When people talk about cadence, they usually reference the rhythm of how a band plays, keeping a beat or keeping time.
In the world of sales and marketing—especially in the area of marketing automation—cadence means timing. Many people confuse it with frequency, but it’s more dialed in, more granular than that. Frequency relates more to volume and the haphazard way that many organizations send content out, at random times to random people.
Cadence is the pattern of the content – meaning it includes the number of marketing emails/blogs/case studies/texts/calls sent, the spacing between them, the actual content sent, and the audience that’s receiving and consuming (if it’s good content) what you are sending.
Content cadence is more targeted and focused than content frequency.
Of course, timing is important but there are a number of other factors that come into play when your marketing team is looking for the right content cadence. Factors such as who you are marketing to, what platform your using, how you engage them, when you engage them, what you engage them with, and the value that it brings.
The key is to send the right content at the right time to the right person in the right stage of their buying cycle
The first thing you will want to do is have your buyer personas nailed down in order to send the right content to the different types of buyers you are targeting.
Buyer personas help you understand your prospective customers better in order to tailor your content and messaging to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.
Now that you know WHO you are creating your content for, the type of content created will need to be determined. The type of content that you will send them is just as important as when you send it to them. Content that is stale, poorly timed and non-engaging is a sure way of getting you—and your company—ignored by your prospects.
You’ll want to make sure that your content drives engagement in the form of interactive content. This gives you the best chance of a prospect engaging with you. And depending upon what stage of their buying cycle they’re in you’ll want to have different types of content and different touchpoints that creates an overall experience for the prospect.
All of this centers around connecting and engaging with your prospect at the right time in order to help them make a decision—a decision to engage with your organization and purchase its products or services.
When determining the cadence for a content campaign, ask these questions:
When these questions are answered, set up a series of triggers and a logical order of activities and responses for each campaign.
Marketing triggers set the tone for driving a conversation and determining the next steps of a cadence.
Whether it’s done in a more hands-on way or through marketing automation, setting up triggers that help determine the cadence based on how a prospect interacts with each touchpoint.
Create a series of if/then actions in response to each trigger. Use those triggers as often as possible. If a prospect shows that something is important to them—whether its a piece of content or some kind of an offer—then the response will be to follow up with a relevant piece of content and moves the prospect further down the sales funnel.
When all of these factors are put together and the data is collected, then you will want to analyze the data in order to fine-tune your cadence—because whatever can be measured can be optimized.
Testing allows you to find the optimal cadence for each type of target audience you are looking to connect with, market to, and ultimately sell to. Testing and analyzing help you find the right combination of factors working together to create the right sequence of content delivery.
The best way to measure the cadence of a campaign is by testing to see which content generates the highest level of engagement. There are different types of metrics for engagement that can be used—click rate, email replies, unsubscribes, downloads, webinar sign-ups, landing page conversions, and even sales.
Frequency is how often you send content, it doesn’t go deep the way cadence does. Cadence is more personalized, the triggers drive targeted content, and ultimately result in better and more engagement.
And with engagement comes more opportunities for your sales team.
