You’ve seen the statistics. Blog posts and top Marketing gurus are telling you that content is king, and that content marketing has replaced any sort of traditional “outbound” marketing strategies. Rather than reaching out to consumers, you bring them in with killer content and your email subscriber list grows before your eyes. Once your content is produced, you just have to sit back and watch the leads come in.

We all know that this is easier said than done. For 63% of businesses, lead generation is a top challenge. How can this new form of marketing make this challenge go away?

At first glance, the idea of posting content that appears on search engines and magically generates leads can seem overwhelming or unachievable. Don’t worry. Once you put the strategy and the optimisation behind each piece of content, the leads will come. Generating leads with content marketing can be done by keeping your customer’s needs, questions, and overall journey in mind.

How to Generate Leads with Content Marketing

Provide Answers

Let’s start with the basics. Content, including blog posts, eBooks, webinars, social media content, etc. is used to provide users with information throughout each step of the sales funnel. When users engage with this content, they build trust with the company, learn more about their products, and are ideally convinced to buy and support the brand. Studies show that 82% of consumers enjoy custom content, and view brands that provide this content in a positive light.

This whole process can start with a blog post. A majority of content marketers name blogging as their top priority.

Why are blog posts so crucial to content marketing?

They provide answers.

Before consumers even begin to think about making a purchase, they are trying to solve a problem. For example, before they hire a personal trainer, they explore different ways to lose weight or eat healthy. If you own a business as a personal trainer, you may be able to answer those questions and give consumers relevant information. The consumers don’t want to invest their money in a trainer just yet, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait for them to seek out personal trainers on their own. (By that time, your competition will have already contacted them!) So you write a blog post.

Content can help you provide answers to questions. If consumers are satisfied with your advice for losing weight, they will want to learn more and pay attention to your personal training brand. They may not be ready to purchase, but they are one step closer to becoming an interested lead.

Blog posts don’t just give away free resources. By bringing people to your website, you can collect data on who is interested in your content and how you can expand your reach to find more high-quality leads. The data you collect from content can be very useful, as long as you take advantage of it.

Optimise Your Website

Blog posts and content should be updated and created regularly to keep up with your industry and your competitors. Your website may consist of the same landing pages without edits for a longer period of time, but in order to generate more leads, you need to make sure that the content on your website is optimised and proves to be useful for readers.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) and content marketing go hand in hand. If your website isn’t optimised, consumers won’t see your content. Create and distribute more high-quality content for a higher ranking on Google search results.

If you are creating a content marketing strategy, be sure to include steps to optimising your website and ensuring that your content is actually seen by relevant viewers.

Offer Content In Exchange For Contact Information

So you want to get a list of email addresses or phone numbers. Great. But what’s in it for the leads?

Inbound and content marketing has shifted the focus of marketing strategies from the business to the customer. Consumers have access to all of the information in the world, and businesses are starting to shape their strategy so that their name is behind the information consumers are reading or watching. Like a carrot on the string, if you move consumers along the buyer’s journey with content that they want, they’ll eventually meet you where you want them.

So you’ve produced a great blog post that is informative for consumers. Now what?

Offer more content.

Once a reader has enjoyed one of your blog posts or explored your site, they are very close to becoming a lead. They just need a little push. But you’ve already offered them the basics. They see a 1500-word blog post or a simple landing page. In order to pull the string and move the carrot closer to you, you have to provide more in-depth content.

Blog posts are great, but they can be accessed by anyone. A downloadable eBook, PDF, or white paper is more exclusive. If you make this type of content available only to people who give you their email address, you will find more email addresses popping up on your subscriber list.

Let’s go back to the personal trainer example. You have created a blog post about healthy diets, and a potential lead has read through the entire blog post. At the bottom, you create a call to action. Any of the following pieces of content may be appropriate for these leads who want to learn more about dieting, fitness, and a healthy lifestyle:

• An eBook of healthy recipes
• A webinar that shows how to meal prep for the week
• A PDF checklist containing healthy ingredients to buy at the grocery store
• An infographic about a specific superfood that is relevant to the consumer’s diet
• A podcast about eating vegan, paleo, or a different type of diet

If you offer the right type of content, consumers will be more likely to share their contact information and engage further with your brand. Congratulations! You have a lead.

Consider the Sales Funnel

Whether you prefer to think by the sales funnel or the buyer’s journey theories, there is appropriate types of content as consumers are introduced to your company and then eventually become customers or active supporters of your company. Content for loyal customers looks and sounds a lot different than content for people who don’t trust or don’t know your brand (yet.) If you can create content for each stage of the sales funnel, and distribute that content where the appropriate users will interact and move further, you will generate more leads, customers, and active supporters of your company.

Use Ads

Search engines aren’t the only way to bring consumers to your website. Just because content marketing has replaced more traditional forms of marketing doesn’t mean that advertisements are dead. Google AdWords and Facebook ads still fall under the category of content marketing. If you can apply key principles of content marketing to your advertisements, you will bring more people to your landing pages and generate more leads.

Engage With Users on Social Media

Facebook is just one form of social media marketing that can bring users to your website. If potential leads are on Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest, you should be too.

Social media offers a separate platform to exchange information or offer content for contact information. If users have found or followed you on social media channels, they are one step closer to being a quality lead. Get creative with your social media to generate leads in exciting and engaging ways:

• Run contests or giveaways of products. Ask for contact information when users enter the contest.
• Create Facebook or LinkedIn groups where potential leads can connect, network, and discuss your industry. Offer content to users who express problems or issues that they are trying to solve.
• Write or produce content for LinkedIn pulse, LinkedIn’s own publishing platform.
• Run a remarketing campaign on Facebook to target visitors who have visited your site but have not converted.

Keep in mind that the consumers who find you on social media may be different from consumers that find you through organic searches. They may move through the customer journey at a different pace, and the next step may be to get these followers on your actual landing pages.

Ready to Generate More Leads? Build a Content Strategy with Digital Squad.

Content marketing allows you to get creative and customise your content to the needs of your consumers. Now that we’ve gone through the basics of lead generation with content marketing, it’s time to get to work.

The secrets to successful content marketing rely in thorough research, high-quality optimised content, and a team of experts who can track, adjust, and distribute more content to reach the right consumers. If you are looking for experts in Auckland, look no further than the team at Digital Squad.

We are a top content marketing agency in Auckland, and we invest our experience and in-depth knowledge of SEO and digital marketing into our clients’ long-term success. Learn more about how you can become a Digital Squad partner and create a killer, lead-generating content marketing strategy.

Megan Okonsky is a copywriter and content marketing specialist with Digital Squad. She is originally from Philadelphia but has landed in Melbourne after traveling for eight months in Southeast Asia and New Zealand. She also teaches vinyasa yoga online. 

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