We all know that creating content is one of the best ways to get in front of our target audience. But how do we know what type of content will generate leads?
We’ve all seen it happen: we spend hours perfecting a blog post, only to be met with a trickle of traffic. What went wrong?
There are many reasons why content marketing can fall flat. However, there are just as many (if not more) ways to turn things around. Your content is more powerful than you may think, and before diving into some proven tactics to generate more leads with your content, it’s crucial to understand the power of content and why it can be so effective.
The Content You Produce is More Powerful than You Think
Lead generation is a primary goal of any content marketing strategy. Recent studies have shown that approximately 35% of marketers rank lead generation as their top priority, with converting those leads into paying customers as their second priority.
While these are both important goals, many marketing teams quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options available to them. Between social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing alone, there are infinite ways to generate leads. However, when you take the time to sit down and consider your options, you will realize that all of these options have one thing in common: content creation.
Businesses produce content all the time. It’s part of the job. You have to create content for your blog, social media, website, newsletters, reports, and so on. Here’s just a brief rundown on the amount of content created per day:
- More than 7.5 million blogs are posted per day
- Brands publish roughly 7.5 Facebook posts per day
- Instagram sees an average of 95 million photos/videos shared per day
- TikTok has over 1B active users a month
- YouTubers upload an average of 720,000 hours of video content per day
When you take the right approach to content creation, you have the ability to reach a massive audience, and with that comes the potential to generate leads and grow your business.
5 Approaches to Help You Generate Leads with Your Content
Generating leads with your content is a challenge that most content marketers face. Here are five approaches to help you generate leads with your content:
1. Start with a Benefit-Oriented or Problem-Based Headline
It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a blog post or a social media headline. If you’re trying to generate leads with your content, you need to be sure you are taking the time to craft a clear and compelling headline.
Gone are the days when you could simply write a clickbait headline and expect people to be interested in what you have to say. If you want to generate leads with your content, you need to be writing headlines that are either benefit-oriented or problem-based.
A problem-based headline addresses a problem that your audience is facing. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about how to save money on your grocery bill, you could write a headline as simple as “5 Ways to Save Money on Groceries.” This not only addresses the problem that your audience is facing, but also tells them that they will be receiving five tips to help them save money.
A benefit-oriented headline tells people what they will get from reading your content. I use a lot of these types of headlines for my own blogs! For example, one of my recent blog posts was titled, “How to Keep Your Content Calendar Fresh With Ideas.” This is a benefit-oriented headline because it tells people what they will get from reading the post – steps to keep your content calendar fresh with ideas, something many marketers struggle with.
2. Write for a Specific Audience/Niche
Writing for a specific audience or niche is one of the most powerful ways to help you generate leads with your content. The first step in this is to identify your audience.
- What type of content do they consume?
- What do they like to do in their spare time?
- What do they struggle with?
- What do they commonly search for online?
- Do they have a specific problem that you can solve for them?
The more specific you can be, the more targeted your content will be. It is imperative to write for a specific audience and address their particular wants/needs. When you do, your audience will feel like you are talking directly to them and be more willing to engage with your content.
3. Offer Content Upgrades or Add-Ons to Your Content
When your audience is perusing your content, they are searching for something to help them solve a problem or fill a need. While your piece of content should be doing just that, another way to help generate leads is by including content upgrades or add-ons into your content.
Content upgrades/add-ons can be anything from an eBook, whitepaper, webinar, etc. The idea behind offering content upgrades/add-ons is to incentivize your audience to continue engaging with your content by exchanging something of value for their time and basic information, such as their name and email address.
However, unlike your standard call-to-action, these upgrades/add-ons should add to the information you’ve already provided in your content.
For instance, if you’ve shared a blog on how to build a website, then you may want to consider providing your readers with a downloadable checklist that they can use to help guide them on how to build their website.
These offers usually appear within the body of your content and, again, are separate from your standard concluding calls to action. Of course, you can use that call-to-action to encourage readers to consider your content upgrades/add-ons.
Another thing to remember when encouraging your audience to consider your content upgrades/add-ons is that you don’t want to be too pushy or ask for too much information from them in return. The goal is to make them think they need your offer, and if you ask them for too much information in the process, they may feel like they’re being pressured or tricked into taking your offer.
4. Include Video Content Where Relevant
There is no denying the importance of video content in today’s digital landscape. As humans, we are visual learners and are much more likely to respond to a video with a relevant message than if we were to read a blog on the same subject.
When it comes to generating leads, incorporating video content into your blog can be a great way to increase your reach and help you generate more leads. While you can include many different types of videos in your content, such as tutorials, interviews, or testimonials, the most popular type of video content is a simple how-to video.
5. Don’t Neglect to Promote and Repurpose Your Best Content
Finally, it’s imperative that you take the time to promote and repurpose your content properly.
Content creators spend hours, days, sometimes months creating amazing content, and then once they hit publish, that’s it. That is a huge waste of time and resources.
Instead of approaching your content creation as a one-and-done process, you need to be taking the time to market and promote your content to ensure that it reaches the people most likely to be interested in it. This can be as simple as sharing on social media or as complex as creating a content funnel that allows you to capture leads and turn them into customers.
One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to repurpose your content too frequently. If you do, you’ll start to lose the attention and interest of your audience and be seen as spamming your content.
Instead, you want to repurpose your top-performing content at least once every few months.
Improve Your Lead Generation with the Right Tips
Content marketing is one of the most popular strategies for generating leads and turning them into customers. However, if you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to use your content to capture leads, then you’re going to be missing out on a lot of potential opportunities.
By following the tips outlined above, you can improve your lead generation efforts by using your content to reach more prospects. All it takes is a little effort and dedication, and you’ll get the desired results before you know it.
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