Content Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Lead Generation
Are you having a hard time using content marketing to generate quality leads for your business?
Great content helps you draw in traffic through which you can generate leads. And, quality leads help you market your products and services with ease.
Without great content, attracting traffic will be a tall order. This is because you will have a limited audience hence generate minimal leads. The results? Even fewer customers and very little sales.
So, where do you start?
Read on. Discover a step by step guide on how you can use your content to generate leads and make great sales too.
But, first things first.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a long term marketing strategy that uses relevant, high-quality content. When used consistently, it allows your business to build a strong relationship with its target audience. Ultimately, this helps you to generate quality leads.
Every business wants to turn a profit. Also, the more leads you generate, the higher your chances to make sales. Therefore, you can use your content to make sales, right?
Yes and no.
The thing is, content marketing doesn’t happen overnight. Your website, blog posts, social media posts, videos, or webinars won’t make people want to rush and buy from you. Sorry buddy, this is hardly the case. Ever.
Content marketing takes time. It takes time to generate quality leads that convert. It takes time to build amazing content that resonates with your audience and inspires them to make a purchase.
So, how does content marketing work?
Well, here’s how.
How Content Marketing Works
Content marketing works when you repeat specific steps over and over again until you perfect the process. As you do this, you become better at it. You discover what is great content; the type that moves your audience.
Great content marketing helps you create positive experiences for your audience. Over time, these positive associations with your brand help them have you top of mind. When the need for a product or service that you offer arises, they will then most likely buy from you.
Why? Because they trust you.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s explore the steps your business needs to take to generate leads using content marketing.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Lead Generation Using Content Marketing
For starters, bear in mind that investing in content marketing includes having a proper plan for the time and effort needed.
Besides an ample budget, there are also several other things you need to consider. For example, whether your content will help your search rankings, what keywords and channels to use, and how to track conversions.
All this can be overwhelming so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We will cover all these issues in detail.
Below is a systematic guide to help you ensure that your content marketing delivers the results you are looking for:
Step 1: Conduct Extensive Market Research
So, how do you find out what kind of content your audience is looking for?
By using the right keywords. Keywords help you to determine what information will meet the needs of your target audience. What they want to learn more about.
The Search Demand Curve
Keywords can help you find out the number of potential customers you could reach out to and attract to your business. Use both simple and long-tail keywords as well as various content marketing strategies such as a dedicated social media channel.
However, your goal is not only to have appealing content that people read but to have them take the next step.
To do this, formulate a content marketing strategy that allows you to reach your audience when they most need you. By addressing their specific needs and answering their questions, you will build your brand. This will help create a loyal following and generate leads for your business.
Step 2: Create High-Converting Landing Pages
Here, we will discuss how to ensure that your landing page maximizes leads and turns them into customers.
Whatever role your landing page is meant to play and whichever channel you choose, for great customer experience, it needs a:
- Captivating headline
- Strong intro
- The ability to persuade readers to proceed further down the copy
Remember, focusing on your target users’ interests will allow you to generate qualified leads.
Additionally, ensure that your landing page:
- Is easy to navigate
- Loads fast
- Is aesthetically pleasing
Step 3: Create High-Quality Content
Content is king, they say. And, you want to create content that converts. But how do you make sure the content you create is:
- The right content
- Relevant
By doing the following:
- Determine what content users want. What content has high page views, low bounce rates, or elicits more comments currently?
- Use clickable headlines but ensure that the ensuing content is worth your readers’ time
- Use data-driven content. For example, use high ranking keywords to craft content that will help you generate qualified leads
- Use high-quality internal linking. This will help your content rank better and keep people longer on your site
Also, utilize a content outline. Following one will help you organize your thoughts, craft in-depth content, and also structure it to provide maximum impact for your audience. Besides, Google loves detailed content that’s data-driven.
Step 4: Promote Your Content
How often will you publish your content? This is key because consistency is more important than frequency.
Note that if you don’t promote your content, it will not reach as many eyeballs as it potentially could. Promotion also helps you attract new customers.
It is easy to promote your content when you use a variety of content formats. These may include infographics, e-books, articles, videos, or whitepapers.
Schedule content promotion and post about new content on your social channels. With Facebook, you can schedule content in advance. You can also use social media posting tools to make your work easier.
Some methods you can use to promote your content include:
- Guest blogging
- Content upgrades such as a downloadable checklist within a blog post
- Targeting long-tail keywords since they rank higher in search results
- Engaging with your community in the right social platforms
- Advertising your content using Facebook or Google ads
Step 5: Conduct Social Media Outreach
This is a vital step in your quest for successful lead generation.
Why? Because you need to create connections with people who will support you in reaching even more people. For example, a social media marketing campaign can help trigger a chain reaction that can result in numerous connections.
When brand ambassadors endorse your products and share your content, they can reach huge numbers due to their huge online following. Besides, influencers can help make your content go viral. The key here is to focus on building relationships with the influencers while helping them as well.
Step 6: Lead Nurturing
Okay, now you’ve gotten your leads. Then what?
If you have no plan in place to nurture your leads, guess what? You might as well not have gotten into the trouble of getting them in the first place. Besides, this is a big hindrance to realizing sales given that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales.
You see, the first contact with a prospect usually doesn’t often result in a sale. You need to provide more information about your offering.
Enter email marketing.
You can use email to nurture your leads. Using email newsletters, warm them up to a level where they trust you enough to spend their money on your products.
Additionally, create follow-up emails for new email subscribers. Note to send regular updates that consist of high-quality information in a way that allows you to measure success.
Finally, ensure your email subject headlines attract clicks. Nurture your email list and create a good relationship with your subscribers. This is the only way you will build potential customers who will not be too hard to persuade.
Here are Some Content Marketing Examples We Love
These cool content marketing examples are not only inspiring, but they are also innovative which makes them stand out. Have a look:
1. Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke”
The “Share a Coke” campaign started in Australia, in 2011, and it’s still going strong to date. It allows every Coca-Cola lover to either personalize their drink with their name on the company website or look for their name on a bottle at the supermarket.
Coke personalized every bottle with commonly used names per country. The campaign went viral as consumers posted pictures with their personalized drinks – or their friends – online. It grabbed peoples’ attention, led them to buy a coke, and helped create emotional connections.
Print and social media campaigns were followed with videos showing friends coming together to share a Coke bearing their name. The results; consumers felt special and appreciated.
Finding ways to appeal to your customers’ emotions can help you make authentic connections.
2. #WeAreCisco
20 Cisco employees were invited to an online brainstorming session on ways to connect with university students, graduates, and other Generation Z members. They created a successful program whereby the company’s younger staff share Snapchat Stories on how working inside Cisco is like.
Content that talks about your brand story is powerful. By allowing your audience to share their experiences with your brand and acknowledging their contributions, you get to hold a special place in their hearts.
Final Words
So, do you have a content marketing strategy? If the answer is no, there’s no better time than the present to create one. Don’t place your hopes on people stumbling on your site.
Remember, great content is the magnet that helps draw audiences to your business. What’s more, it allows you to convert them to customers.
With a good content marketing strategy, you can craft the right content at the right time and generate quality leads, time, and time again.
