5 ways to get more from your content syndication leads.

“THESE LEADS SUCK.”

Three cursed words B2B marketers dread hearing from Sales. 

What went wrong? After all, you pushed a great piece of original content out to your carefully targeted audience via a trusted syndication platform. 

The reality is, when content syndication programs don’t deliver the results you expect, it’s not because syndication as a strategy is flawed. It’s because the follow-up is mishandled.

It’s fixable, though, and I’ll show you how. In this article, we’ll look at:

• How content syndication strategies can fall short
• Why brand recall is critical to successfully syndicating content
• Five content syndication best practices

The content-consumption gap and the danger of over-indexing on the download.

When someone completes a registration form, that submission appears in your CRM within minutes. Yet research from Netline shows the content-consumption gap, or the time between downloading a gated asset and actually opening it, averages 39 hours. That’s up 7 hours in just the last couple years. Some people won’t come back to your asset for weeks—and some won’t ever open it.

Your leads don’t suck, it’s just that they’re not really leads yet.

A single form fill signals curiosity, not necessarily intent. Content syndication is one step in a buyer journey likely to span multiple touches and weeks or months. Treating it as a hand-raise for an immediate sales conversation wastes resources and burns credibility. 

The first hurdle is helping them remember what they downloaded and who you are.

Why brand recall matters more than speed in content syndication for B2B.

For many contacts, a syndicated asset is their first encounter with your company. And that encounter is happening on a third-party syndication site, so their awareness of your brand will be shaky at best.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of B2B decision makers are not actively evaluating solutions at any given moment. 

Instead of handing off dubious “leads” to Sales so they can rush to start a conversation, your job is to make sure these new contacts:

1. Remember—and get the most out of—the asset they downloaded.
2. Learn about and build trust with your brand.

Brand recall requires deliberate, repeated exposure after the initial registration. Use the following best practices to engage and warm your content syndication leads so you can get a better return on your investment.

Best practices for B2B content syndication leads.

1. Use multiple channels to nurture recall.

Your new contact may not remember what they downloaded, let alone who you are. Brand recall is critical to being able to productively nurture contacts into legit MQLs. 

Your nurture sequence should start with email. Reintroduce your brand by helping contacts get the most out of the asset. Don’t overthink it—give them a reminder of what they downloaded and a few tips for using it. 

Then, over the next few emails, dive into more specific elements of the asset, or share related insights. Again, think of it as a conversation, evolving and progressing over time.

PROTIP: Include a pathway back to the original resource. We’ve all downloaded a gated asset and planned to read it later, only to misplace it. Include a link to the actual ungated asset, not the landing page.

Don’t confine that conversation to just one channel. Build your paid media strategy to layer on display retargeting and paid social that mirrors the nurture storyline. Each touchpoint ushers your contact along their buying journey while reinforcing your brand and value proposition.

2. Define the conversation arc.

So you have a nurture running, but it isn’t working very well? It’s probably because you’re talking to everyone in exactly the same way. Even in the case of a single asset targeted to a single industry vertical, you’re going to have multiple personas consuming it. You wouldn’t treat them the same in a marketing campaign, so don’t do it in your nurture either.

Pick 1-2 high-impact roles in the buying group to focus on, not everyone. Before sending a single email, map out the conversation arcs for those roles. This is the plan of the back-and-forth you’re going to have with each persona as you continue to provide value by answering their questions. Clarify what they care about, what obstacles they face, and which follow-up content can help them move forward in their buying journey.

A prospect who downloaded a broad industry trends report might next receive a comparison checklist, then a ROI calculator, and only later an invitation to discuss solutions. Planning the arc keeps the dialogue respectful, relevant and progressive; it also gives you guardrails for when and how to introduce Sales.  

3. Create a consistent buyer experience.

Brand-building by syndicating content can be tricky because your asset often resides on a third-party domain, leaving a disconnect between the download and your brand.

Before you launch a campaign, walk through the entire journey yourself to understand the download/registration experience from your audience’s POV. Look at: 

• The promotional email
• Promotional ads/social media
• The landing page
• The confirmation page
• The thank-you email
• The first email in your nurture sequence

How many different domains and logos are involved? Does the prospect ever see your company name? 

The name of the game is building consistency into the pre- and post-download experiences:

• Include your logo, a short “about” blurb and a link back to your site at every step. 
• Try to find a content syndication vendor that enables you to host the landing page and/or thank-you pages on your own domain.
• Include the same branding elements in the asset delivery email, and remind contacts what they downloaded and who provided it.
• Make sure the subject line of your first nurture email gives context for why the lead is hearing from your brand.

The initial sequence via the syndication platform might be dialed in, but the handoff from that platform to your email nurture is often where communication and recall break down. If your first nurture email comes from a domain and brand name the contact has never seen before, they’re liable to mark it as spam and move on. On the other hand, consistency across touchpoints dramatically increases the odds contacts will connect the content with your company later.

4. Use form data to improve your outreach.

Embedding custom questions into registration forms will provide valuable insights into your audience. For instance, you can ask about their biggest challenge, project timeline or primary objective. 

The response flows directly into your CRM. Now you have the context to improve messaging and nurture paths. You’ll be able to better segment your promotion and follow-up. Imagine, for instance, you’ve captured info about project timelines. For one group, your messaging could focus on staying top of mind with helpful content, while for another your messaging might drill into specific implementation information for your solution.

And with the modern tech available to marketers, personalization can even extend beyond direct outreach, turning your website into a 1:1 touchpoint.