How to Generate More Leads than Ever With Content Marketing

What is Content Marketing?

Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute defines “Content Marketing” as “the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” From another perspective Marcus Sheridan from the Sale Lion offers the following maxim “Consumers, for now until the end of the world, will find the time to research that which is important to them.” Sheridan defines content marketing as “They ask, you answer.” He then defines “Content Marketing” as “a business’ ability to be the most helpful and effective teachers in the world at what they do.” If you need more context on Content Marketing check out “The 33 Undisputable Laws Content Marketing Success.”

Who should a Local Insurance Agent or Small Business Owner consider employing “Content Marketing” as a core strategy in 2015?

Because…

• Your prospects and customers have questions that are unanswered
• Your prospects and customers are doing online research about your niche
• You want to attract news leads
• You have expertise to demonstrate within your niche
• You know that online marketing is growing considerably year after year

Honestly, for the reasons listed above and a host of other reasons I won’t get into, every business in the Western Hemisphere in 2015 should have some content marketing strategy in place.

How does Content Marketing Generate Leads?

When your content shows up on the first page of Google SERP (“search engine results page”) you see steady traffic coming to your website. When prospects get their questions answered in a thoughtful, helpful way they come to see you as an expert. When prospects determine that you are an expert in your field and you have been helpful they trust you. When they trust you they pick up the phone or they purchase online. So Content Markets reverse engineer this outcome. They determine how to rank for the keywords that will bring you to the first page of Google (preferably results 1–3 of the first page). The write content that is super clear and helpful to their prospects. They answer the real questions of real people (Hint: keep your sales people/producers close and consistently ask them to share the real questions they are getting). They build inbound links naturally and deliberately to increase their rank in Google. They stick with this strategy month-after-month and begin to see a stacked pipeline of leads and new customers. Those who get started first do have a distinct advantage. But the good news is, in most niches still have accessible long-tail keyword opportunities. But first you have to determine your target keywords…

How to Determine Your Target Keywords

How industry insiders talk about a business or service is not necessary how consumers do. The average lead for your business is typing something quick in short-hand into google looking for relevant content. So they type things like “cheapest car insurance dallas tx” or “surety bond insurance” or “local florist Portland or.” These are often referred to as “long-tail-keywords” and should be considered precious real estate as far as they relate to your business. The longer and the more specific the keyword the better. For examples the keyword “bonds” is bad news for us a surety bond broke. It is difficult to rank for and more times than not applies to an investment vehicle and not a surety bond. However, the long-tail keyword “surety bond cost” is both easier to rank for and more targeted for our actual prospects. For this reason we target “surety bond cost” as one of our 20 Golden Keywords for 2015. It is important to zero in on the top 5–20 keywords you want to target in a given time frame. This will provide you with both focus and clarity as you build out your content marketing strategy.

Moz has a helpful “Beginners guide to SEO keyword research” if you are new to this. While there are several tools that can give you insights, the Google AdWords Keyword Planner is still the Standard in Keyword research. Here is Google’s introduction to “Using the Keyword Planner to get keyword ideas and traffic forecasts.” To get set up and rolling with the AdWords Keyword Planner you will need to set up an AdWords account for you agency or business. The Keyword Planner was built by Google to give Pay-Per-Click insights to businesses. However, you don’t have to actually spend any money on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) after setting up the account.

I recommend you start with 20 keywords that you want to pursue for 2015. You can then write each content piece without a target keyword or two in mind. HubSpot has a simple post on SEO 101 which shares the 5 parts of your site where you should insert your keywords.

Which are as follows with the Target Keyword of “Surety Bond Insurance” as an example…

• Titles (e.g. “5 Things Every Small Business Owners Needs to Know about Surety Bond Insurance”)
• Descriptions (Meta-Descriptions: “5 Types of Surety Bond Insurance that Small Businesses Need”| Surety Solutions, LLC”)
• Headings and Content (don’t use a keyword more than 5 times here)

Headings “Surety Bond Insurance 101”

Body copy “Surety Bond Insurance is required by State or Local Municipalities to protect consumers for negligent or unethical behavior on the part of service providers.”

• Image File Names (i.e. replace existing alt-text description with “Surety Bond Insurance”)
• URLS (i.e. http://blog.suretysolutionsllc.com/suretynews/5-types-of-surety-bond-insurance-that-small-businesses-need)

Your Content Marketing Strategy for 2015

Once you have determined your target keywords you are ready to refine your content roadmap.

Here is a proven formula:

# of Buyer Personas x

# of stages in the buyers journey x

# of questions in each stage =

# of content pieces you need to create

Your Process Begins with…

The Number of Buyer Personas

The better you can segment your buying personas the more you can create relevant, quality content for real customers. When you write for one person your writing is concrete and helpful. When you write for the masses, you dumb everything down to the lowest common generality. This is not helpful. In marketing speak the specific target customers you have are called “personas.” These are the proto-typical customers that you have in your agency or business. They are “soccer moms” or “small business owners” or even more specifically “Oregon Residential Construction Contractors.” The Content Marketing Institute Annual report for B2B content marketing found that most business average 4 target personas. Here are four (of many) that we target as a Surety Bond Insurance Provider…

• Motor Vehicle Dealers
• Lawyers or Paralegals placing Court Bonds
• Construction Contractors
• Mortgage Loan Originators

Determine your buying personas and write specific, helpful content to address their pain points.

The Number of Stages in the Buyers Journey

This next step is important because your leads do not go from ignorant of you, your products, and your value straight to giving you their credit card information. Building trust with your leads takes time, it take nurturing. While various marketers segment the buyer’s journey in different ways, here are 5 stages that you might consider. Choose the ones that apply or add ones that are not listed.

The Buyers Journey

• Awareness — “I know very little about <product/service> please dumb it down and give me the basics.” This is the stage most often overlooked. We are fully immersed in our business and therefore assume too much knowledge on behalf of our prospects)
• Consideration — “I have questions about price and quality, how can I know that your <product/service> is the best value?”
• Decision — “I am going to move on this in a day or two and I need some hard fact. Don’t be vague, give me price, prove your value, and show me why you’re better than the competition.”
• Engagement — “I am moving forward with your product/service but if this doesn’t go well I will tell my friends and will cancel a service / return a product ASAP.”
• Evangelist — “Continue to add value and I’ll fall in love with you and tell all my friends.” You continue to nurture existing customers to keep your referral loop rolling.

The Number of Questions in Each Stage

Leads have different questions depending on their stage in the buyer’s journey. You can’t assume anything with unqualified leads that show up for the first time. They need the cookies on the bottom shelf. They need to basics. The Simple stuff is what most marketers forget to share (e.g. “What does life insurance cover?”). As a lead progresses through your funnel their questions change. They get more serious, they become more aware of your competitors, the look for case studies, client reviews, and ultimately value. As the near the contract stage, they are looking for fine print and asking questions like “can I get out of this in 3 months if things aren’t going well.”

Here are some sample questions to illustrate the kinds of questions that you will want to write content around for each of the stages. Each of these questions warrants one blog post or landing page on your site. Remember you will want to duplicate these sections for each buyer persona that you have.

Awareness/Education

• How much does <product/service> cost?
• How difficult is it to do <service> myself?
• Help! I have <insert common problem> what should I do now?
• How does <product/service> work?
• How often should I <service>?
• When should I consider getting <service> done?
• Who is most likely to need <product/service>?

Consideration/Qualifying

• Which is best: product #1 vs. product #2?
• Which options or services should I consider?
• How do I know a <service provider> is up to snuff?
• How long does it take to do <service> well?
• What kinds of questions should I ask a <service provider>?
• What Factors determine the price of <product/service>?
• Process #1 or Process #2: Which one is better?

Decision/Closing

• Who definitely doesn’t need <product/service>?
• What kind of equipment do you use to do <service>?
• How are your employees trained to do <service>?
• Where do you get the inputs for your <product>? (Local? Free Trade?, etc)
• How do I get a quote?
• How long am I locked into the service contract?
• What are the terms and conditions in the contract?

Of course you will need to understand your prospects questions and pain points in order to write the most appropriate content pieces to serve them and qualify yourself as an expert.

Stick With It

Savvy Content Marketers know that you don’t experience ROI in a week. It take focused, methodical quality content creation to greater increase traffic to your site and build a pipeline of leads for your business. If you followed the example above all the way through to completion it would look like this:

4 Target Personas x 3 Stages in the Buyers Journey x 7 Questions in Each Stage = 84 Posts / 52 (weeks) = 1.6 posts per week.

Need Help with your Content Marketing?

You may be like many local agents and small business owners who say, “I was overwhelmed with my 2014 Responsibilities and can’t imagine adding 84 more content pieces to that in 2015?” If that is you but you are convinced you need to implement this strategy, you might consider outsourcing this to a content marketing company. There are several quality Companies in the marketplace who specialize in this and can get you through this strategy at a minimum fee. Here are three Content Marketing firms to consider…

Content.ly (www.contently.com)

Content.ly focuses on high quality content and scalability. They can easily facilitate an aggressive content creation strategy. Content.ly charges $4,750 as an Annual Subscription to Content Software System. This system does your Matchmaking with journalists and allows you to scale your project to whatever size you need. Their individual content prices go for $350 and up for Content Pieces (they only take a 5% fee through PayPal for processing) Most of this goes to the Writer. They have specialized writers who are versed in various verticals (e.g. Financial Services / Insurance) Content.ly is positioned as a premium offering with their pricing on the high end. They do not focus on keyword research or Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They do however provide content analytics and place an emphasis on “time on site” as a metric for engagement with your prospects. Contently is certainly a company to consider if you are in the market for content marketing services.

WritersAccess (http://www.writeraccess.com/)

Another solid choice for content marketing is WritersAccess. They boast a pool of 10,000+ Writers and who have specialized expertise in writing for 50 Verticals. They also have a software solution that enables Quality Content at Scale. WritersAccess is playing the price game and offers some of the cheapest content on the market. They feature a price calculator on their website that allows you to see how expense a piece of content will cost based on the # of words to be written coupled with the “star quality” (e.g. 3-star, 4-star, 5-Star, etc) of the writing talent. Content written by lower star writers is available for dirt cheap. How does $18 sounds? Like Content.ly they make no mention of keyword research/Promotion/SEO in their strategy. They are focused on writing, quality control of writing, and scalability. In my research I came across no mention of SEO or Analytics. This will be a good option for someone on a limited budget who is not concerned with rankings or metrics.

Media Shower (http://mediashower.com/)

Media Shower produces great content and promotion that drives searches and sales. How? They help companies identify their Golden Keywords (around 20). Then their American Journalists write great content for a variety of industries ($49 per article). They provide real-time analytics through a back-end dashboard on their site that enables you track ROI based on your conversions rate and the lifetime value of a customer. They also promote content by getting your content in front of your audience. They schedule monthly progress calls to discuss your content marketing progress and to tweak ongoing strategy. For those who are entertaining their service, they offer a Free Content Piece that enables you to experience their process and to sample the quality of their content. This “try before you buy” eliminates the risk as you consider their services and helps companies to determine if they are a good fit. Media Shower is a solid choice if you are interested in SEO and tracking ROI in your content marketing efforts.

Conclusion

Content Marketing is not easy but it is effective. Those who put in the work built a robust body of work that makes them increasingly “findable” to their prospects as a great source of knowledge that speaks directly to the pain points. If you execute the strategy described above in 2015, you can organize all of this content into tidy section on your website to further enhance your messaging to leads at every stage of the buyers’ journey.

Your Turn.

What have you learned about content marketing that you would pass along to other local agents or small business owners?

What are you still curious about?

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