Lead generation through content marketing can take a lot longer than through paid marketing. However, once you get traction with this strategy, it can work all by itself! Initially it’s worth identifying your perfect customer “avatar”. This is an important step in lead generation. By offering an attractive lead magnet, your efforts at content generation can go much further. If your visitor doesn’t match with your offer, you can have a much longer journey.
Website visitors will convert into subscribers much faster with well targeted content which attracts the right visitors. Likewise with your lead magnet. An attractive offer will convert more visitors into subscribers. So before creating a lot of content, decide on your target audience for both content and lead generation strategy – see how to know your target market. A ebook makes a good lead magnet. It’s simple and straight forward and your visitors should immediately see the value in it. See ebook lead magnet for more on this.
Lead Generation Through Content Marketing
Once you are clear on your customer “avatar” and lead magnet it makes it much easier to identify content which your target market is interested in. You can then use Google’s keyword planner to identify content ideas based around your audience and your lead generation offer. You can also use YouTube’s search feature to find content ideas related to your main keywords. So whether you’re a blogger or video creator, you can find suitable topics to create content around using these strategies.
A simple strategy for blogging is to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. If you accomplish this successfully and create some great content, you can get ranked on Google (and other search engines) for free traffic.
But this takes time and there’s often plenty of competing content which makes it more difficult to rank your content. So it’s better not to rely on this happening and to create your own content marketing strategy as well. If you content does well, think of it as a bonus, rather than the sole goal.
Lead Generation Through Content Marketing – Promotion
Once you have created some content either through blogging or video, your job isn’t over. You need to get eyes on your content and you can do this in several different ways. Although “content is king” is the generally held view for search engine optimisation, content promotion is most definitely “queen”! Unless you promote your content in some way, it’s harder for Google to see how people react to it, and rank it accordingly. But promoting your content is also a means to getting traffic and finding people to put in front of your lead generation “magnet”.
So here’s a few ways to promote your content once you have created it:
- Through social media – share your content throughout your social media presence. You can also get various plugins which do this for you. See best free blog plugins for WordPress.
- By offering share buttons on your website (see above link)
- Through building backlinks from other blogs and websites
- Using paid marketing – Google Adwords, Bing, YouTube etc.
- Through deep linking – keyword targeted back links from your newer content
- Revive Old Posts is a great plugin which automatically shares your older content through social media
Lead Generation Prominence & Cross Testing
With a lot of content generation going on, it’s easy to lose track of your main goal: getting leads. Your content should be a strategy to get eyes in front of your lead magnet. A good lead magnet should be cross tested using different content pitted against each other. By continually cross testing your lead magnet you get to know which one performs the best. Try different colours, titles and text in your lead magnet opt in page, or images.
Make sure your lead magnet is prominent on your website on all your content. Don’t forget your lead generation objective! If someone lands on your content, they only have a few minutes to decide what to do there. After that they are gone forever! But once you get them to sign up to your email list, you can communicate your messages over a much longer time period.
So make it a priority to test and measure your lead generation tools over 1000 or so web visitors. A good lead magnet can turn many more visitors into subscribers. So if you’re spending a lot of time (and money) getting people to your website, you want to make sure your lead magnet is converting them to leads. Consider using a lead magnet pop-up on your website and try out different strategies across a number of visitors to determine which works the best.
Summary
Lead generation through content marketing can take some time. But once your content starts generating traffic by itself, this can be a great strategy. You can see traffic from the work you’ve done previously. If you can convert this traffic into leads with a good lead magnet, you can earn money completely on autopilot!
First you should identify your perfect customer “avatar”. Create an enticing lead magnet which speaks to your audience and then start creating content which targets both your perfect customer and your lead magnet and connects them in some way.
Keep creating content which is targeted towards people looking for what you offer. You’ll also need a good content marketing strategy and you can outsource much of this too. Don’t just create content, but promote it aggressively too. Use social media platforms and the many available plugins which can help automate the process and encourage visitors to share your content.