What's your best content marketing tip?

Content marketing is an effective strategy you can use to generate leads for your business. According to Marketo, 93% of b2b companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies. This is why 85% 0f b2b marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal in 2016.

I would share today with you not only my best tip on this topic, but how it is possible an effective content marketing strategy for a business.

Let’s start!

STEP1: Choose the right target audience

A good content strategy will involve choosing the right audience that will consume your content. Therefore, before you start creating your content, you need to know your ideal customer. You need to have a detailed knowledge about their age, location, income status, educational background, job title, gender, their pain paints, etc. These details will enable you to develop a buyer persona.

STEP 2: Find the right content type

Now you have the picture of your ideal customer, it is time to find suitable content type for them. There are different types of content you can create for your audience. But for the purpose of lead generation, you need:

Blog post: Creating blog posts is important for lead generation. You need high-quality blog posts that will educate and inspire your audience. Blog posts should be published on regular basis. According to Hubspot, b2b companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than 4x as many leads than those that blog only 4.5 times per month.

E-Books: E-book is longer and more in-depth than blog posts. It adds value to your target audience and it is a great tool for lead generation purposes. Your potential customers can download it after opting into your email list.

Video content: Video requires more time and money to create. However, it generates engagement when neatly done. Almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.

Infographics: Infographics are becoming more popular than before. It contains organized data presented in a visually compelling format. You can add it to your blog posts and also share it on the social media networks.

Mini-course: You can create mini-courses in your niche to further educate your audience to know more about your offerings. This can be a series of posts on the same topics or series of videos.

Webinars: Webinars are good for lead generation purposes. It helps to build trust and credibility in your audience. This is what your audience needs before they can do business with you.

Now that you know the right type of content that will drive traffic and also turn them into leads for your business, the next thing to do is to look for appropriate channel to promote the content.

STEP 3: Select the correct channel and spread your content

There are different kinds of channel you can use to distribute your content. They can either be free or paid. The free channel is not totally free as you will be paying with your time. It takes a lot of time to spread content and also see a tangible result. Free channels include Social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, G+, Instagram, etc), Forum marketing, Guest posting, etc.

STEP 4: Prepare your lead magnet

A lead magnet is an irresistible offer you have prepared for your prospective customers. It is a resource that should your target audience solve their problems. This means it must be valuable, useful, of high quality and easy for them to digest.

Your lead magnet can be an e-book, white paper, demo, etc. The purpose of a lead magnet is to assist your audience to learn from you. The more they know about you, the more they will trust your brand.

You need a good landing page that will entice your audience to subscribe. A good landing page should enable you to capture your visitors’ emails.

As an example, this is one of LeadsBridge’s most downloaded lead magnets.

STEP 5: Write high quality Blog post

Don’t forget the content in content marketing. Lead generation with content marketing works because of the content. You need highly engaging and quality blog posts to entice your audience to become leads.

A good blog post must contain a clickable headline that will entice your audience to click and read. A Copyblogger research study revealed that 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. You need a headline that will entice your visitors to click and read your content.

STEP 6: Engage with your audience

One way to keep your audience coming back to your blog is by engaging with them. This will help you to create a strong community around your blog. As your audience reads your blog and you nurture them with relevant posts, they will start leaving comments on your blog posts and your social media channels. Make sure you reply all their comments. Don't ignore them. Make it easy for readers to contact you by adding a contact page or email address to your blog.

STEP 7: Retarget your audience and generate leads

The truth is, 95% of people who visits your website will not return again. That means little to no lead generation for your business. You can solve this problem by using retargeting. You can retarget your blog readers to bring them back to your website or get them to convert to leads. You can do this by placing a pixel or code on your website. When anyone comes to your page to read the content, you can easily retarget them with ads on other websites or social media channels.

Conclusion

Using content marketing for lead generation is an effective method. All you need do is to follow the guide above.