Tech marketers too often think of lead generation activities in terms of lead guarantees, duration, clicks, impressions, etc. Organizations fail to realize that the content for lead generation directly affects the quality of their leads. Therefore, employing a focus on technically-rich content, as we do for our clients, is key to any successful lead gen activity.
In the tech market, you are not selling a simple commodity such as shoes. As a result, not everyone understands your product, and most don’t even have the right persona for it. Big numbers say nothing about your campaign’s potential success to software developers and engineers or DevOps, quality assurance, and big data professionals.
Moreover, the right personas for the tech market are complex and difficult to target. Assuming a too-broad or random aim risks making an enemy by enticing someone to click something that leaves them disappointed. Consequently, it’s so critical for your product marketing, demand generation, and lead generation teams to clearly identify the expectations of your market and make sure the landing page for all marketing campaigns provides value.
Three Criteria for Technically-Rich Content
Written with Clarity: When a person sees technically-rich content, they should be able to quickly identify the offering. If it’s super buzzy, that’s really annoying; if it doesn’t provide a solution to a tech challenge, that’s equally annoying.
Consider what happens upon the click. If it reveals fluff, or the landing page’s content doesn’t reflect ad copy, then the click costs you a relationship. This relationship potentially has a higher value than a single conversion.
Of course, the click supports lead generation, but is it the right lead? For example, if your ad copy relates to Node JS application deployments, but the content of the landing page concerns DevOps, either you get an unfavorable reaction from the visitor, or you end up with an unqualified lead, which translates into an expense.
Provides Value: This is a give-get world. You need to give the techie something of value. So, the most valuable content allows the techie to:
a.) learn a new concept;
b.) get an answer to a question;
c.) take actionable steps as promised in the content; or,
d.) discover something useful to share with their peers.
If they get nothing from the content, then your salesperson will not receive a favorable response when contacting this lead.
Meets Expectations: Clarity combined with value ensures that visitors get what they expected with the click. In other words, lead gen activities should make sure visitors don’t feel cheated. Your technically-rich content must target the right person, meet well-defined expectations, and provide a strong call to action that invites them to engage at some level. It’s essential to provide high-quality content on well-curated topics.
Diverse Distribution Channels
At Fixate, our objective is to direct valuable content to a specific destination—often via digital media channels. While we use Sweetcode.io to vet contributors and validate our messaging, we are not a media company that serves larger audiences through distribution options. However, there are services that can extend the reach of your high-quality, technically rich content.
MediaOps, for example, aligns content with relevant and related campaigns positioned to reach and engage with the target market. And Stack Overflow – Direct to Developer – organizes content not only by stack and persona, but also by mood. If you have a question on stack, you have a very specific need and want an answer right now. By accessing Fixate-created content that directly relates to stack questions, you are getting answers at the right place, time, and mood.
Technical Content Aligned with Marketing Strategy
Lead generation campaigns in the tech world are a liability if they do not deliver great content. All product marketing, demand generation, and lead generation professionals should realize this and build their campaigns around technically-rich content.
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This post was originally published in July 2019 and updated in August 2022.