Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of online material such as videos, blogs, social media posts, and podcasts. This information does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. It is one of the best ways to generate leads for a business, garnering 3 times as many leads with 62% less investment than traditional marketing. Your marketing campaign needs to include this efficient marketing tool. But, how do you generate leads with content marketing? The following are some steps and tips to get you started.
- Get to know your target audience: To define your target audience, analyze your customer base, conduct a survey, interview customers, listen to social media conversations about your brand, research a competitor's audience and/or use analytics tools. Get as much information as possible.
- Create a buyer persona; a research-based profile that represents the type of individual that would use your product/service. Understanding your audience helps you refine your content.
- Choose a type of content that suits your target audience: Your content needs to drive traffic and increase your chance of generating leads. Determine the type of content your target audience responds to.
- Blog Posts add value for readers and increase the indexable pages of your domain. They direct people to your landing and/or sales page. Blogs are ideal for informing your target audience regarding topics they care about and are customizable and budget-friendly. 60% of internet users read blogs and marketers who blog are 13x more likely to achieve a positive ROI.
- Video content is a great way to drive traffic to your site and is popular with Millenials and Gen Zs. Create interesting, audience-focused videos.
- Social media posts drive traffic to your site. This requires optimizing your social profiles, engaging with users and utilizing targeted social media ads to engage your target audience in a direct, yet informal manner. 18 to 29-year-olds are the largest users of social media, followed closely by 30 to 49-year-olds.
- Podcasts are multiplying rapidly. Use them to interact with your target audience on an intimate level, giving your brand a personal face and establishing your authority. Recruit guest hosts and arrange Q&As to increase the scope of your podcast content. Half of all podcast listeners are aged 12 to 34, with listeners 35+ making up the other half.
- Infographics are visual images (charts, diagrams) used to represent information or data. They meet the need for bite-sized information and visual content. Infographics are faster and easier for the brain to process and drive traffic to your page, improving website traffic by 12%.
- Use content syndication: This involves uploading your content to third-party sites that are more popular than yours in order to generate more traffic and increase engagements. Choose sites with lots of traffic from your target audience. Consider Medium, Slideshare, Quora, Outbrain, Taboola, Scoop.it, Facebook Business, LinkedIn, Reddit and Tumblr. They provide a massive opportunity to capture leads.
- Promote your content to drive more traffic to your site. Choose channels where you have the most engagement. Stick with brand themes and promote quality content. Test different headlines and formats to determine what works best. When you find what works, replicate it. Choose relevant hashtags. Tag sources in your content, increasing the chance of engagement. Interact with your audience. Consider guest blogging, guest vlogging and podcast appearances, adding a link to your posts.
- Create compelling lead magnets: To capture a lead, you need to provide value. Lead magnets solve an immediate problem for your target audience and act as an incentive for them to share personal information. Lead magnets need to be short, accessible, specific and easy to digest.
- Checklists convert well as they're easy to consume and contain vital information.
- Cheatsheets offer step-by-step guidelines to get optimal results with less stress.
- Templates: Find out what templates people look for in your industry and offer them for free.
- Examples: Users are looking for different ways to solve problems. Offering actionable examples in exchange for an email is a win-win solution.
- Resource lists save the user time as opposed to doing the research themselves.
- Recipe lists can be great as a lead magnet.
- Tutorials, eBooks, and guides are the most widely-used options and are essential to help users learn about your product and the problems it solves.
- Run A/B tests to track effects on conversions. Test copy, call to action, images, background and form fields. Test a single element at a time.
- Do keyword research to find out what your target audience desires to learn about and to ensure content is relevant. Uncover the questions they're asking, the topics they care about and commercial keywords that are being searched for.
When planning marketing campaigns, remember content. Plan, create and share quality online content for the purpose of generating leads. Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for building your business.
Interested in content marketing? Need help with your marketing strategies? Call us at (403) 456-0072 or email [email protected]. Allow us to be your very own marketing department! Connect with our tightly-knit team of knowledgeable digital-first consultants, each eager to help your business grow. Contact us today.
