Are you struggling to generate leads for your business through content? You have probably heard the phrase “Content is King”, and that is because great content will attract an audience. Modern SEO, demands high-value content from users in order to have greater lead generation. Meeting that need, your users will trust you with whatever social media marketing you happen to throw their way.
Have smart content marketers know that there need to be clear marketing strategies. Besides native advertising, blogging is a primary avenue through which either B2C or B2B marketers generate leads in various market channels.
Different types of content will generate different numbers of leads for you. Without great content, you will have no audience and no leads, which will mean you won’t be able to make sales online.
Today we are going to teach some tips so you will learn what great content is and how to create it for qualified lead generation. With the right content, you’ll find that promotion on a social media channel will be a lot easier.
Research Your Customer
The first rule of great content is that it must be appealing to your ideal potential customer. If it doesn’t, it won’t attract leads or it will attract the wrong leads. Prior to creating any piece of content, you must have a deep understanding of your ideal customer. A great way to do this is a little research and thinking about who you want to attract.
Customer Avatar
A customer avatar is a detailed profile of who your target customer is. It is a fictional character, however, it does represent the targeted people in your market.
If you have several different targeted audiences you need to create a customer avatar. This will help you to create content that appeals to the targeted market to help generate leads. If you create content that appeals to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one and getting no leads.
To create your customer avatars start with the following information:
● Biographical Info – Name, age, gender, income, location, etc.
● Values – What do they care about? What are their goals?
● Pain Points – What do they struggle with?
● Favorite Sources of Info/Entertainment – What blogs, magazines or books do they read? What are their favorite TV shows?
● Role In The Purchase Process – Do they have the final say when it comes to purchasing your product, or do they have to ask a spouse, a parent or a boss?
● Objections To The Sale – What are their main objections to purchasing your product?
But what if you have no clue who your target audience is? Well, you’ll have to buckle down and do your research. Thankfully, there are lots of tools that can help.
Customer Research Tools
There are several tools that can be used when researching your customer avatar:
U.S. Census Bureau
This data can be used for figuring out how large your target market is, and whether your customer avatars actually exist in the real world.
Facebook Audience Insights
This tool (located within your Facebook Ads Manager) is loaded with information on consumers.
The Marketer’s Almanac
This resource by Google is chocked full of insights into consumer behavior and trends.
Quantcast
This tool helps you to understand your target audience with demographic and lifestyle insights.
MyBestSegments
This tool gives you a peek into the brands that people in your target market are already buying. It also reveals their media habits and what they do in their free time.
Now that you have completed your research and created customer avatar(s), you should have a clear picture of who you are creating your content for.
Content Types
While there are lots of different content types, some are more aptly suited to lead generation than others.
For your content to generate as many leads as possible, you should plan to include at least two primary types of content:
1) Traffic generating content
2) Lead generating content
Traffic Generating Content
Traffic generating content is important for getting visitors to your website and growing your audience. You are unable to generate leads without traffic.
Here are some of the best types of content for traffic generation. Pick a few from this list to include in your content plan.
● Blog posts
● Social media posts
● Videos
● Podcasts
● Infographics
● Photos
● eBooks
Now that you’ve chosen the types of content that you’ll use to drive traffic, let’s choose your lead-generating content.
Lead-Generating Content
Lead generating content is content that you package into lead magnets. A lead magnet is a valuable resource that you give away for free in exchange for someone’s email address.
Lead magnets are non-negotiable for generating leads. Most people do not want to give their email address out to just anybody, therefore, you have to give them a good incentive.
Here are some of the best content types for generating leads. Pick a few from this list that you will use as lead magnets, you do not want to pick all but a few will work if you are successful in execution.
● Useful Resources – these can be checklists of tools or lists of resources.
● eBooks & Free Reports – these offer something educational.
● Webinars – webinars work really well as lead magnets because of their high perceived value.
● Discounts & Coupons – perfect if you have an eCommerce business. All you have to do is offer a coupon code in exchange for an email address.
● Free Trial – if you sell software, you could offer a free trial download or a lite version.
● Quizzes – you could offer a free quiz, but for your users to get their results they’ll have to give you their email addresses.
● Mini-Course – this could be a series of emails or a series of videos explaining how to do something.
Now you’ve chosen the types of content you will use to drive traffic and generate leads, next you’ll choose your content distribution channels.
Content Distribution Channels
Your content plan should be really starting to come together! You have your customer avatar, and you know the types of content you will be creating for them. In this step, we’ll decide where you will distribute that content.
Although there are many different content distribution channels, they all boil down to two distinct methods: organic and paid.
Organic Distribution Channels
Organic channels do not require any paid advertising, so they are really great for a low budget. These channels do take time to generate leads because you have to be in your user’s face and post quality content.
● YouTube
● Facebook
● Twitter
● LinkedIn – Perfect for B2B leads
● Pinterest
● Tumblr
● Instagram – Perfect to reach B2C and influencers
● Search Engines
Paid Distribution Channels
Paid channels require you to spend some money on ads, however, they can get you traffic a lot quicker than organic methods.
Here are the main paid distribution channels that you’ll want to consider.
● Social media ads
● Google Ads
● Native ads (ads that appear on other platforms)
● Banner ads
● Content discovery networks (ads for your blog posts that appear in the “around the web” and “recommended stories” sections of large online publications)
Automatic Ad Extension
The automatic ad extensions are just that. They automatically pulled out from the different sources to create an ad extension for you. They are of the following types:
-
- Customer Rating Extensions: They are generated from certified Google sources and consumer surveys.
- Seller Rating Extensions: This adds to your store’s rating.
- Previous Visits Extensions: It provides a short footnote telling the user if they have recently visited the website.
- Dynamic Sitelink Extensions: A link to a popular offering or piece of content on your website.
- Dynamic Structured Extensions: This Shows additional information about various categories of your website.
Map Out Your Content Plan
Now that you’ve decided on your content types and distribution channels, it’s time to pull everything together into a cohesive marketing content plan.
A good content plan maps out what content to publish, by whom, and how frequently. How many days per week will you publish blog posts? When will you offer live webinars or videos? How frequently do you plan to promote your content on social media? Which team members will be creating and promoting the content? What will be your call to action?
You may also want to create an editorial calendar to map out your blog posts and keep track of what’s coming down the pipe. This will help keep track of what you have and will be creating and publishing.
Once you’ve mapped out your content plan, it’s time to put it all into action! Let’s start by creating an irresistible lead magnet…
Compelling Lead Magnet
We have already stated that a lead magnet is a non-negotiable part of any content marketing plan. Well, now it’s time to create one.
No matter which content distribution method you choose and how irresistible your lead magnet is, you need to ensure that your landing page once they are directed back to your site is properly running and provides a good UX (user experience). If your landing page does not provide a good UX then no number of ads, or intuitive your lead magnet is, it won’t generate quality leads for your sales team.
In order for your lead magnet to be effective at generating leads, it must be absolutely irresistible to your customer avatar. To be irresistible it has to have a few characteristics:
1. It solves a real problem
2. It promises one quick win
3. It’s super specific
4. It’s quick to digest
5. It’s high value
6. It’s instantly accessible
7. It demonstrates your expertise
Once you’ve created your own lead magnet, you will be ready for the next step
Write High-Converting Blogs
Blog posts are a non-negotiable part of any content marketing plan. Now that you have your lead magnet, it’s time to start writing some high-converting posts. Writing quality posts will grow your audience and get them to see your lead magnet.
All high-converting blog posts have certain characteristics as well. For your blog posts to be effective at driving traffic and generating leads, they must contain the following.
1. A really enticing headline
2. Long-form content
3. Useful or educational content
4. Relevant visuals
5. Your keywords
6. Links to high-quality resources
7. Links to related posts on your own blog
Conclusion
Businesses can generate leads online with a solid content marketing strategy. To generate leads with your content marketing, you’ll need to:
1. Customer avatar
2. Various content types
3. Content distribution channels
4. Map of your content plan
5. Irresistible lead magnet
6. Write high-converting blog posts
When combined, your blog and content will be able to generate quality leads and a bunch of them! You will want to continually refresh and adjust your customer avatar, which could lead to changing your content type and distribution channels. Continually looking at your content plan will ensure you are providing your customers the best quality content that is meaningful to them, thus leading to better more quantifiable leads.
While reading this article you realize that you do not do some of these steps, do not worry. Blue Water Marketing in Stuart, Fl can assist you. We provide many services that can be tailored to fit your needs and within your budget. Contact us today to see how we can improve your site to gain more leads through Content Marketing.
