One of the most common tactics in tech marketing is creating thought leadership content written by subject matter experts and/or influencers. And when these pieces share valuable content, more than half of tech buyers say it can influence them contacting a vendor (2021 Foundry Customer Engagement). But how do you extend the reach of your blog posts to turn readers into leads?
Scale the Reach of Your Native Content through Media Sites
Beyond social amplification and SEO campaigns, one of the more effective tactics in being seen is publishing your content on a trusted and well-known content websites or media brands. Media brands such as CIO.com, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal allow marketers to place their thought leadership content on their domains as part of a campaign. The content lives “natively” among the site’s editorial content, albeit with clear labeling that it is sponsored by an advertiser, and it is all done with full disclosure. The benefits are clear – your content is placed in an environment of trust and affinity. The relationship the audience has with the brand provides a halo effect on your content and messaging.
This native content tactic is perfect for creating top of funnel awareness. The problem many marketers face, however, is how to move the sales needle by turning this valuable traffic into prospects and customers. Fortunately, we’ve seen success with a few tactics to help drive these audiences into your various marketing and nurture streams.
Strong Calls to Action: Give Them More Content
Including call to action (CTA) links in the body of the hosted native content offers readers more of the type of content they are already reading. For example, if your native content is introductory in nature, offer some deeper level content on your site to capture some information or get them to sign up for a newsletter.
Ad Remarketing: An Invitation to Deepen the Relationship
Taking that idea one step further, you can set up retargeting pools for the content page where your native content is being hosted. That enables you to serve ads across the web on contextually relevant sites using ad creative with a strong CTA pointing to your website landing pages with more content on the same topic.
Ad retargeting, often called remarketing, is a powerful tool to reengage people who have already raised their hand for your content. You have piqued their interest with content, now offer more in exchange for some basic information (e.g. email address, company name). Set some frequency caps so you don’t overdo it, but it is reasonable to reach someone in your retargeting pool 3-4 times to entice them to visit your site/landing page.
Account Identification: Your Secret Weapon
Account ID is a tactic to get more information about the people landing on your native content. There are several technologies that give you critical information about your site visitors. Products such as Foundry Intent are powerful tools that disclose the company/organization of the readers who land on your native content. These tools use the person’s IP address combined with proprietary algorithms to identify the company of the site visitor. That data comes appended with additional useful information such as industry, company size, URL, and location. This data can be used in a few ways outlined below.
Feed the info to your sales team to match to their prospect pools or ABM target account list to confirm if these accounts are consuming your content and being retargeted by your ad campaigns. Or use the list of uncovered accounts to build a target account list and feed them into an email nurture campaign to names already in your CRM. Another option is a lead gen campaign with a reputable demand gen company to generate net new names.
Posting native content on a media website is a tried-and-true tactic for driving awareness and establishing credibility with your target audience. A few additional steps can help generate prospects and eventually turn them into customers.
