We all know that the purpose of any marketing effort all comes down to one thing – leads. Even if your strategy is just to build brand awareness, it’s still the first step in the sales funnel with the ultimate goal of convincing new prospects to buy from you. If you’re not familiar with the marketing funnel, read this blog here, and then come back. Content marketing forms a big part of the marketing funnel at every stage, but it will only generate leads for your business if you do it properly. So, want to know how to generate leads through content marketing?
What Is Lead Generation Content?
Lead generation content really is what it says on the tin – it’s content that generates leads for your business. Where once lead generation was done through cold calling and visiting offices, it’s now done by sharing the right kind of content online for prospects to read. The aim is to have them fall in love with your business, or at the very least makes them want to know more about your service. Moreover, good content marketing will help your prospects to trust you, which means they will be much happier to buy when the time comes. If you’re struggling to bring new leads into your business, a lead generation strategy using content should be your first stop.
It’s Not Just What You Have – It’s How You Use It
Generating leads with your content is a bit different. After all, just having the content is great, but what you do with it is the real key. By providing your prospects with the right information at the right time, you’re able to start building that client relationship earlier, and with greater success. This does mean you need to have some level of insight into who you’re trying to attract so that you can create content that’s tailored to their needs and is easy for them to find. This is where the content marketing strategy comes in, because you need to know what to create, who to create it for, and where to put it in order to start those leads coming in.
How does Content Marketing generate leads?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Content marketing can generate leads in a few ways:
- By creating content that is relevant to your target audience, you can attract their attention and help them learn more about your products or services.
- By using lead capture forms and other calls-to-action in your content, you can encourage your audience to provide their contact information in exchange for more information or a free sample of your product or service.
- By sharing your content on social media and other online channels, you can reach a larger audience and generate Web traffic that can lead to conversion.
How to Create Lead Generating Content
The good news is, creating lead-generating content isn’t rocket science. If you follow the right steps, any business can generate leads online with solid content marketing. It might require some legwork in the beginning, but the effort will pay off once the leads start coming in. In general, there are 7 steps:
1. Research Your Customer Avatar
The golden rule of any marketing campaign is that it must appeal to your ideal customer, which means you need to know who your target customer is. If you don’t, then you have no hope of generating leads that will actually convert. So before you do anything, make sure you have completed a detailed customer profile. Or several, depending on how many target markets you have.
2. Choose Your Content Types
There are hundreds of different types of content out there, and it’s impossible for one business to do all of them. Instead, narrow down a few types of content you want to produce for each stage of the marketing funnel that will attract and intrigue your target client. At a minimum, you should have 2 types of content, traffic generating and lead generating. Traffic generating content gets eyes on your website, while lead generation convinces readers to buy. A couple of examples of content you could create include:
Traffic Generating: Blog posts, social media activity, videos, podcasts, infographics, photos, and eBooks.
Lead Generating: Free reports, checklists, resources, webinars, quizzes, discounts, and mini-courses.
3. Choose Your Content Distribution Channels
Now you have all of this content, it’s time to send it out into the world. You can either do this organically through channels like search engines, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on), and YouTube, or you can opt for paid distribution through things like social media ads, Google ads, native ads, banner ads, and content discovery networks. The key here is to find out where your customers hang out, and make sure your content is there.
4. Map Your Content Plan
This is where is all comes together into an actual plan. This should essentially be a big calendar that details what content you’ll publish, when and how frequently. It should also include who is responsible for creating and distributing the content, how it will be distributed and promoted. There are a lot of different software solutions you can do to create this content map, or you can just use a calendar or whiteboard. But the ultimate aim is to have a clear plan that everyone can understand and follow on a daily basis.
5. Create A Lead Magnet
A good lead magnet is essential for any lead-generating content marketing strategy, no this stage is not optional! You need to create a piece of content that solves a real problem for your customer, promises and delivers value, is instantly accessible and easy to digest. Our favourite option for this is a whitepaper or eBook, as these can showcase your expertise and give you enough time to dig into a topic to deliver real value. Remember, this is the piece that will convert visitors to customers, so it’s worth investing some time in.
6. Write Your Traffic Generating Content
Now you need the content that will draw people to your lead magnet. This is your blog posts, your social media activity, your infographics and your videos. They should all be keyword optimised, eye-catching and link directly to your site. Traffic generation works best when the content is engaging, informative or entertaining, and provides a high-quality resource for your customers.
7. Publish and keep up to date!
And you’re set! The good news is, once you’ve created these content resources, you can continue to use them in the future. They might need tweaking to stay relevant, but well-written lead magnets should be able to stand the test of time, giving you valuable content you can use again and again.
At Lion Spirit Media, we love helping our clients build a content plan that not only gets their voice out there, but converts prospects into paying clients. Our Digital Marketing Strategy and support helps you create content that Resonates with people, gives you Opportunities to reach them, helps you Achieve great things and provides you with Resources to accelerate your success. In other words, it makes your business ROAR! If you’d like to dive into the content marketing world, we’d love to help – just get in touch with the team today.
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