The process of lead generation is basically collecting contact details from prospective customers and building meaningful relationships with them. Knowing that today’s customer journeys get longer and more complicated, marketers like to see leads as new conversions.
One big question is – can content marketing help in driving leads and assist you in creating a proper lead nurturing strategy?
The answer to this question is yes, it can. However, without a reliable source of leads for a product or service, you won’t reach your goals. That is why it is important to balance your marketing portfolio and segment your offering.
Restructure your lead generation with the power of content: 13 ideas to help you generate more leads
If your sales funnel is not channeling enough leads (or not channeling leads at all), it means that you should think about restructuring your lead generation process and exploring some new ideas and strategies to align with the future of your company.
In today’s guide, we are showing you some of the best content-driven lead generation ideas – showing you all the ways you can use content to close more deals.
- Consider hosting free webinars
Hosting your free webinars is one of the best lead generation ideas that are working nowadays. Plenty of users enjoy tuning into webinars and love connecting with brands that cannot reach them through physical events or some other form of marketing. Whether it’s a pre-recorded webinar that people can tune into at a specific time or a real-time online webinar, it is a surefire way to spark interest in your audience. The best thing about it is that there are no geographical limitations (you can gather people from all around the world) and that it is a low-cost method to share content in a meaningful way.
One of the most important things to consider if you want to host a webinar is choosing the right event platform. To do that, you should lay down your goals and understand how you want to use webinars as part of your content strategy. You can test various platforms and see what’s unique in each and what can help you, your specific audience, or your industry in reaching your goals.
- Offer downloadable digital content
E-books, whitepapers, case studies…All of these are great formats for businesses that have some information they want to share. They are also types of visual content that users are more likely to engage with as compared to standard blogs or web content.
However, our advice is to not just give things away without getting something in return. Asking your consumers to provide you with their name and email address to download something is common. You can add information to your email list and create a drip campaign that helps move your leads through the sales funnel and maximize conversions.
One good tip from us is to use a nice cover for your ebook or case study. You shouldn’t underestimate the power of images and how they can help a potential user perform a certain action, in this case, a download.
- Write more blogs
We all know how great content is – and how it can help you rank higher and attract specific audiences to your website. Writing blogs is a great example of that – managers often decide to revisit their content strategy once they are done with content consolidation or are looking for new topics for their blog.
Some of the best ways to consolidate your content for SEO are to delete all the irrelevant, outdated and thin content and focus on a long-form copy that actually helps people solve a specific problem. You can also repurpose old blogs – fill in the blanks and make sure they have the right length, keyword structure, and density to rank higher. If you want more tips on blogging, you can always look up specific resources online, such as copywriting for coaches, SEO blog writing, outsourcing your content, etc.
- LinkedIn slides
LinkedIn slides are a great way to upload presentations and easily share them with your network. As you know, LinkedIn is a professional network where you can be professional and use slides to showcase your recent milestones, next goals, or valuable brand updates. You can also present your products or services in a better way, finding a formula that works and sends viewers an instant message.
Slides are also a good way to measure engagement with your audience – you can see how many of them saw a slideshow to the very end, where they stopped, or how long they viewed it. If you are not sure where to begin, know that there are a bunch of design templates for social media out there, and LinkedIn slides are no exception.
- Grow your email list
Everyone knows how valuable it is to have an email list and send regular newsletters. You will always have someone to update you about your new offers, and people will immediately see your promotion as a high-value offer if you want to capture their attention.
However, if you are clueless on the topic of building or growing a list, you can start exploring lead magnets – or in other words, offers like free content, items, or services given to users when they share their contact details. For instance, if you have an online shop and you want to grow your email list, you should focus on ecommerce lead magnets. One of them is giving out a 15% discount on their first order if they leave their email or contact information.
On another note, everyone managing a newsletter should be aware of some rules and tips regarding email etiquette. For those of you who don’t know, this refers to all the principles that guide our behavior when sending and receiving emails. As a thought leader, you should use appropriate language to convey a message, structure your emails properly, include a signature, and ideally, work on an email strategy that begins with introductory emails and sends subscribers weekly or bi-weekly updates.
- Video tutorials
If you are selling products online, you should consider creating content for navigational intent. Most searchers or shoppers would like to see your products from a different angle, which is why most ecommerce store owners leverage video tutorials on how to use a product. Marketers love video because it is a great way to supercharge your funnel, especially on the top levels.
Besides that, you can curate videos talking about specific features of a product or explore titles such as “X best features of product X.” The idea is to not only inform but also educate current and potential customers that can become your returning buyers.
Video marketing provides marketers with an extremely shareable medium to reach their audiences. Attractive, versatile, and up to 6 times more effective compared to print and direct mail, video is a marketing tool that should be part of every brand’s strategy.
- Free trials
Let’s face it – one of the quickest ways to get more leads is to offer them a free trial to something. This is especially relevant if you are selling software, courses, or anything else that you make first-hand. Once the trial is done, your customer can come back, find more features in the full product, and convert in a paying customer or a brand loyalist.
Speaking of which, a smart strategy when it comes to free trials is to lock in some features and only make them available in a paid version of your software. This strategy is called a freemium and differs from free trials in the way that it locks certain features instead of offering all the features for a specific period.
If your product is good enough, it will speak for itself and lure more users into buying a paid version. With a free trial strategy, you can only gain – after all, it is something that big names such as Netflix, Dropbox, Cloudways, Big Contacts, Crazy Egg, and many more succeeded out there.
- Affiliate marketing
More and more businesses are seeing the benefits of affiliate marketing as one of the best ways to make the most out of your content. An affiliate program has a similar structure to a referral program – you can effectively market products with a low budget, low effort, and time. Affiliate marketing involves hiring people to promote your product and rewarding them for their efforts on a commission-level basis. For instance, if you are selling a course for $500, you can offer a 20% ($100) reward for affiliates for each signup that they bring to you.
If you are unsure about this practice or are wondering how to start affiliate marketing for your business, there are plenty of online courses that can help you. Obviously, your type of industry and/or niche matters a lot. For online-based businesses, affiliate marketing works with a unique link that is created to track traffic directed to the website, based on which the affiliate gets a certain percentage of sales made through those links.
- Cold email outreach
This is another cost-effective and efficient strategy for generating leads online. For those of you who don’t know, cold email outreach refers to sending personalized email messages to initiate conversations and a potential relationship with prospective customers that you had no contact with before.
While it may seem strange for some, once a conversation like this is initiated, it is a lot easier to nurture a prospect. You can also search for proven cold email templates online that can show you the ropes on how you should initiate a conversation. Once someone responds to your emails, it will be easy to direct them toward your funnel and main offering.
Final thoughts
As you can see from the above mentioned, there are plenty of ways to generate leads through content. The key before initiating any of the strategies listed above is to establish your digital marketing KPIs and know how to track the performance of each channel. From webinars to e-books and whitepapers, blogs and podcasts, there are numerous ways to highlight content that has higher perceived value and explores topics that you cover.
With content, you will never go wrong – it has always been one of the most strategic marketing approaches that produce instant results. With valuable, relevant, and consistent content, you will always attract and retain a clearly defined audience, driving profitable action.
No matter what kind of product or service you provide, content can always help you attract prospects and convert them into leads. So, ready to start exploring these strategies?
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