6 Steps to Killer Content for Lead Generation.
Content Marketing: A Lead Generation Tool
Leads come in many different shapes and forms. Telemarketing, online forms, lead generation tools and so on. With the rise of internet and social media platforms came another player into the field: content marketing. Not only does it improve your online visibility, it also helps you to create an extra pipeline of lead generation. Now, we all want killer content to increase our amount of leads. However, killer content is only attainable if you understand your audience. In this manual, we will explain to you how to find out who your audience is and how to create a content strategy plan that helps you generate those leads.
The Buyer’s Journey
If you buy something online, or look into a new service, whatever that involves you doing a purchase or thinking about engaging with a certain company, it probably started somewhere on the internet. This is also known as the ‘’buyer’s journey’’. It’s the path we walk in making a purchase decision. In this journey, we research a problem, find potential solutions to it and then choose one of those solutions. Customers could be in any part of that path in any stage: Unaware. Pain/Problem Aware or Solution Aware. This is where content marketing comes into play.
In most cases, with the exception of a few impulse purchases, a person begins their journey in an ‘’unaware stage’’. This person likely fits the demographic of your ideal client but they are unaware of your product or in need of it. It is possible that they experience an event that triggers their situation. This kicks off their buyer’s journey.
Let’s say a person wants to get healthier and improve their physical condition. They usually don’t immediately decide to purchase a gym membership. They probably go to the internet first to learn more about memberships, different gyms in the area and make decisions as they progress through the following stages in the buyer journey. As a content marketeer, you assist in this process.
Awareness Stage
In this stage, the buyer is experiencing a problem that leads them to trying to find a solution. Let’s say, someone wants to build more muscle. They probably take their question to the internet and do a search query. ‘’How do I get stronger?’’. In the awareness stage, they are not even thinking about solutions, brands or providers yet. It’s too early for that. Instead, they are focussing on finding information that helps them understand their problem better. In this stage, you want to show up in search engines, not only to establish your authority but also to gain trust of buyers who are starting the journey. It takes around 7 times for a person to see your brand to actually make a purchase, so starting off early is crucial.
Consideration Stage
In the consideration stage, the buyer will have defined a clear name to their problem, and are committed to understanding and researching the available approaches to solving the problem. In other words, they are searching for solutions.
As an example: in the consideration stage a buyer would for instance do a search enquiry like: ‘’Better to go to a gym or to hire a personal trainer to gain muscle?’’. They are not yet ready to buy, but are exploring the available options. The goal when it comes to content marketing here is to consider your indirect competitors and educate your target audience on the pros and cons.
As an example: in the consideration stage a buyer would for instance do a search enquiry like: ‘’Better to go to a gym or to hire a personal trainer to gain muscle?’’. They are not yet ready to buy, but are exploring the available options. The goal when it comes to content marketing here is to consider your indirect competitors and educate your target audience on the pros and cons.
Decision Stage
In the decision stage, the buyer understands their problem and solution approaches, and now has the goal to have a short list of available vendors and make a decision on their purchase.
In this stage, a buyer will do a more specific search, where they will compare product A vs product B. An example of a search enquiry could be: ‘’Basic Fit or Train More’’. They are ready to spend money, and are searching for the one vendor that meets their needs.
Creating content for the buyers’ journey
As in all marketing disciplines, it’s essential to understand your audience: how they think, the answers they seek and the path they take to find a solution. After understanding this, you create a documented content strategy that maps out the content you will present to your buyer persona’s through various stages of the buyer’s journey.
It’s important to understand your audience. When you don’t completely understand what they are searching for and what their needs are, a disconnect is created between your business and your potential customers. In content marketing this translates to putting out content that doesn’t really relate to your target audience.
To avoid this disconnect, consider the stage they’re at in their journey. What does someone want to see or read in their awareness stage, or their consideration stage? Also, take the best channels to put out your content into consideration. Understand who your target group is, and which channels they use.
6 Steps To Killer Content for Lead Generation
Now you know who your target audience is, it’s time to create a content strategy plan. Not only does it help you create a method to the content madness (forget posting randomly or crafting posts last minute), it also helps you determine which content fits with your business and target audience, and align those together. We are going to show you the 6 steps to create killer content, without having to spend hours every day on your social media platforms.
Remember: creating content is not just about filling up web pages to rank high on search engines. It’s about giving your audiences and prospects valuable, relevant information and insights to develop trust.
So, how do we create a content plan?
- Goals
What do you hope to achieve?
Look at your business objectives. How can content marketing contribute to that? For instance: one of your business goals is to improve your webshop and generate more sales. One way of doing that is by generating more traffic to your website. What kind of content would contribute to this goal? Know your goals before you begin planning, and you’ll have an easier time determining what’s best for your strategy.
2. Audience
Who will it influence?
To develop a successful plan, you need to clearly define your content’s target audience — also
known as your .
This is especially important for those who are starting out or are new to marketing. By knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to read and convert on. Your buyer’s persona should be a clear representation of who they are, what they want, which channels they use and so on. Hubspot has a free tool that helps you create a buyer’s persona, we’ve linked it for you here.
3. Run an audit
What content works and what not?
Early on, most brands start with blog posts. If you at some point want to venture out into different formats, you can run a content audit to assess your top-performing and lowest-performing content. Then, use that information to inform which direction you take next.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you should review your content marketing efforts and last year’s results. Figure out what you can do differently in the upcoming year and set new goals.
Whatever stage you’re in, a content audit will help you determine what resonates best with your audience, identify gaps in your topic clusters, and brainstorm fresh content ideas.
4. Process
How will you execute?
How will you schedule your posts and on which channels? There are many free to use tools online to schedule content in order to keep it consistent and easier for yourself. Some great platforms for content planning are for instance Hootsuite, Buffer and Planoly.
5. Determine the type of content
What kind of content will you publish?
There are a variety of options out there for content you can create, from written content like ebooks and blog posts to audio content like podcasts. It’s important here to circle back to your buyer’s journey. Who are you making the content for? Which channels do they use and which type of content works best for these channels.
In the next section, we’ll discuss some of the most popular tools to help you get you started on your content creation journey.
The Feedly RSS feed is a wonderful way to track trendy topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time. You start by telling the software what topics you’re most interested in and its AI tool will do the rest.
You won’t need to search the internet to find new content ideas anymore. Instead, you can go through your curated list, compiled from news sites, newsletters, and social media.
Want to discover popular content and content ideas? BuzzSumo offers several market research tools, one of which uses social media shares to determine if a piece of content is popular and well-liked.
This information helps you see which content ideas would do well if you were to create content about them.
Get your mind gears going with IMPACT’s blog title generator. This tool shows you common headline formats with blanks where you can fill in the subject you have in mind.
This brainstorming technique helps you put general ideas in contexts that would be appealing to your target audience. Once you have a headline you like, BlogAbout lets you add it to your “Notebook” so you can save your best ideas.
6. Performance
Was it a success?
Define KPI’s and check back on them after a month. KPI’s could for instance be clicks, views or Google Rankings. Check which content did well and which didn’t. Some content can be re-used at a later point, some content is not relevant anymore in a year’s time. Always analyse to see what works and what doesn’t, so you can improve.
Content Marketing Strategy Example
To better understand what a content strategy is, let’s explore an example of real-life content strategies based on a few business goals.
Evernote, a note-taking app, developed an SEO-driven content strategy to attract new prospects to their website. Evernote’s blog offers a wealth of knowledge on the topic of productivity. They posted a blog post named How To Stay Disciplined When Times Are Tough. But why is a company that sells a note-taking app writing about discipline?
Because it’s how their target group likely finds their website when searching for “How to stay disciplined” on Google. People interested in reading content related to productivity are likely the same people interested in downloading Evernote’s note-taking product. Here’s why understanding your audience and creating content based on their needs is so important. If Evernote’s marketing team simply created content for the sake of increasing traffic — like publishing “Our 10 Favorite Beyonce Songs” — it wouldn’t be considered a content strategy at all, it would just be content.
A strategy needs to align content with business goals. In Evernote’s case, the strategy aligns content (blog posts on productivity) with the business goal of attracting leads (people interested in note-taking) to their site.
Pro tip: We don’t create content stuffed with keywords for algorithms. We create content to draw in our customers and foster brand love. To create content that resonates with your audience, you must understand intent based search. In other words, make sure that you’re providing the type of content, information, and answers that someone searching on a given keyword is actually seeking.
Conclusion
The one thing to keep in mind is: always align your content strategy with your ultimate goals and your target audience’s needs. This way, every piece of content will return value to your business, add to your ROI and deliver you the leads your brand needs. Further, always keep testing and optimizing lead generation tactics you use to maximise effectiveness of your CRO efforts.
—
Read this blog in Dutch
