Content Triangle: Effective Lead Nurturing with Progressive Profiling

There are many companies that do lead generation.

But how many really manage to build an automatic, relevant, and personalized conversation with their leads?

This is one of the goals we set in building a Sand-Mill and today I share with you one of the most effective techniques for building an effective Lead Nurturing strategy with Progressive Profiling.

The Content Triangle.

Ingredients for a Content Triangle

The ingredients to create an effective Content Triangle are:

• Forms with the functionality of progressive profiling
• A Marketing Automation software
• 2 resources exposed to the Sea of Micro-Moments (lead magnet)
• 1 "secret" resource that cannot be accessed from the outside

The purpose is to build a relationship with prospects, showing how much our brand understands their needs and, at the same time, profiling the potential customer in detail, collecting both implicit and explicit information.

Profiling allows us to understand whether a lead is qualified (i.e., has all the characteristics of our ideal customer) or is not qualified (due to issues related to their goals, the size of their company, their industry). The information collected allows us to personalize communications, activating specific flows for each Buyer Persona, but also ensuring that unqualified leads do not receive sales communications (and therefore do not affect our KPIs).

These activities also help Sales teams, who will already have tools available to assess the priority of each potential customer in the sales pipeline (knowing the characteristics that make up their profile and the score indicating their engagement) and at the same time will be speaking with a prospect more aware of what our company can do for them.

La ricetta per realizzare un Triangolo di Contenuti

To understand what the content triangle consists of, let's imagine A and B, two lead magnets exposed to the Sea of Micro-Moments dealing with TOFU or MOFU themes, complementary to each other.

A and B turn out to be two effective lead generation tools.

They can be downloaded from two landing pages that link to both specific articles on our blog and our advertising campaigns.

To create a Content Triangle, we can create a automation to send an invitation to download B to those who downloaded lead magnet A and an invitation to download A to those who downloaded lead magnet B.

By setting up progressive profiling, each form completion will allow us to acquire new information from the contact, profiling them and getting to know them better.

If on the first form we ask for name, surname, and email, on the second one the user will have to enter the company name and a segmenting information, such as their job title or the sector in which they operate.

To those who have downloaded both A and B, we will then send an exclusive and "secret" resource, not directly accessible in the Sea of Micro-moments. Let's call it C.

This resource C should be of particularly high value for the Buyer Persona and providing it for free after starting to build a relationship with the two previous steps will allow us to take that relationship to the next level.

The fact that the resource is "secret" and of high value contributes to creating a sense of exclusivity that helps the relationship move forward and often lays the groundwork for the creation of a community in the Advocacy Base.

By completing the third form (necessary to download C), we will have collected the information needed to personalize all subsequent communications, ensuring the utmost relevance of our messages at the bottom of the Funnel.

 

The Content Triangle in an advanced Nurturing strategy

Understanding how the Content Triangle works, we can create more complex strategies that, for example, interconnect more than 3 different resources.

When implementing a Marketing Automation strategy involving contact profiling, I always try to build a sequence capable of adapting to the behavior and interests of those reading, even if the reader does not immediately fill out the second form (the one to download resource B).

Let's not forget that behind our click and conversion rates, there are people.

In the emails where we are proposing a resource, we clearly explain to these people why this resource will be useful to them.

But what if it doesn't convert?

Remember that in the early stages of the Funnel we are making assumptions.

After just one submission, we don't have a profile of our interlocutor yet and above all, we don't know the segmenting information that allows us to personalize communications and ensure they are always relevant.

So, what can we do? Here are some possibilities.

Propose other downloadable resources

We could think about additional content that addresses pain points related to another job-to-be-done or is relevant to a different buyer persona than the one for which resource B is intended.

Proposing blog content

Another useful technique is to continue the sequence with emails that highlight value concentrations not protected by forms, such as blog articles.

I am referring to the best long-form articles on our blog, real guides that the user can read without filling out a new form.

By monitoring clicks within the email, we can understand which of these resources has captured their interest and therefore segment the contact using another tool: their digital body language.

Furthermore, if the blog articles have been designed correctly and have CTAs that contribute to the company's lead generation strategy, they may themselves be able to lead contacts to fill out the next form.

Segmenting

We can have multiple secret resources and send one or the other depending on the segmenting information we have collected with progressive profiling in previous steps.

 

Conclusions

The best nurturing strategy depends on many factors, such as the length of your buying cycle and the characteristics of your buyer personas.

To help you understand how to set up the most suitable Marketing Automation strategy to grow your business, I have created this calculator.

Try it out and start applying the specific suggestions for your business that you will receive directly via email.