be a shame to let all that hard work go to waste. Now’s the time to close the sale.
The best content for the decision-stage is content that compares your product or service with other solutions in the market. This can be done in a variety of formats, but formats that tend to work best include:
Don’t forget that as with all of the other content you’ve created as part of your inbound strategy, bottom-of-the-funnel content also needs to focus on a specific buyer persona.You can create several versions of the same piece of content that speaks to each persona differently, or use different formats of the same piece of content that are suitable for the different channels you utilize. For example, if you’re creating a recorded presentation or webinar, you might consider LinkedIn, while detailed product videos might work better on Facebook.In fact, Animoto reported that 64% of consumers say watching a marketing video on Facebook has influenced a purchase decision.
Although decision-stage content is often delivered to prospects via email (either through marketing automation workflows or manually from someone in sales), people are searching for this type of content online right before they’re about to purchase - and you definitely don’t want to miss that kind of traffic!
Make sure to optimize your content with keywords that your personas will use when searching. Common bottom-of-the-funnel keyword modifiers include things like:
Don’t save all of your decision-stage content for automated workflows or keep it locked away with your sales team. As I mentioned, prospects (really warm prospects) may indeed be searching for vendor comparisons right before they buy. They’re not going to find the great content you’ve produced if it’s sitting in your sale rep’s email. Place bottom-of-the-funnel content strategically throughout your website. Think about the journey that someone might take on your site. Maybe they first arrive on your website on a blog post, and then end up on a service page. A product demo might be the perfect decision-stage offer that your service page needs to close the sale. You can experiment with various placements, size, etc. on the page itself. Try sidebar, middle of the page highlighted text, bottom of the page image CTA, etc. As the saying goes, effective websites are never truly finished - they’re always a work in progress.