Are you targeting multiple personas with each marketing campaign? If you are, then you’re ahead of the game. But you also know how difficult it is to get a campaign like that off the ground.
Nurturing prospects depends on high quality thought leadership and sales enablement content. Typically, that means a journalistic approach, crafting a compelling narrative while demonstrating your subject matter expertise and unique capabilities.
But there’s a barrier in the way – and it’s a big one.
More personas, more problems
Let’s use whitepapers as a lead magnet example. Different buyers have different pain points, needs, and interests. So, how do you go about speaking their language?
72% of buyers expect vendors to personalise content and engagement to their needs. In other words, they want to see persona-based content. Yet for teams being asked to do more with less, there aren’t enough hours in the day.
You could bundle everything together and shove it all into a mega-length whitepaper addressing the broader challenge. That’d work, right? Potentially. But you’ve worked hard to earn their attention. Are you willing to take the risk?
Another option is a unique whitepaper for each persona.
That’s better but comes with its own hurdles. We’ve all had a painful experience where getting a whitepaper over the finish line has taken far longer than it should, especially when multiple SMEs are involved. Going round again could become the kiss of death – that campaign might never see the light of day.
Thankfully, there’s a better approach: interconnected assets, which allow you to deliver value to a wider audience but for a fraction of the effort.
What’s an interconnected asset?
Often, for solution-based businesses reaching different buyer personas with an asset like a whitepaper, the content you put in front of each audience doesn’t need to be entirely unique.
Take the travel industry as an example. If you’re a digital transformation service provider helping airlines to address the customer experience challenge they’re grappling with in a post-pandemic world, you’ll be targeting a front- and back-office persona.
Getting buy-in from both will be key, demonstrating how digital processes and AI can transform each business area for an airline. But there will be commonalities: unsiloing data, integrating analytics, bringing employees along for the ride. And, designing new end-to-end processes to account for the all-important blend of AI and a human in the loop.
As you can see, there’s quite a bit of overlap between a pair of whitepapers each targeting a different persona. In most cases, we find it’s a 60/40 split: 60% common content, 40% tailored, persona-specific content.
Common content doesn’t mean it’s exactly the same across both assets. It’ll still need tweaking for the given persona. But it’s the difference between starting with a blank Google doc versus a detailed outline: the latter is easier to build from – and much easier to get stakeholder buy-in for.
The benefits of interconnected assets
There are several benefits beyond ease of content creation:
- Speed-to-market. Less time stuck in the ideation and creation phase means faster campaign launch, minimizing cost of delay.
- Quality, journalistic content. Because an interconnected asset is an easier lift, you can spend more time honing the overarching narrative and journalistic approach, boosting the impact of the campaign. Add in a show, don’t tell approach – with each main section including a use case delivered by your solution – and you’ll create a softer, yet more impactful, sell.
- Extended shelf life. Interconnected assets give you content atomisation and refresh opportunities off the bat. You can also create a combined asset at a later stage for prospects further down the funnel.
- Enhanced thought leadership. Breaking out actionable, in-depth content in this way helps better demonstrate expertise while generating qualified leads.
How you can maximise impact with interconnected assets
The benefits of an interconnected approach don’t just apply to lead magnet assets. Landing pages should get the same treatment.
Two common ways to think about this:
- Multiple landing pages targeted to different buyer personas. The more obvious choice and an easy way to deliver a tailored, personalised experience through persona-based messaging and visuals.
- Dynamic content. A gamified experience where different buyers can self-navigate to the content that’s relevant to them using interactive options at the top of the page. Leaning on our airline example above, picture a ‘security fast track’ where visitors can go ‘left’ for front-office and ‘right’ for back-office.
Other options are available, too. Advanced landing pages (such as interactive maps or quizzes) can be an effective way of getting prospects to hand over their contact details, and can be used as an engaging mechanism to deliver the most relevant lead magnet to a prospect.
Experimenting with other content formats
Interconnected assets don’t have to be whitepapers. Granted, this approach lends itself well to long-form assets like a whitepaper, but don’t be afraid to switch up content types. Especially if research shows your target audience will be more receptive to a certain format.
We’ve applied this to expert guides, data-backed reports, solution overviews and videos, and a multitude of content in support of ABM lite strategies.
Looking for a partner that can help supercharge your marketing campaigns, from content strategy and ideation through to delivery and activation? We’d love to help. Get in touch:
hello@isolinecomms.com.
