Are you looking to attract customers who don’t know your company? It’s not easy. But with the right content strategy, you can get their attention and pull them into your sales funnel.
This step in the sales process is challenging because you have no trust and no rapport with the prospect. Both of those things are necessary for them to agree to engage with you. There’s a good chance the prospect isn’t even considering a change. These are all large hurdles to overcome.
BUT, YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE… SO HERE GOES!
Step 1: How to Use Content for Cold Prospecting
Using content at this point requires you, the marketer, to think about the prospects’ perspective. This is ALL about them. And their perspective needs to shape everything about the content you create.
Here is the prospect’s perspective at this stage: I’m unaware or unconvinced of the value of what YOU are selling. And change only creates more work for me. Why should I care? I’m not ready to be sold to yet.
You need to overcome this to get them to engage with you.
Your challenge and goal at this stage: YOU need to show the value of what YOU do — your content needs to create urgency to want to learn more and communicate the opportunity the prospect is missing.
They don’t know what they don’t know.
Examples of the content assets you’ll need: Consistent release of blog posts on topics related to the prospect’s daily problems and challenges. What are the ways you can offer expertise YOU have and that they need?
Your company can distribute these types of content through social sharing, email campaigns, and high-quality newsletters. It just needs to get out there so the prospects will see it.
The types of topics that may resonate can include talking about the things you can help customers do (without it being a sales pitch… not even a sniff of one) …with little to no mention of YOU as the solution (yet). Content must come across as NOT salesy or self-serving.
What’s Your Real Goal Here? It’s not simply to educate. The actual motive is to create fear and confusion in the prospect’s mind. Overwhelm them. Make them feel a little FOMO. Maybe suggest their current provider is taking advantage of them. Push them to reach out to YOU to learn more because they realize they need help.
This may sound unpleasant, but it takes discomfort for companies to change their logistics partners. And top-of-funnel content is your best chance to do that.
