HOW TO TURN YOUR RESOURCE CENTER INTO A LEAD GENERATION MACHINE By Braveen Kumar
HOW TO TURN YOUR RESOURCE CENTER INTO A
LEAD GENERATION MACHINE
By Braveen Kumar
Table of Contents
EditingHana Abaza
Writing & Research Braveen Kumar
Graphic DesignJenny Choi
Is Your Resource Center a Content Graveyard?
Building a Lead Gen Machine
Make it Pretty
Clean it Up
Create a Journey
Invite Action
Give Marketers Control
Let’s Review
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03
05
07
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oday’s marketers are creating more content than
ever before but still struggle with their content
marketing ROI. Maybe more content isn’t the answer.
Instead, marketers should look to where they keep this
content—where traffic is directed—in many cases, a
Resource Center.
All the content you create—from eBooks to videos—has the
potential to garner the attention of an audience of potential
leads, but is your Resource Center in any condition to
capture those leads? Or does your Resource Center have
the symptoms of Graveyard Syndrome?
Is Your Resource Center a Content Graveyard?
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T
If you can recognize any of these symptoms, you’re likely missing
out on key opportunities to capture would-be leads and make the
most out of all the content you create. So, how can we breathe life
back into your resource center? Well, we start by building a Lead
Gen Machine instead.
Graveyard Syndrome Symptoms:
Permanent and void of life
Cold and uninviting
A nightmare to navigate
Isolated from your community
A final destination instead of an engaging journey
Buried content
Visitors don’t seem eager to share the experience
02
What’s the opposite of a content graveyard? A
place where you can send traffic to consume
your content, built for conversions and your long term
content marketing goals—in other words, a Lead
Generation Machine.
Building a Lead Gen Machine
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W
Increases the discoverability and extends the
lifespan of all your content
Educates prospects and customers about your
products, services, and industry
Puts you behind the wheel with full control—not
IT or your developers
Retains visitor interest and encourages further
action
Encourages visitors to participate in content
distribution as brand evangelists
Captures qualified leads for your sales funnel
and lead nurturing campaigns
“Resource Center” carries the unfortunate connotation of blandness—
they’re traditionally employed as a library of information that people don’t
want to sift through unless they’re desperately seeking a solution.
But that doesn’t mean yours needs to be the same. It all starts with
creating a strong first impression.
With the right elements, you can turn your resource
center into a lead gen machine that:
04
ost resource centers make a terrible first
impression. They’re dry, text-heavy, and don’t do
a good job of reflecting your brand in a positive way. You
should opt for a more visual design to create a simple
and approachable experience for visitors.
Make it Pretty
3
M
This resource center from Motorola, for example, has some
good-looking corporate content. However, it doesn’t leave
you with that impression on first glance.
Visually engaging video content shouldn’t suffer simply
because you hide it behind a column of text. It’s not
just Motorola, most resource centers choose to present
themselves like this: cold, unwelcoming and a lot of work
for the visitor.
Instead, try to create that positive first impression through
a visually branded experience before visitors even click
through to see your content. After all, who are you creating
content for? Your resource center or new leads and
existing customers?
06
ould you invite your guests to a messy home?
Then don’t invite your would-be leads to a
messy resource center.
Make sure your content is organized in a manner that
makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
Organized doesn’t mean alphabetical or chronological;
it means having a structure that makes sense to visitors
who are seeking specific information.The standard
is to organize your content by type (webinar, eBook,
Whitepapers, etc.), but your best bet is to strategically
categorize your content based on topics or your buyer
personas’ interests.
Clean it Up
4
W
The Resource Center at MarketingProfs, for example,
shows different content types on the top bar and marketing
topics on the sidebar to capture both visitor interests and
content format preferences. Note how the topics on the
sidebar appeal to different interests among MarketingProfs’
audience from “Email Marketing” to “Graphic Design”.
Choose a structure for your own resource center that’s
meaningful to your target audience, even if it means
excluding generic content formats in favour of categories
that make more sense, such as Marketing Automation for a
marketing software company or Buyers and Sellers for real
estate content. A content-wide search feature is good to
have as well.
08
journey provides a direction. A destination
provokes the question, “Now what?”
Providing a clear engagement path keeps your visitors
invested in your Resource Center’s content. The more
involved a visitor is in the experience, the greater their
chances of converting. Strive to eliminate dead ends.
Create a Journey
5
A
PDF Content: Offline eBooks or Whitepapers that
offer no opportunities for further engagement
Social Silos: Directing visitors outbound to YouTube
or Twitter to view videos or tweets
No Path to Consume More: Not offering more
content when visitors have finished with an item and
are open to consuming more
Non-Responsive Design: Neglecting mobile visitors
by offering an experience that doesn’t scale for
smaller screens in an age when 38% of our daily
media interactions are on smartphones.
It’s important to explore solutions that eliminate these
potential dead ends, such as:
• Using interactive alternatives to the PDF for eBooks
and Whitepapers
• Integrating your media into your Resource Center
instead of sending traffic outbound
• Offering Previous/Next navigation within content or
suggestions for further reading
• Employing a responsive design to accommodate
audiences on multiple devices
Once these leaks are plugged, you’re ready to add the key element for
generating new leads.
Common dead ends include:
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ontent serves a multitude of purposes, from
lead generation to customer education, all of
which contribute to your broader business goals. Your
Resource Center needs to reinforce these goals by
inviting visitors to take the actions that help you achieve
them.
Invite Action
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C
Contextual Calls to Action are essential
for conversions. If you want to generate leads with your
Resource Center, you cannot neglect this aspect. Within or
around your content, you need to present your visitors with
a variety of CTAs that make sense in their environment.
Link directly to a piece of gated content at the end of a blog
post, invite them to call a Sales rep, present an opt-in form
to receive future updates. If you never ask, you’ll never
receive.
Enable Social Sharing within your content
to help you increase brand awareness and reach new
audiences with your content. Even if product-oriented
resources are less likely to be shared, your top of the
funnel content can help you increase brand awareness and
reach new audiences. This helps feed higher volumes of
relevant traffic into your lead generation machine.
Of course, being able to steer your lead gen machine to
achieve these different goals requires a marketer’s touch
and a ton of flexibility.
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o far we’ve emphasized the front-end experience
and the visitor’s perspective, but it’s important
to remember who’s operating this lead gen machine:
the marketer. In order to realize the inbound marketing
potential of your Resource Center, it needs to align
with your marketing team’s needs and put them directly
behind the wheel.
Give Marketers Control
7
S
An adaptable architecture for your Resource
Center helps you steer your content strategy on the fly and
replace outdated information with ease, making regular
content audits easier to conduct. Otherwise, you’re serving
up a rigid experience to an ever-changing audience. Cut
out the middle man—whether that’s IT or developers—and
invest in a platform that gives marketers complete control
and flexibility.
Sync it with your marketing ecosystem to maximize the potential of your other
software. Your Resource Center is one cog—albeit a
significant one—in your content marketing machine.
Connect lead activity within your Resource Center to your
analytics and marketing automation tools to paint a bigger
picture and turn your data into insights for future content
creation and lead nurturing campaigns.
Gate quality content such as webinars, eBooks,
or Whitepapers to catapult your lead generation to new
heights. If you have informative, must-have content that you
can offer visitors in exchange for information, do so with as
much tact as you can. It has to be exclusive enough and
worth their time and contact information. Put this quality
content behind a landing page (Unbounce offers an easy-
to-use landing page builder), or Overlay CTA (if you use the
Uberflip platform).
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our Resource Center shouldn’t be a half-
hearted obligation to your customers where
your content buries itself, not when it could be a home
for your content and the cornerstone of your content
marketing—a place to give value to your audience while
bringing qualified leads into your Sales funnel.
Let’s Review
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Make the most out of your content by ensuring that your Resource Center:
Presents a visually appealing design that
entices every visitor without overwhelming them
Employs an organized structure that makes
sense to your target audience and helps them
find what they’re looking for
Creates an experience that reinforces a journey
that minimizes the dead ends and leaks that cost
you leads
Invites action with contextual CTAs and makes
social sharing easy
Integrates with your existing marketing
ecosystem—metrics, automation, and all
Enables marketers to gate, promote, and modify
content without developers or IT
Of course, it’s not enough to just feed content into your new Resource
Center and expect leads to come out; after all, you are what you eat
and you still need great content and strategic distribution. But, at least
now, your content will have more than a fighting chance.
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