Content selling is using educational content as a follow-up to reel in a customer once they show interest in a product or service. It can be offering guidance on using said product or sharing similar products that a customer may be interested in. Thanks to content selling, businesses build better relationships with their clients and drive more sales.
But how do you make a good content selling strategy? In this guide, our experts will cover everything about content selling, from what it is and why you should use it to several tips, examples, and agencies that can help your business’s content selling strategy.
Table of Contents
- What Is Content Selling?
- Content Selling vs. Content Marketing
- How To Create an Effective Content Selling Strategy: Step-by-Step Guide
- 7 Key Reasons Why You Should Employ a Content Selling Strategy
- Top 5 Content Marketing Agencies To Boost Your Content Selling Strategy
- 7 Bonus Content Selling Tips
- Top 3 Content Selling Examples
- Content Selling: Final Thoughts
What Is Content Selling?
Content selling is a marketing strategy that uses content throughout the buyer’s journey to encourage prospects who have interacted with your brand to close a sale.
For example, a user has interacted with your brand for the first time by requesting a free demo of your services. This means the user has entered your sales funnel. Following this first interaction, you must contact them between seven to 12 times to get them to convert.
During this lengthy period, your sales content team must keep your prospects engaged with your brand, so they remember your product or service and eventually choose to convert. You can use different content to lead users on an exciting buyer journey, from offering guidance and highlighting the value of your product or service to presenting similar products or services they might be interested in.
Content Selling vs. Content Marketing
Content marketing is directed at a broader audience of your target groups and random website visitors or social media followers. Content selling is aimed at specific buyer personas who have already acted to enter your sales funnel.
What we mean by taking an action is:
- Joining an email list
- Sending a request for more information
- Subscribing to company news
- Listening to a webinar
Simply put, content marketing targets cold audiences, while content selling targets warm leads.
Pro tip: If you want to explore the topic of content marketing further, check out our article about content marketing vs. advertising!
How To Create an Effective Content Selling Strategy: Step-by-Step Guide
We've put together a step-by-step guide on how to create a content selling strategy:
- Identify Your Target Audiences
- Identify the Number of Touchpoints Needed to Close a Sale
- Create Content
- Automate Content
Step #1: Identify Your Target Audiences
- Research your target audiences.
- Create buyer personas based on demographics, interests, pain points, career level, and the types of content they prefer to consume.
Step #2: Identify the Number of Touchpoints Needed to Close a Sale
- Analyze data from previous sales to define the usual number of contacts needed to close a sale.
- Determine the frequency of sending out your content, whether emails, newsletters, or ads.
- Identify the most effective channels to contact your users.
Step #3: Create Content
- Decide on the type of content you will use. Follow your brand’s content style guide to ensure consistent voice and tone, grammar and punctuation, and personalization in content that sells and provides greater user engagement.
- Create a content schedule to plan and send your content in logical order. For example, if you have sent an email with common Q&As, you can follow up by sending a video with instructions on how to use a product or service.
Step #4: Automate Content
- Implement a customer relationship management (CRM) software solution to automate sending content to prospects.
- Set intervals to send your content after a user has interacted with your brand for the first time.
- Track analytics to measure the results of your content selling.
- Make changes to the frequency of content selling, if needed. For example, increase the frequency of sending content to prospects if you see no reaction on their part.
7 Key Reasons Why You Should Employ a Content Selling Strategy
Why should you use content selling as a strategy? Here are a few reasons:
- Reminds Your Users of Your Products or Services
- Promotes Your Brand
- Builds Trust
- Helps You Educate Prospects About Your Offering
- Increases Engagement
- Boosts Conversion
- Upsells Existing Customers
1. Reminds Your Users of Your Products or Services
Content selling helps you regularly reach your prospects to remind them of your brand. Reminding them ensures you stay on their radar in a highly competitive market with alternative offers.
2. Promotes Your Brand
Content selling helps increase brand recognition by sending recognizable content characterized by branded design and targeted messaging.
3. Builds Trust
Content selling builds trust by creating content that sells, focuses on the needs of your users, and shows care for your target audiences. Building trust establishes an emotional connection between your brand and your prospects.
4. Helps You Educate Prospects About Your Offering
By showing leads you know what questions they might have during various stages of the consideration process, content selling helps you build a professional image. By sending them content focused on different angles of your product or service, you present it and educate your target audience on your offerings.
5. Increases Engagement
Content selling helps you keep your users engaged by interacting with them regularly. By watching a video or receiving information about other products or services you sell, prospects can maintain interest in your brand and take the next step toward conversion.
6. Boosts Conversion
Content selling helps you provide your users with additional information on the value of your products or services that may motivate them to convert. Regularly reminding prospects of your brand, you can encourage leads to choose your offering.
7. Upsells Existing Customers
Content selling helps you remind your existing customers of your brand and upsell your products or services. For example, you might send prospects a discount on an item they have viewed before. Or, send an email about accessories or services that complement their previous purchase.
Top 5 Content Marketing Agencies To Boost Your Content Selling Strategy
A content marketing agency can help you achieve your content marketing goals — create content that sells, influences your prospects' buying decisions, and turns them into your customers.
Here are our top five picks of the top content marketing agencies:
1. Pearl Lemon
Headquartered in London, United Kingdom, Pearl Lemon employs top global talent to deliver outstanding digital marketing services. It offers:
- Content marketing
- SEO services
- eCommerce marketing
- CMS SEO
- Advanced remarketing
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Small Business marketing
Pearl Lemon’s notable clients include OAL Group, St Emilion Capital, Astteria London, and EmergeOne.
2. Visualwebz LLC
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Visualwebz LLC provides value-added web services across industries, from law offices to elderly care homes. It offers:
- Content marketing
- SEO services
- eCommerce solutions
- Website design
- Business marketing
Visualwebz LLC has partnered with numerous clients, including TimeXtender, PGTAA, Montessori Kirkland, and enePath.
3. ADINDEX
Headquartered in Dnipro, Ukraine, ADINDEX specializes in marketing solutions for B2B and eCommerce businesses. It offers:
- Content marketing
- SEO services
- PPC advertising
- Social media marketing
- ECommerce marketing
ADINDEX’s clients include Holz, Alfamarket, Aromateque, Meest China, and Polaroid.
4. Digital Silk
Headquartered in New York City, Digital Silk creates solutions that drive engagement and brand exposure for top brands in B2B and B2C. It offers:
- Content marketing
- Digital marketing
- Branding
- Social media marketing
- 360° Digital Agency Services
Digital Silk has worked on projects for well-known brands such as HP, IBM, XEROX, Puma, and the International Schools Partnership.
5. Moloko Creative Agency
Headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, Moloko Creative Agency specializes in effective communication, creating advertising campaigns, videos, and animation. It offers:
- Content marketing
- Branding
- Logo design
- Video production
- Creative design
Moloko Creative Agency has partnered with renowned companies and organizations such as KFC, Zytlyn, Finteqhub, and John Dory.
7 Bonus Content Selling Tips
Now that you've explored the benefits of content selling and how to use it in your marketing strategy, here are some additional pro tips from our experts:
- Explore and understand how the conversion funnel functions
- Use clear statements highlighting the benefits of your products or services for potential customers
- Avoid sending similar or repeating content to keep your users engaged
- Provide additional information in case the user is not the decision maker—for example, on how your product or service can benefit the brand they represent.
- Use emotion-backed call-to-actions (CTAs) such as “Join the fun,” “Indulge in,” “Commit to,” and “Customize it your way.”
- Use specific naming for buttons, tabs, and fields so that your prospect understands them.
- Follow the latest trends to adjust your content to drive results
Top 3 Content Selling Examples
To give you a better overview of the topic, here are 3 examples of famous companies that use content selling to improve their sales:
1. Canva
Having a free version and being one of the top tools used in creating designs, Canva employs its content-selling strategy once you create an account. It automatically places users into its email newsletter and often sends out news on its accomplishments and perks you can gain by purchasing the tool with all its features.
2. Duolingo
Duolingo is a great example of how content selling can be subtly used to gain more customers. This language app has both a free and paid version and starts using its sales content strategy the second you create an account.
But it’s not just email outreach, providing you with news and the benefits of paying for the app. It also does daily reminders of your accomplishments, special tournaments, and features only for paid users, which free accounts get to try out a few times (as a freebie), fun facts to encourage you to keep playing and potentially purchasing, and more.
3. Apple
Today, Apple only needs to say it’s conceptualizing a new product to have people lining up in front of Apple shops everywhere. That is all thanks to its marketing strategy, including content selling.
With every new product, Apple does a short preview of it alongside a Q&A session, where it discusses what new features the product will give. Its yearly Worldwide Developers Conference shares all news, tips, and tricks to be expected with the new chips, iPhones, Macs, iPads, etc.
Another part of its content selling strategy is, of course, newsletters. Once you create an account (even without purchasing a product), you’re immediately part of the email list, so you’ll get every announcement and news about deals, discounts, new similar products to the ones you’ve browsed, etc.
Content Selling: Final Thoughts
Content selling is a tactic for engaging prospects with content after entering the sales funnel. Sending content to prospects promotes your brand, builds trust, establishes expertise, increases engagement, boosts conversion, and upsells existing customers.
To develop a content selling strategy, identify your target audiences and the number of interactions needed to close a sale. Create engaging content and let it do the rest.
If you need help, contact experts. Professional content marketing agencies will research your industry, target market, and competitive landscape to ensure you send out valuable content that encourages your users to convert.