Lead Generation Tips
This blog post can help you to improve your knowledge on lead generation tips with content marketing. The article is mainly useful for digital marketing professionals, content marketers & SEOs
One of the most important components of inbound marketing is Content. If the content is not relevant, compelling, or timely, inbound marketing may not be able to succeed as a form of lead generation tool. Your website might be thought of as a marketing machine, but technically speaking it is the content that should be considered as the fuel; the fuel which generates the leads, drives the conversions and creates engagement.
Yes, that doesn’t sound too easy, doesn’t it? But contrary to how it sounds, creating compelling content is not an easy task. The entire process boils down to one simple thing – and that is getting the most apt content for the right audience. Here we have given you some tips which would help you generate leads.
Get in touch with your Principal Personality
Like we just mentioned above, great content is that which is apt and that which speaks to the audience; the audience which is considered right for you. All this needs to start with the personalities of the buyer – that is your target audiences representations. This is where your creativity and research should come in. Your content would not be able to bring in any apt leads if you are not familiar with your buyers. You need to create buyer personalities so that you can create targeted content as well. Start the process by asking questions – question their goals, concerns or motivators. The following are some questions you should be asking while creating the buyers personality.
What problems is she/he trying to find a solution to?
What concerns does the industry bring up?
Is the buyer a decision maker? What would his/her role be in the company?
What are the factors that drive the buyers needs?
Use Analytics to your advantage
You need to use the analytics in such a way that they work for you. Take advantage of the sites analytics and use them to create compelling content as per your buyers personalities. Give attention to the most popular pages or posts. When you go through popular content, you would get an idea of what the visitors consider as interesting. You would find out the rates of bounces as well. If you find that too many new visitors are ?jumping off? the site then that means that something is wrong and that you need better and good quality content. Use the metrics and get in touch with the factors which drive page views, landing page conversions or page views. Run A/B testing, analyze, monitor and see what is working and what isn?t. So a landing page development must be completed after grabbing enough lead generation tips.
The following are four ways in which analytics can be used to boost leads
Find out what kind of content brings in more site visitors and connects with them.
The CTA or call to action content’s alignment needs to be improved.
The rates of visitors which get converted to leads across channels needs to be compared.
The content that is reproduced needs to be successful.
The Content Needs to be Audited
You might be an expert or a long time creator of content. But you still need to take a breath and evaluate the content. This is extremely important as far as the lead generation campaign goes. Everything boils down to the most important motive which is to align the content with the personas of the buyers. When you audit your content you might come up with some loopholes or errors which would push you to cut them out and get right on track.
You need to make up a spreadsheet and make an inventory of the contents catalog right from the previous year. Take into account everything right from eBooks and blog posts to presentations and Webinars.
Make up groups of the type of content, the topic, the persona of the buyers, the creation of data and the customers or leads that have been generated.
Bring up each of the buyer persona profiles and take a note of the content that was created for every persona. Check how many was based on text and how many say based on the visual content.
Check the response rates for each audience and content.
The audit findings for the content can help you in the content marketing strategy. It is pretty much like a roadmap for you. Whatever you learn from the audit, apply it and keep a track of the results on a periodic basis.
Line up the content and the buying cycle
Through the entire buying cycle, the prospects behavior might differ. While a customer is in the research phase, he might have a different interest as compared to a customer who is in the evaluation stage. Hence, to generate more and apt leads, you need to align your content with the entire buying cycle. Imagine yourself as the buyer and think of the various issues that might matter to you during every stage of the buying cycle. The content that is created for the sake of generating awareness would be naturally different from the content which is created for the purpose of lead conversion into customers.
For example, a prospect who is in the research phase might have just come to know about your brand. So then is this person the right candidate for content that is educational? Yes, Absolutely!
You need to make sure that the content is right for every stage of the sales process – Knowledge, Research, the comparison and the final purchase. It has been seen that the kind of content can actually affect the decision of the buyer at particular stages of the cycle.
Knowledge – Educational Webinars, social media updates and Blog posts.
Research – Tip sheets, eBooks, videos on how-to, industry reports and webinars.
Evaluation and Comparison – Data sheets, case studies, customer testimonials and demo videos
The final purchase – Live Demos, analyst reports, free trials and consultation
Set and commit yourself to a budget for the ongoing content.
It is but obvious that resources are needed for content marketing. In fact, online content is probably another mode of paid advertising. Some of the marketing funds need to be allocated to ongoing content creation. If required, move some funds to content marketing and development from other paid media. This is how important content is. This way you would better your offers, bring in more leads and convert those leads into customers.
The conclusion – Lead Generation Tips
Imagine you are a sales manager at a fashion retail store. A customer walks in and is just browsing around. Whether she becomes a customer or not, depends on how you approach her. If you start pushing a dress on to her; you might throw her away and get her annoyed. This is her awareness stage. So depending on what she is looking for, you need to educate her and give her the information that would be useful to her. Be open to questions. If she finds you impressive and the information that you gave her as useful, she would be open to the idea of coming back and picking up more dresses.
This very same concept is applied to online buyer personalities. Buyer personas differ during every stage of the buyer cycle. Some might be just weighing their options while some might be ready to purchase. However, the one thing that is similar in all stages is that the buyer wants themselves to be approached in the right way.
The right content needs to be aligned with the right audience with the help of marketing intelligence. Also the content calendar needs to be regularly evaluated to make sure that pathways are laid out for the generation of leads.
But mind you, once you have attained your goals of lead generation the content alignment should not end. It has been seen that usually out of the leads 50% are qualified enough but are not ready to buy immediately. Hence, the content creation needs to be able to solve their problems. You need to make sure of that. Your leads need to be nurtured; and there needs to be an ongoing tactic for it.
Make sure that you implement all the above important points and build the groundwork for a thriving lead generation platform. Combine your content with social media, SEO, nurturing of leads, analysis and measurement and thus charge up the lead generation campaign.
If at all you are ever doubtful, you just need to evaluate the process from the point of the view of the buyer. You need to ensure that you push solutions and not push purchases.
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