Building Differentiated Identity Management Content to Get Noticed

Differentiation comes down to your identity management firm making it a priority to invest in creating remarkable, educational content. 

Remarkable content means it is so good that people just have to remark on it—whether it is at the water cooler in the office or on social media. You are looking deep visceral emotional reactions:

• “Holy crap! This stuff is awesome! It is so helpful and valuable! I have been looking for something like this for hours, days, or weeks. I cannot believe I finally found it!”
• “What else do they have to say?”

With reactions like these, someone is hanging out on your website, falling in love with your content, and by extension, starting to fall in love with your brand--even though they do not know much about your brand quite yet.

In these scenarios, someone sticks around long enough to realize  “Oh! They have an eBook that goes into a lot more detail on this topic (or a related white paper, special report, planning guide, template, or webinar recording). I have to get that and see what else they have to say.”

That is what allows you to begin a relationship with this stranger/visitor and convert them from a visitor into a lead, which is supercritical for an identity management company that has a sales cycle outside of impulse buys. 

Offering Multiple Conversion Paths

It is very common for companies who are just getting started to have only a ‘Contact Us’ page or a ‘Sign Up for a Demo’ page. These companies simply have two places on their entire website where someone who’s a hot prospect can raise their hand, fill out a form, and get themselves into your company’s sales funnel.

The reality is, this type of offer is woefully inadequate in nearly all cases because it only appeals to people in the absolute tail-end of their sales process—prospects who are sales-ready, at the decision stage, and already navigated through their buyer’s journey.

It is critical to implement a way to capture visitors and leads early on when they are just starting to research broad-based problems. You need to earn a seat at the table as a trusted advisor where you teach them what to look for as they evaluate different solutions.

Why Getting Found Early Matters

Do you get excited when someone says “I am going to make a purchase decision today,”?

Unfortunately, if that is the first time you have heard from them, you may have arrived too late; this is what we call funnel jumping.

Funnel jumping happens when a prospect only shows up at the end of the sales cycle. This prospect cares about one thing and one thing only: price. Now, the sales process turns into a bidding game (or RFP) and forces the company to compete on price.

It is very important to have content that’s hyper-relevant to who they are, answers their questions, solves their problems and attracts them early on.

Getting differentiated and noticed can be accomplished by investing in buyer personas and tackling your strategy—and approaching it as a full-funnel problem.

Avoid the HIPPO

It is important the content is remarkable in the eyes of your buyer persona. All too often, a C-level person will say, “Well, I do not like this, so there’s no way they could like it.”

You may have a HIPPO problem. What’s a HIPPO problem? The HIPPO is the highest paid person in the organization or the highest paid person’s opinion. The HIPPO is when you, your boss, your investor, or your advisor says “I know what’s best. We are doing what I say. That is not what our clients want. I know what they want.”

Instead, you need to consider what the CIO’s, CTO’s, or whomever you are trying to attract actually cares about. Think about where they are hanging out, their goals, plans, and challenges. What keeps them up at night? Who are their influencers? Who do they look to for advice?

It is critical to focus on your buyer personas when you are looking to create remarkable content—not what you think about your typical prospect. You are only relevant in that last 30% of the journey. The first 70% is absolutely, positively all about them.

The Bottom Line

Most IDM companies assume everyone who lands on their website is ready to speak with sales immediately and on their first visit. That would be like a car dealership making the assumption everyone who walked in was ready to buy or lease a vehicle that day.

It is important to understand your prospect’s buyer’s journey, your sales cycle, and the content you need to support the different phases. It is really important you have educational, helpful content that gets your company noticed and keeps you top-of-mind.

How is your identity management company creating content to differentiate and get noticed? Is it working? Let us know in the Comments below.

If your identity management company is ready to accelerate its revenue growth and learn more initiatives to take you to the next level, check out our webinar “Identity Management Revenue Growth Acceleration Q&A Webinar.”