Experts Tips On How To Use Content Marketing

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.