April 15, 2019 Andrew Warren-Payne
This post is the latest in our series on scrappy marketing – an approach can help you achieve better results in less time.
Earlier on the ON24 blog, we provided a list of scrappy tools and techniques that can help provide some sources of inspiration when you’re looking to get campaigns out quickly to market. These were mostly based on using sources of external data.
However, the most valuable insights are likely to come from your own customers. As such, harnessing information you can gather directly from them can be even more powerful. Below are a few places to turn to so you can gather this information.
Look at your customers’ questions – and ask more
Chances are that you already have a host of questions that your customers have asked previously in one way or another. Past interactive webinars can act as an archive of both Q&A material, poll responses and surveys. This can both help to guide a path to new ideas and provide an easy way to start repurposing content.
While more commonly used by product and development teams, support tickets can also act as a treasure trove of information, particularly if you are able to segment out those asked by high-value target groups.
If you need more information, then don’t be afraid to reach out and ask directly. Create a short survey to send out by email, run a poll on social media, or even engage those on your site via on-site chat. It doesn’t need to be complicated – a simple question such as “What content would you help you be better at your job?” or “What topics are most important to you right now?” will often be enough to surface valuable pointers.
Ask your sales team for insights
While marketers like to own the customer experience, it’s most likely your sales or customer success team that has a closer relationship with the customer than anyone else in the business. Find out from them what burning questions they’re most frequently asked by leads or customers.
It’s certainly worth working more closely with your sales team so you can more easily share your insights with each other, not only to keep tabs on what matters most to your customer, which can inform your marketing activities, but also so that the sales team can be in a better position to answer their questions.
Dive into your engagement metrics
On the quantitative side, customers can tell you a great deal about their interests and preferences through their behavior. Content intelligence can be gathered through a number of sources, which come in the following different flavors:
Website traffic: Use your on-site analytics to find out what kinds of content on your site are most popular (most visits and longest dwell time), where site visitors are coming from (channel and geography), and (if you have it available) the keywords they’re using to find you.
Email data: Look at your email campaigns. Which subject lines have proven the most engaging? Which links (to internal or external content) are getting the most clicks?
Content downloads: Which of your existing assets have performed most strongly? Are there any that could do with a refresh? Are there any areas lacking engagement but have the opportunity to perform more strongly?
Webinar engagement: Review the webinars you’ve held in recent years. Are there specific topics that see more registrations? Which webinars get the most audience interaction? Make note of the questions audience members ask the end – these can often form the basis of a blog post at the very least.
Investigate your CRM Data
One more place you can find inspiration for campaign ideas is your CRM data. What industries are you targeting? Does the CRM tell you which are more receptive to your existing content? Are there any particular clients or target accounts you should be focusing more attention on?
Cross-reference these insights with the other information you’ve gathered, and this can help you think differently about new content going forward.