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02
Jan
2020

Experts Tips On How To Use Content Marketing To Improve Lead Generation

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Experts Tips On How To Use Content Marketing To Improve Lead Generation

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content marketing

Are you struggling to generate more leads with your content? We have a few valuable insights from 10 marketers across the globe who tell us about “how to use content marketing effectively to generate more leads and grow your business.”

You’ve probably heard the old cited quote, “Content is King”. That’s because great content attracts a large number of audiences. And with a large number of audiences, you can generate more leads. Content Marketing, for real, has proven to be very effective when done right.

Introduction

Are you struggling to generate more leads with your content? We have a few valuable insights from 10 marketers across the globe who tell us about “how to use content marketing effectively to generate more leads and grow your business.”

You’ve probably heard the old cited quote, “Content is King”. That’s because great content attracts a large number of audiences. And with a large number of audiences, you can generate more leads. Content Marketing, for real, has proven to be very effective when done right.

According to Content Marketing Institute–
“Content marketing is used for lead generation by 83% of B2B marketers.”

Besides other marketing methods, content marketing is the essential road through which B2C and B2B marketers generate leads through various marketing channels. Different types of content will create different numbers of leads for you.

What you really want to learn is how to use content marketing effectively for lead generation. What types of content marketing strategies get you results, and which don’t?

With the right kind of approach, content marketing could work for you as well.

Eventually, “How to use Content Marketing to Improve Lead Generation?” is the question we presented to a few well-known Marketing Experts, who shared their best advice.

I would want to say a big Thank You, to all these marketing experts who were so kind and send me their best insights to share it with our audiences!

#1 Erika Heald

erikaheald

An effective content marketing strategy relies upon understanding who your ideal customer is, and creating content that helps them overcome their challenges and meet their business goals. When you consistently publish and distribute that kind of content, you become a trusted resource for the people who have found your content to be useful. Then, when they are looking for a new product or service, and you turn up in their searches, and as part of “best of” lists, they are already more inclined to consider you versus your competition.

Author Bio

Erika Heald is a content marketing expert and executive ghostwriter. As a consultant, she focuses on helping organizations define and document a content marketing strategy that drives lead generation and customer loyalty. Erika led and grew high-performance content marketing teams at Highwire PR, Anaplan, and Achievers. You can find her on her blog erikaheald.com or hosting the weekly #ContentChat Twitter chat on Mondays at 12 noon Pacific. You can connect with her on Twitter.

#2 Robert Katai

robertkatai

One good example of content you can create you improve lead generation is publishing statistical content for your industry. For example you can start doing a research in your industry about a trend or something you see as a hot topic. You can find out ideas, you can look up to numbers and you can get quotes from experts that later can help you get more exposure on your content.

With that research you can start creating content in different examples: writing a blog post, creating a video for Youtube, Facebook or Linkedin and you can pitch podcasters from your industry and ask them if they are interested in talking about that specific research. From that you can also use visual content to promote your research with slide desks, infographics and several social media graphics.

In that case your content is different, it’s credible and you don’t have to create ton of new content. All you have to do just repurpose this research in several new type of content. And the best thing is that the next year you can take this content and do an update with it.

This is an example we’ve done with several case studies. For example we worked with Andy Crestodina (www.orbitmedia.com) on a study called “The Visual Anatomy of a Blog Post” where we talked with more then 300 content creators and bloggers about what kind of visual do they use in their blog posts. The content got so much traction that several content creators started using Bannersnack (www.bannersnack.com) because they found valuable information in this case study.

Author Bio

Robert Katai is the content marketing manager of Bannersnack, a professional banner creation app for designers and marketers. His work was featured on Adweek, Entrepreneur, TNW, HubSpot, Content Marketing Institute and other places. He is also blogging on his personal website: www.robertkatai.com. You can connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

#3 Anthony John Amyx

anthony

My favorite way to use Content Marketing to improve lead generation is to destroy your prospects limiting beliefs. So many people make the mistake of creating a lot of “how-to” content. The problem with this is it’s like giving out band-aids to wounded people. They read your “how-to” content and feel they can solve their problems themselves. Yet, the reality is they cannot because they are not addressing, nor have awareness of why they are wounded in the first place. If they did, they would have healed it by now. So create content that helps them see what their real problem is and what is at stake if they don’t solve their real problem. And lastly, make sure you position your product or service as the thing that can help them solve their real problem.

Author Bio

Anthony John Amyx is a Free Spirit, Husband, Entrepreneur and Life & Business Coach For Entrepreneurs and Experts.He has been featured on CNN, BusinessInsider and CreativeLive and has been a mentor to some of Forbes Top Social Media Influencers. Hubspot even named him as one of the Top Business Coaches of 2019. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter

#4 Minuca Elena

minuca

Having a pretty site is not enough to attract more leads. You must publish new content regularly. Start by making a profile of your target audience. Who are the people that will buy your products or services? For example, if you sell toys then your potential clients are young mothers.

After you’ve identified some important things about your clients (age, profession, hobbies, marital status, health, etc.) then try to see what needs and issues they have. People are always searching for a solution to a problem. Find out what are these problems by doing keyword research. A tool I recommend is Ahrefs.

The next step is to choose a topic, research it in-depth, and write a fantastic article about it. You must back up your enough with proves such as case studies, surveys, or experiments.

Before publishing the post, you must optimize your blog for lead generations. There are some nice plugins, some free, others premium, that offer an opt-in box. You need to offer something to your readers in order for them to subscribe to your email list.

The best thing you could do is to include a content upgrade in your post. Add a special offer that you made precisely for this post. The freebie can be a checklist, a guide, a 3 days course, a discount, etc. The conversion rate will be much higher.

Author Bio

Minuca Elena is a freelance writer specializing in creating expert roundups. Her posts provide quality content, draw huge traffic and get backlinks. She also helps bloggers connect with influencers. You can connect with her on Twitter and visit her website.

#5 Ronell Smith

ronell

Content marketing becomes a much more manageable beast when you understand that content is anything created by, for and/or about your brand. This means everything from ads to customer reviews and testimonials, blog posts, emails and word of mouth, to name a few. The folks who would become your customers will make the time to check you out well before they decide to do business with you.

These are my three must haves for opening the doors for more business.

1. Be likable: It has been said that people do business with two types of brands—those they like and those who are like them. Many of the most popular and most-searched-for brands are also some of the most liked. Optimize the customer experience of your brand to make sure prospects and customers always see your best side.

2. Be known & respected: Any prospect looking for what your brand offers in the way of products or services will do a Google search to see what shows up, in addition to asking folks around the web about their experiences with your brand. Make it a point to share quality content from noted professionals. If you create and share premium content, have a best-in-class product or service and leave customers satisfied, you’ll likely have to turn customers away.

Also, keep in mind that the best leads come from folks who personally know and have vetted you. Creating amazing content they can share and promote is a huge boon.

Author Bio

Ronell Smith is a digital content strategist helping brands do amazing things with content, including grow their audience, increase qualified web traffic to their websites and outwit the competition. You can connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

#6 Melissa Rosen

melissa

Breakdown keyword intent, in addition to straight SEO opportunities, to really improve lead generation. Tailor your content to speak to decision makers who are actively looking for a business solution.

Google rankings don’t necessarily correlate to leads. Go beyond traffic insights to create content for targeted lead generation. Pull the right people into your marketing funnel to really affect lead metrics.

Get personal. Understand your readers’ motivation, goals, and pain points to tailor your writing. Keep it educational and valuable, warming up leads for further engagement down the funnel.

Set up clear expectations for when leads become customers. Improve retention with streamlined communication throughout the entire customer experience. Focus on efforts beyond lead generation (like trial, demo, or conversion rates), then work backwards to hone in on the needs of this specific audience.

Author Bio

Melissa is a content marketer at Groove (https://www.groovehq.com/blog/). Her background spans running customer support and experience at startups to running script changes on live TV shows. Her goal is to help businesses grow by offering practical and actionable ways to improve overall customer experience. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

#7 Andra Zaharia

pam

The first and most important thing you have to do is to decide you will focus your content marketing efforts *exclusively* on lead generation. This extreme focus is fundamental for success because of content marketing efforts tend to get scaterred or stakeholders tend to expect they cover everything from branding to link building, SEO, and, of course, lead gen.

With that in mind, content marketing for lead generation is most effective when based on thorough, in-depth customer development. Without customer interviews, surveys, and even direct customer observation, content marketers will, at best, create mirage content (as Grow & Convert calls it) that looks and feels right but doesn’t generate any leads.

I highly recommend tackling highly specific needs customers have and working on MOFU and BOFU assets, which, for lead generation, are more important than TOFU content.

Case studies, playbooks, whitepapers, solution briefs – I’ve found these types of MOFU content to be the most helpful because they bridge the gap between industry know-how and the product/service’s benefits in a way that serves real-world customer needs.

To recap, I’d like to emphasize it all starts with focus on lead gen as a core objective. Once that’s set, a deep-dive into the customer development process will reveal the type of content to create, the topics customers are interested in, and the channels and formats they prefer to consume it.

Author Bio

Andra is a freelance content marketer who helps cybersecurity, privacy, and AI companies grow organically with focused and impactful assets. She’s also the host of How do you know? – a podcast that helps listeners learn how to make better decisions. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.

#8 Chris Makara

chris

Content marketing is a great opportunity to generate new leads. Ideally, you will leverage your content to pique the interest of visitors on your site. Your content should be able to help them solve a problem.

While your content should be enough to get them pointed in the right direction of solving their problem, a great way to turn them into leads is to offer a relevant content upgrade that directly relates to the topic of the content.

For example, it could be a downloadable checklist, swipe file, spreadsheet, ebook, etc.

Basically something that is enticing enough to get them to give up their information.

And from there you can nurture these leads into clients/customers.

Author Bio

Since 2003, Chris Makara has developed a broad digital marketing background with a focus on SEO, Social Media, Automation and Analytics. He is the founder of Bulkly, a social media automation tool for individuals and small businesses. You can connect with him on Twitter.

#9 Edward Ford

edward

Firstly, you need to align your content & lead gen efforts with your business objectives and go-to-market model. If you have a high-touch, sales-assisted model then it’s about gathering information to be used in lead scoring and that your sales team can use further down the line. With a low-touch self-serve sales model then it’s about providing content that will seamlessly guide people towards a product-related conversion point.

Either way, your responsibility to your audience is to provide high-value content that helps them improve in their job and develop their skills or knowledge. The bar for content quality is increasing all the time, and combined with the rise of brand, we’ll see some alternative forms of content in future such as original video series, talk shows, and new podcast formats for example. Even though value adding content will always be needed, I think content marketing will also be more entertainment-driven in future.

Gating your content is the primary way to improve lead gen, but the quality you need to deliver to justify that is much higher now than it’s ever been before.

Author Bio

Edward Ford is Marketing Director at Supermetrics, host of The Growth Hub Podcast, and loves to geek out on all things B2B SaaS marketing. To get in touch, follow him on Twitter.

#10 Megan Mosley

megan

We like to provide content to help everyone, not just our current customers. This way, we establish ourselves within our industry, and hopefully help ourselves become top of mine when people are considering our type of software. Plus, by offering more elaborate and generalized content within your industry, you have a better chance of reaching further audiences – as more search engines are likely to pick up your content.

Our blog is strictly insightful information, while we have a separate resource center for brand specific documentation. Keeping these types of content separate have proven to be beneficial for us. As our blog can serve and be helpful for anyone who may land on it, even those who are not customers.

We also promote our content on multiple social platforms. We’ve also found it beneficial to tag the brands or people we have mentioned within the article. This allows their audiences to also see us, thus allowing us to have more eyes on us as those individuals often retweet and share the article as well.

Another thing we have found to be helpful in lead generation is to write about topics related to us. So for example, we are a referral software, but we also write about other types of rewards programs, as we can share our knowledge within those types of related fields.

Author Bio

Megan Mosley is the marketing specialist at Referral Rock, where they believe every business has the potential to increase their word of mouth. When she’s not working, she enjoys sipping on coffee and hanging out with her family.

About Author

Shawn Hadden is a digital marketing strategist. He provides innovative and results-driven internet marketing solutions so that business owners become even more successful in their chosen fields of endeavor.

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