April 2022: Mapping Content to the Sales Funnel

One of the first questions we ask our lead gen and custom content customers is: what stage of the sales funnel (top, middle or late) are you focusing on?

At GlobeSt., our ABM/Activate products offer the ability to find firms/companies that are displaying likely interest in your product/service and indicate where they are in the sales funnel.

And we also have different lead gen programs that track to different stages in the sales funnel. So you can choose broad programs to drive awareness leads, and more targeted programs to drive later-funnel leads.

But what content types align best with the three stages of the sales funnel? Here’s some guidelines from our audience marketing and custom content teams. And check out the key trends CRE marketers need to know that follows these tips.

Content Types Aligned to Sales Funnel

Top of the Funnel – Awareness. Define the Challenge/Opportunity

• Educational: Informative content that answers a question. Think of content around regulations, compliance, and improving efficiency.
• Thought leadership: Forward-thinking and macro industry trends.
• Research: Collecting data that supports a challenge/opportunity and puts it into context.
• Premium programmatic units that grab attention but can be dialed up or down at a moment’s notice.
• Immediate gratification: Solves a pain point, improves efficiency right away. These may come in various types but think along the lines of forms to modernize your contracts, quick reference infographics for compliance, or excel sheets to easily calculate some industry formula.

Mid-Funnel – Consideration: What types of solutions are available?

• Tip-based content: Quick tips or deep-dive tactics to improve your business, team, or solve problems.
• Buyers Guides: Step-by-step content that outlines options available to solve a problem or enhance your capabilities.
• Checklists: Short-hand version/summary of buyers guide.
• Evaluations: Tools to assess what your team needs, where it’s at, and what to consider.

Bottom of the Funnel – Justification: What are proof points that show the solution works?

• Case studies/testimonials: How you solved a customer problem.
• Use cases: When the product is new and you don’t have a case study.
• ROI Calculators: Prospects can input high-level data from their business and see potential outcomes.

Here are some examples of content our Custom Solutions team has created along these lines. Click here to see our Custom Solutions Showcase.

If you’d like more information about our ability to target leads and content that is aligned with your sales funnel strategies, please contact me at [email protected].

In addition, please check out the latest trends in the CRE industry that marketers need to know.

Trends Real Estate Industry Marketers Need to Know

• How CRE will respond to inflation. Inflation is a major headwind for the U.S. economy, thus warranting ongoing coverage. On face value, it appears to be neutral for CRE as the industry is supposedly well positioned to withstand it. But there are definitely scenarios where CRE could feel a negative impact. In other words, this is not a cut-and-dry topic and we will continue to come at it from different angles. One example is Here’s How the Fed’s Response To Inflation Could Create Headwinds for CRE, which received 3,562 visits.
• Foreign investment returns to CRE. After a year in which foreign investment all but decamped from U.S. CRE markets, 2021 saw it return in significant numbers. There are also signs that these flows will continue this year. Foreign Investors Rush Back to US Markets, which received 1,358 visits, looked at this trend.
• Is the office asset class stuck in a stall? Offices saw some momentum in the middle of 2021 when it appeared that vaccinations would herald the return of workers to the office. That didn’t happen and there have been numerous false starts to returning since then. As a result, leasing has stalled as well as other metrics. It remains to be seen if this is merely a temporary phenomenon or whether offices have settled permanently into a new normal. Is This Sluggish Office Demand Permanent?, which received 700 visits, covered this trend.