7 Ways to leverage content marketing for lead generation

If you are struggling to generate more leads, it’s time to level up your lead generation strategy with content marketing.

Do you know that 78% of customers are more convinced about a company if the website has customized content?

B2B and B2C marketers use blogs as their primary mode to drive traffic and generate more leads through websites.

Content marketing for lead generation is highly effective as it helps to increase website traffic, get a higher ranking in SERPs, enhance brand awareness, gain customer trust, engage the users, and many more. 

So, let’s take a look at how you can utilize content marketing for lead generation.

What is content marketing for lead generation?

In a nutshell, content marketing lead generation is the strategic approach in which highly-valuable, engaging, and informative content is created and published online to generate leads from various engaging channels.

Content marketing strategies are highly crucial as they help you connect with the right audience and generate more leads as well.

Below you can find the most interesting lead generation content statistics.

Lead generation content marketing statistics

Below are some interesting content marketing for lead generation statistics you should consider.

• 96% of marketers use paid distribution channels for content marketing purposes.
• About 98% of B2B marketers have witnessed that investment in content marketing has a noticeable ROI. 
• B2B companies generated 67% more leads with a blog post. 
• Companies that used content marketing gained 97% more backlinks and landed on 434% more SERPs than those that didn’t. Also, their marketing expenses have been reduced, and with 62% less expense, companies generated 5X sales leads. 

Based on the above content marketing lead generation statistics, it’s clear how important content is for generating more leads.

Now that you know the importance of content marketing let’s find out how you can leverage content marketing strategy for lead generation.

7-Step content marketing strategy to generate more leads

A smart content strategy includes producing and distributing relevant content that enhances engagement, educates, and adds value to the reader’s life. 

Go through the following step-by-step strategy that can drive more leads through your content marketing. 

Step 1: Do strategic market research 

“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is to fund research and learn the basic facts.” – Bill Gates

Conducting comprehensive market research before you enter the world of business competition is important as it will define your business potential in the current and future world.

When using content marketing for lead generation, thorough research enables marketers to make firm, progressive decisions. 

So, what can extensive market research give? 

• Target customer interests and searches 
• Identify the pain points of your target audience
• Showcase the USP (Unique Selling Point) of your brand 
• Competitor’s growth secrets and performance status 
• Marketing strategies to generate more leads  
• Potential industries for sales

Not just the above 7 points, but market research gives a lot more.  

Now, there are some factors for market research to understand the potential of content for lead generation. Let’s discuss them one by one.

Targeted keywords

Keywords help in identifying the interest and want of your target audience. More specifically, you can find commercial words of your business to know customer intent to buy.

You can use keyword research tools such as Ahrefs and Google Ads Keyword Planner etc., to find the exact words to target your potential audience.

Remember, the more specific keywords you select, the more potential leads you’ll be able to get.

FAQs and People Also Ask

It is the basic behavior of humans that we like to interact with people who satisfy our minds with their knowledge.

FAQs are effective in the case of businesses too, so if your website, blog, or social media platform has all the answers to the niche-specific questions, your likely audience will definitely turn into a lead. 

Search engines show a list of frequently asked questions in the section “People Also Ask” related to every topic that helps to identify the most relevant questions searched by your prospects.

Consistency in answering all the questions supports brand building, and soon you will have a list of a loyal audience that is convinced to become to pay for your product or services.

You can take the help of these best 10 market research tools as mentioned below. 

• Answer the public 
• BuzzSumo
• Think with Google 
• Spyfu 
• Statista 
• Yelp 
• Quora 
• Reddit 
• Latana 
• Typeform 

If you can discover two things –

1. What your audience wants (through keyword research) and,
2. Where they are interacting for answers (through search engine results),

You can drive all the potential traffic to your online content resources.

Remember, content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight unless it becomes viral, which is an exceptional case. Just stick to your strategy based on your market research.

Step 2: Leverage high converting business landing pages

Landing pages can offer an average conversion rate of 26%. Hence, marketers use landing pages as one of the content strategies for lead generation.

You have to understand two main things when creating a landing page:

• Understand how to create a perfect landing page structure. 
• Focus on writing perfect web content to catch attention for more engagement to generate leads.

If you succeed in presenting the landing page with the right anatomy and offer a compelling web copy, then it will be easier to build your reader’s interest to get leads.  

Below is an example showing what a perfect landing page should look like, so scroll down fast.

You will understand why it looks appealing if you closely observe the above screenshot.  

It is primarily focusing on relevancy and usability.

Your landing page must give a great user experience to your visitors.

Cunning landing pages are attractive, but to generate qualified leads, you must curate relevant content that provides the right information. 

Below are key points to keep in mind while creating a landing page –

• Focus on accessibility: It should be easy to navigate and must offer customer-centric content.
• Appealing: Eye-catchy background that supports highlighting the content and graphics.
• Headline: It must be short, clear, and drives attention. 
• Bullet points: Benefits and usefulness of the brand should be presented in bullet points clearly.
• Personal photo: The face of the real person gives a strong visual appeal.
• Social proofs: It must have testimonials, media mentions, awards, and certificates to show high credibility.

Don’t forget to put opt-in forms and CTA (Call-To-Action) after social proof, as these will increase the chances of lead generation.

One last suggestion, make sure your landing page loads faster, as slow speed will ruin all your efforts.

So, you must optimize the loading time of your landing page for a faster landing.

Step 3: Attract with a lead magnet

A lead magnet, also known as a content upgrade, is a valuable resource that is prepared and offered free to that target audience to motivate them to perform the necessary click-to-action.

For example, a cold sales email guide can be a fantastic lead magnet for the sales and marketing team. 

The lead magnet must be able to fulfill two primary motives:  

• Motivate the visitors to provide their contact details such as email or numbers.
• Identify and filter out unqualified leads by adding tags.

Marketers rely on email marketing for better customer retention and higher inbound leads.

So, targeting your potential audience with a lead magnet for executing cold emails would be adequate.  

Still, wondering whether you need to create a lead magnet? Well, check out the following points.

• It teaches your target audience about your brand/product/services in a compelling manner.
• Also convinces your audience that you are the best in the industry.  
• It helps in building trust among your target audience.  
• It increases prospects’ engagement with your brand.

Remember your magnet must be resourceful, valuable, and informative to give a great impression to your target visitor.

In our later segment of the article, we have discussed 17 types of content that can be perfect lead magnets to engage the audience or generate leads. So don’t miss any!

Step 4: Create high-value content

Content marketing can be a powerful tool whether to win customer trust, increase website traffic or generate leads for a business.

But you must produce data-driven and valuable high intent content with a solid customer understanding to get success with your content marketing campaigns. Industry-focused content can be more valuable for lead generation.

Here are the tips followed by successful content marketers for you: 

Pinpoint the content that your audience wants 

A maximum visit to a page indicates that the subject can be a good topic for your audience.

You can find out all such critical details with the help of Google Analytics.  

Log in to your Google Analytics account, then on the Dashboard–> Behavior tab–> Site content–> All pages. You will get a similar image showing customer responses to different content types. 

Before preparing the lead magnet for your target audience –

• Do keyword research for your business and find commercial keywords. 
• Find out what the best performing content of your competitors is.  
• Feedback from your target audience will be an insight into making a robust content marketing strategy.

Once you implement these tips, you can create targeted lead magnets for your audience.

Game of successful content headlines 

Out of 10, 8 people click an article after seeing a captivating headline. Also, they continue reading if they find the headlines persuasive.

So, tweak your content headline to draw more attention from the prospects. You can master the art of writing headlines by observing online publications, magazines, and newspapers. 

Checkout and analyze top-ranking headlines 

When designing headlines for your content, the best place to learn is from Google results. After all, your audience searches here for every solution.

Check out the results shown by Google on your search. Consider the headlines of the top 5 results and now closely analyze what has made them interesting for you. 

Assemble relevant data and statistics

Do you know? 

60% of marketers must create at least one piece of content daily. Data-driven content is more successful in generating qualified leads.

Customer analysis tools such as Google Analytics and Talkwalker can help you discover exact data about the number of page views and users of your website at a particular time. 

Step 5: Content promotion is a must 

Content marketing offers versatility when it comes to promotion.  You must leverage your content with various platforms to generate more leads. 

Suppose you have created a variety of content formats like articles, blog posts, whitepapers, videos, create Infographics, online courses, and many more. 

So, what’s next?  

How to leverage this content to get more leads? 

You have to extensively promote your content to get new users for lead generation. Make sure your content provides high quality and successfully conveys your brand message. 

Guest blogging is a common practice used by B2B and B2C marketers to drive relevant traffic. You can get a loyal audience for your brand by guest blogging on other authoritative blogs.

Moreover, you can share your latest blog post on forums such as Quora, Reddit, etc.

Step 6: Do social media outreach

Irrespective of the industry type, social media is a great platform to connect with people to get support and new potential customers for your business.

Around 91% of social media users have a smartphone and mobile devices.

The only objective of social media outreach is to connect with the most likely expert in your industry to leverage a constant helping hand.

You can go with the following four effective social media engagements to get the right audience as leads.

• Do social media analysis to find the most relevant pages and follow social media experts/influencers.  
• Share famous articles of industry experts that are relevant to your business.  
• Comment on the blogs of industry-specific social media influencers.  
• Engage extensively with the content of your top industry expert.  

Remember: It is better to follow a niche-specific influencer of your industry over following a famous personality who has millions of followers.

Step 7: Lead nurturing through email marketing 

Once the lead is generated, the sales opportunity only depends on your lead nurturing process.

Lead nurturing enables you to build a trustworthy customer relationship that will make your sales conversion easier. The most favorable tool for lead nurturing is email marketing. 

Nurtured leads drive 47%bigger purchases compared to non-nurtured leads.

You can do the following 5 best practices to nurture your leads with email marketing –

• Send personalized and targeted bulk emails 
• Send targeted content that triggers your audience
• Offer discounts and free resources
• Create automated follow-up emails 
• Align your sales and marketing efforts for outreach

Through email lead nurturing, you can constantly keep in touch with your active customers, send them helpful content and invite them for a product trial to increase the chances of sales.

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Now that we know the avenue of content marketing for lead generation, marketers must have an assertive content marketing strategy.

Why do you need a documented content marketing strategy?

Though 40% of businesses don’t have a documented content strategy, it is essential to have one if you want to benchmark with high-value content.

Let’s find out what a documented form of content marketing strategy gives:  

• An organized system to achieve goals   
• Success metrics to proceed effectively  
• The consistency that led to continuous improvement

5 Best content types you can create to generate high-quality leads

To generate better leads, you need to create content your audience can relate to. Hence, below are 5 types of content every marketer can create based on their requirements.

1. Original Data & Research

Statistical data is a captivating type of content that helps build authority and gain customer trust. 

If your research and marketing team can generate useful in-depth industry reports with all metrics, bandwidth, etc., then it will be easier to get your prospect’s emails in exchange for this report.

Sharing the results of the entire study and infographics in a downloadable document will be a smarter move to generate leads. This process of creating content is highly effective as it taps into a specific demographic.

2. Guides

You can create a simple pocket guide, introductory guides, step by step guides as a content resource to generate leads for your business. 

Try to provide the necessary screenshots and statistical data to make it more interesting for your readers.

A long-form guide is one of the most effective ways of content marketing as it provides information for the entire topic.

This practice can help generate leads and help appear on the top of SERP.

3. Checklists 

A checklist is a short form of content that contains important brand relatable points which can be resourceful for readers.

You can create a checklist content with a downloadable option to get their contact details in return.

 For example, you can provide a checklist for creating a 30-60-90 day sales plan so that every rep can download it and use it to perform better.

4. eBooks

An eBook is a digital form of a book that you can read on various electronic devices such as phones, tablets, laptops, etc.

Your topic should be interesting enough that it could tempt your prospects to enter their email address for downloading it.  

Research well and discuss with your sales team before identifying whether creating an eBook will help in lead generation or not!

5. Online courses

Your target audience can fill in your form if you can offer a great online course that can upskill them or enhance their knowledge.

Also, you can provide a recorded or live session per the customer’s need and your budget.

Moreover, you can promote your course using email marketing and social media platforms to get more leads.

You can offer a lead magnet, such as lifetime access to the recording session. A skillful online course has a higher chance of generating leads. 

Apart from these 7 top lead generation content, some other famous forms of content such as templates, newsletters, SlideShare presentations, podcasts, and many more that businesses can use to generate leads.

What is content syndication and its usefulness in lead generation? 

Content syndication is a growth marketing approach in which the owned published content is republished to other pertinent sites to attract customers. 

Content syndication is beneficial in many ways; its essential benefits are mentioned below. 

• Single content can be utilized multiple times 
• Helps in generating new leads
• Republishing on good sites improves brand authority
• Helps in enhancing brand awareness
• Give a longer shelf life to your content 

Content syndication is an excellent tactic for lead generation, but you must continuously try to get the desirable results.

It is advisable to republish the maximum number of posts on various content syndicating sites.

Once you succeed in attracting your prospect and they are on your website, you must have lead generation tools so your marketing efforts don’t get wasted.

Ways to capture leads on your website

These are the best three ways through which you can capture leads, as discussed below: 

1. Lead generation web forms

A web form is created on your landing pages to capture the contact details of your website visitors in exchange for some freebies as a lead magnet.

Web forms are created with different proposals such as demo web forms, webinar enrollment web forms, gated content forms, feedback web forms, etc.

2. Live chats/ chatbots for lead generation

Do you know? 73% of customers see live chats as one of the most useful forms of communication with an organization.

Live chat and chatbots are types of customer messaging tools integrated within website landing pages to generate leads by answering the visitor’s query on any web page.

3. Meeting scheduler

Once a visitor lands on your website, you must entice them to take a certain action. You can add a meeting scheduler to your website if you have a SaaS business or consulting agency.

Therefore, your visitor can directly book meetings from your website and share their email addresses and other contact details.

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Although there are dedicated tools for web forms builder, live chats, or chatbot systems that you can pay to use, I have a better suggestion for you.

With Salesmate, you can not only capture and manage your leads but also streamline your entire business process.

Salesmate is more than lead generation and automation software; it can enhance the productivity of your sales team with features such as Sales Sequence, Mobile CRM, Sales Reports, Smart Emails, Contact Management, and Power Dialer.   

Salesmate CRM can meet various business goals, such as automating lead generation, email marketing, prospecting, lead nurturing, and deal closing.    

If you want to get software that can meet all your sales goals, then you must try Salesmate. It offers a 15-day free trial as well.

 Conclusion

Further, always keep testing and optimizing the lead generation tactics you use to maximize the effectiveness of your CRO efforts.

Make sure that your content marketing strategy aligns with your ultimate purpose and stands on prospects’ needs.