Content Marketing: Forget What You Heard Until Now and Start Generating Leads by Following this Guide

Are you finding it difficult to generate leads? If your answer is yes, then you are not alone. Hubspot reported that 63% of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge.

But you’re probably wondering:

How do I generate leads for my business?

Well, today I’m going to show you how to use content marketing to generate leads for your business.

Content marketing is an effective strategy you can use to generate leads for your business. According to Marketo, 93% of b2b companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies. This is why 85% 0f b2b marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal in 2016.

In this guide, you are going to learn how to generate leads using content marketing. If you are looking to generate leads for your business, then you will love this guide.

Step 1: Choose the Right Target Audience

A good content strategy will involve choosing the right audience that will consume your content. Therefore, before you start creating your content, you need to know your ideal customer. You need to have a detailed knowledge about their age, location, income status, educational background, job title, gender, their pain paints, etc. These details will enable you to develop a buyer persona.

A buyer persona represents your ideal customer’s interests and behavior as they interact with your business. One tool you can use to create your buyer persona is Google analytics or Xtensio.

How to get your ideal customer’s details from Google Analytics

Log into your Google Analytics account and click on the audience tab. Under the audience tab is the demographic (it contains the age and gender of your audience), the interest tab, Geo tab, behavior tab, technology, mobile, etc.

Click on each one of them to display your audience characteristics. Analyze the data you get from there to produce great content for your audience.

Secondly, you can create your buyer persona with the aid of Xtensio. It is an app that will help you to create beautiful buyer personas with the aid of templates. If you don’t have the details of your customer, you can use you can use this Accelerated consulting Group’s infographic questions.

The answers to the questions above will help you to design a suitable buyer persona for your audience.

Once you understand who your audience is, you can use it to create useful content for them.

Step 2: Find the Right Content Type

Now you have the picture of your ideal customer, it is time to find suitable content type for them. There are different types of content you can create for your audience. But for the purpose of lead generation, you need:

Blog post: Creating blog posts is important for lead generation. You need high-quality blog posts that will educate and inspire your audience. Blog posts should be published on regular basis. According to Hubspot, b2b companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than 4x as many leads than those that blog only 4.5 times per month.
E-Books: E-book is longer and more in-depth than blog posts. It adds value to your target audience and it is a great tool for lead generation purposes. Your potential customers can download it after opting into your email list.
Video content: Video requires more time and money to create. However, it generates engagement when neatly done. Almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.
Infographics: Infographics are becoming more popular than before. It contains organized data presented in a visually compelling format. You can add it to your blog posts and also share it on the social media networks.
Mini-course: You can create mini-courses in your niche to further educate your audience to know more about your offerings. This can be a series of posts on the same topics or series of videos.
Webinars: Webinars are good for lead generation purposes. It helps to build trust and credibility in your audience. This is what your audience needs before they can do business with you.

Now that you know the right type of content that will drive traffic and also turn them into leads for your business, the next thing to do is to look for appropriate channel to promote the content.

Step 3: Select the Correct Channel and Spread Your Content

There are different kinds of channel you can use to distribute your content. They can either be free or paid. The free channel is not totally free as you will be paying with your time. It takes a lot of time to spread content and also see a tangible result. Free channels include Social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, G+, Instagram, etc), Forum marketing, Guest posting, etc.

Social media has proven to be an effective channel for businesses. According to Ad age, consumers say that social media plays almost as big a role in purchasing decisions as does television.

You don’t have to use all the channels, just select the appropriate one where you can find the target audience you defined above.

For the paid channel, you will have to spend money on ads. The advantages of the paid channel over the free channel is that it is quicker to get results and it saves time. All you need is to pay for ads and you will start getting traffic that may convert to leads. You can advertise on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc), Google Ads, Bing, etc.

Step 4: Prepare Your Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an irresistible offer you have prepared for your prospective customers. It is a resource that should your target audience solve their problems. This means it must be valuable, useful, of high quality and easy for them to digest.

Your lead magnet can be an e-book, white paper, demo, etc. The purpose of a lead magnet is to assist your audience to learn from you. The more they know about you, the more they will trust your brand.

You need a good landing page that will entice your audience to subscribe. A good landing page should enable you to capture your visitors’ emails.

As an example, this is one of LeadsBridge’s most downloaded lead magnets.

One way to maximize your result is to integrate your landing page software with your CRM or email software, such as MailChimp, Aweber, etc… As soon as your audience enters their email address, the tool will store it directly into your CRM or email software.

Step 5: Write High Quality Blog Posts

Don’t forget the content in content marketing. Lead generation with content marketing works because of the content. You need highly engaging and quality blog posts to entice your audience to become leads.

A good blog post must contain a clickable headline that will entice your audience to click and read. A Copyblogger research study revealed that 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. You need a headline that will entice your visitors to click and read your content.

Secondly, the era of creating 300-500 blog post is gone. Long-form content has taken over. Your blog post must be long, valuable and educative. Your audience must find value in it. Since you are writing long-form content, you can add photos, charts and infographics to it to make it easy for your audience to read.

You can also link to related blog post on your blog or on other websites within your posts to further enhance its quality.

Step 6: Engage with Your Audience

One way to keep your audience coming back to your blog is by engaging with them. This will help you to create a strong community around your blog. As your audience reads your blog and you nurture them with relevant posts, they will start leaving comments on your blog posts and your social media channels. Make sure you reply all their comments. Don’t ignore them. Make it easy for readers to contact you by adding a contact page or email address to your blog.

Step 7: Retarget your Audience and Generate Leads

The truth is, 95% of people who visits your website will not return again. That means little to no lead generation for your business. You can solve this problem by using retargeting. You can retarget your blog readers to bring them back to your website or get them to convert to leads. You can do this by placing a pixel or code on your website. When anyone comes to your page to read the content, you can easily retarget them with ads on other websites or social media channels.

For example, if someone comes to your website to read your content but did not subscribe or sign up for your free magnet bait, you can follow them with it across the web. They will constantly see your brand and it will remind them of your offering. Retargeting is very effective. Website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70 percent more likely to convert. This is why one in five marketers now have a dedicated budget for retargeting.