Top Lead Generation Ideas With Content Marketing Strategy for VARs
My company VARStreet has handled 4000+ VARs till date. We are dealing with VARs since 1999 and have observed that VARs often ignore content marketing strategy to generate leads. Here, I would like to say that content marketing is a very effective tool to engage prospective customers. Following are some tips that I have found useful for a successful content marketing strategy:
In today’s fast-paced digital world, there is no doubt that content is king for every organization, including value added reseller (VAR) businesses. A robust content strategy can be a very effective tool to generate leads, close sales and boost revenues.
Let’s take a look at some statistics to establish the fact that content marketing is indeed a great tool for inbound lead generation ideas:
- 91% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers leverage content marketing to reach out to their customers
- 72% of marketers say that content marketing increases the number of leads and customer engagement.
- 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say that digital content has a moderate to major impact on their purchasing decisions. In fact, 95% of B2B buyers consider content as a trustworthy source to assess a company and its offerings.
- Conversion rates are 6 times higher for businesses using content marketing than those who don’t.
- B2B marketers spend 39% of their marketing budget on content.
Now, in order to know how to generate leads with content, it is necessary to formulate a content marketing plan.
Here is your step-by-step guide:
- Identify Your Target Audience
You can’t sell to all and sundry. You need to identify market segments and research on buyer persona. This will enable you to find out the pain points of customers and produce relevant content to address their problem areas.
- Review Existing Content
An audit of your existing content will let you know whether it has been successful in getting leads. If yes, then well and good. But, you still need to figure out whether it will help you to stay at the top of the game this year too. If not, then a change is in the order. It is also advisable to visit the content published by your competitors or industry forums/leaders to stay abreast with the latest trends and practices and find out what target audience like to read.
- Determine Types of Content
When you are wondering how to increase leads with content, there is no dearth of tools:
Ø Blogs
Ø Videos
Ø Infographics
Ø Ebooks and White Papers
Ø Podcasts
Ø Webinars
We will discuss these tools in detail later in the article. Keep reading further.
- Determine Types of Channels for Content Promotion
You need a medium to publish and promote the content. Some common channels comprise website, landing pages, social media platforms, emails and search engines. While there are no particular right or wrong medium, their correct usage can yield better results. For instance, if you are launching a new product or offer, landing pages and emails would work better. If you are publishing blogs, white papers or ebooks, websites would be more effective. You can then share the webpage link on your social media handles to get more traffic. If you want to increase the website views, search engines are a more useful medium.
- Implement a Content Plan
Now that you have formulated the plan, it’s time to execute the content strategy. Put everything in a calendar day, week and month wise. You should have the content calendar planned at least three months in advance. Start publishing the content as per the calendar.
- Daily Monitoring and Response
Your job is not over with publishing the content. You have to monitor how the content is performing. Let’s say; you published an e-book on your website. Is the number of downloads as per your expectations? If you have created a landing page for a new marketing campaign, is it getting clicks and conversions? If the answers are no, it indicates that something is wrong with the content promotion or customers don’t find the content useful. You will have to revisit your content plan and tweak it.
It is also important that you respond to customer comments and queries on publishing mediums promptly. Let’s say, someone has asked for the product price for a product you are promoting on Facebook. This is a clear-cut lead and customer has already moved some steps in the sale funnel. The quicker you reply, the quicker you can close the sales.
Fortunately, there are several marketing automation tools which can automate your content publishing and promotion, and also provide dashboards for performance measurement.
Types of Content
There are several content types that value added resellers (VARs) can leverage as mentioned above. We will explore each of them individually.
Ø Blogs
What you are reading now on our website right now is a blog post. They are content pieces which usually range from 400 to 2000 words and published on the company website. You can write blogs about how your products can solve customer pain points or do listicles/curation such as ‘Top 5…’, ’10 Ways to….’, ‘7 Quick Tips….’etc. Know the customer intent and your business goal while deciding the blog topic.
Ø Videos
A survey has revealed that 81% of businesses used video as a marketing tool as in 2018. 76% marketers have been able to increase their traffic and sales from publishing videos. You can create videos regarding product demos and slideshow presentations; publish them on your website or YouTube; and promote on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Ø Infographics
When you want to present snapshot information in a graphic form, nothing can work better than infographics. You can share a lot of data in a compelling manner.
Ø Ebooks and Whitepapers
Ebooks and white papers are useful when you want to publish really long and elaborate content. They can range from 2000 to 4000 words. Ebooks are shorter than white papers and written in the form of chapters. White papers have a longer word limit and written to present case studies or industry problems.
Ø Podcasts
A podcast is a digital or audio file that people can listen on the internet even on the go and fit into their busy schedule. You can release a series of episodes in MP3 format for doing a podcast. Your users can subscribe to podcasts just the way they subscribe to the blogs. According to the latest update, there are over 5,50,000 active podcast on the internet. Your podcasts can talk about various tips, resources, FAQs, ‘How to’, ‘Dos and Don't s’, etc.
Ø Webinars
Webinars are becoming increasingly popular with VARs and other B2B businesses. For the uninitiated, a webinar is an online seminar/event/lecture/chat conducted exclusively for an online audience. Webinars are usually held to discuss problems and solutions. Webinars draw a good audience because viewers can participate in live questions and answers. You can use webinars to give product demos, answer customer questions, etc.
Content is an integral digital asset to drive lead generation. You can’t ignore it anymore.
