5 excellent ideas to generate leads using content marketing

Marketing in today’s world has shown a paradigm shift and most marketers resort to all kinds of tricks to make consumers get to select their product from among the rest. With time most marketers have discovered the usage of content marketing as a useful tool to get their point across.However managing and creating a great content marketing campaign is not as easy as it seems. It requires great skill and ample time to be able to produce the right content which is effective as well.

Even if you hire the best copywriters for your team and invest enough money, there is no surety that it would lead to genuine conversions. There is no hard and fast formula to know what kind of content will work and produce enough results too. Apart from the lack of proper knowledge on the kind of content needed, the below-mentioned challenges continue to make things difficult –

• Increasing competition in market
• Maintaining standard of high quality
• More responses to paid promotion campaigns
• Getting unrealistic expectations fulfilled
• Sustaining the same kind content for a long time
• Difficulty in finding the return on investment

Even though we all know that “Content is king” the results reflect only if it’s marketed well. We are mentioning below the top 5 ideas that you should use to generate maximum leads out of your content marketing.

1) Using Website or Search Engine optimization

A survey done amongst 500 marketers in the US revealed that according to them SEO makes the maximum impact when it comes to lead generation for B2B(57.4%) as well as B2C (41%) markets. The truth is you cannot expect any major lead conversions happening if your website has not been updated or optimized since the last three years. It is important to devote attention to the below-mentioned points while getting your website optimized.

• Ease of navigation mentioning all required details
• Customer oriented content targeting the right audience
• Multiple CTA buttons requesting your leads to get to know more
• Categorizing same product in different price ranges to make the consumer make a selection.

SEO is a perfect choice if you wish to generate leads through the basic searches that most consumers do every day.If your website stays up in the ranking chances are most people will be landing on your page and lead to further sales conversions for you. It is also very essential that the Meta tags you impose are not just a weird combination of many keywords. Most consumers would like to pick up a tag which promises them of giving the benefit they really want.

2) Conducting webinars

For all those who have the desire to reach out to their target audience and captivate them into becoming their customers conducting a webinar becomes an easy tool. A webinar is an interactive medium by which your consumer can have a face to face interaction with you. It is essential that your webinar has a life cycle and a start and end time. To get maximum customers to actually participate and later convert it is required that utmost attention is given to each phase of the webinar’s lifecycle. However, there are some key points to be kept in mind when you design a webinar page.

• Adding an attractive and compelling headline which makes the consumer stop and take notice.
• Mention the benefits; even if your webinar is free you need to tell the customer why he should be a part of it.
• A highly visible call to action button. Make sure that your CTA is such that it becomes the first thing that your customer notices when he clicks on that page.
• Most customers do not wish to fill a lengthy form for a simple task like this. Avoid incorporating many fields and keep it short and simple.

Kindly note the prominence given to “View Now” button.

3) Social media

If done right Social Media can be a powerful tool in order to get maximum lead conversions but getting this done takes a considerable amount of time and patience. Conversion of your social media posts into leads can happen only if you give the readers high-quality content either from your own website or blog. There are three ways in which lead generation can be done on social media.

• Social media — Blog or website article link
• Social media — Gated content
• Social media — Website article-CTA by signing up on newsletter or mailing list.

An infographic is a popular way of converting data and presenting it to the consumer in a visually appealing manner. What makes these infographics different is that the visuals used are clearly ones which can immediately draw the attention of a consumer. Read how presenting infographics to the consumer leads to better conversions and sales.

• Get 200% more likes on Facebook
• 12% more traffic on the landing page
• More click through
• Better visibility and access

In the example shown above you can see how an interesting content topped up with some great data can entice the customers to click and move ahead.

4) Email marketing

When it comes to conversions email marketing stands up at the same level as social media. Email marketing remains one of the simplest ways to actually get your readers to convert into consumers. Essentially an impactful email must contain the following features to be able to convince and get consumers to click further.

• It should have a clear and strong CTA
• The pace of the emails should be frequent enough
• The content should be interesting and should make people want to read
• Focus should be on changing templates and design patterns frequently

It is also necessary that you configure your emails such that readers are able to find the button which would lead them to your site. Apart from that simple CTA ‘s should be avoided as no one responds to messages which show a lack of interest. You can substantiate the CTA with valid proof on what he would gain by signing up to your newsletter.

For example, if you are a website providing web solutions to clients a simple CTA asking them to subscribe to a 4-week newsletter on a topic like “Learning content marketing the easy way” can lead the readers to subscribe. Once there if they are able to like and understand your work chances are they might take the association further and become your loyal customers.

5) Publishing an E-book

Offering them an option to sign up for receiving a free ebook, whitepaper or report acts as a lead magnet for many customers to stay and have a look.The more attractive the offer looks to them the more are the chances of them being converted.Keep the following things in mind while offering them the deal and be sure they would not want to miss it.

• Bring it at a time when the reader is It should be able to add value to your site and should be such that most likely they may not find it anywhere else.
• You have to give them a reason why they should download it. Since they visit countless blogs there should be something compelling in your offer that makes them stop and have a look.
• Instead of focussing on the content talk about what the people are going to achieve by signing up. Instead of getting over lengthy just let them know how this offering of yours works towards achieving their goals.

Times have changed but lead generation remains still the crux of making your business successful. Apart from these, there are other modes too which can be used to generate the necessary eyeballs. However, these five are by far the most effective in actually making your customers take notice and proceed towards enhancing their relationship with you.

It’s purely the marketer’s choice on what would work well with his target customer. However which ever method is used it is absolutely critical that the persuasion tricks are used effectively. Most people do not bother clicking onto a website until they get something valuable in exchange. The key lies in using these tools together or a few in tandem to achieve the target set. One thing that you should understand is that customers clearly prefer going for something different so whatever you offer them just make sure that the benefit is a class apart.

Originally published at wittypen.com on December 20, 2016.