Virtually every company has dabbled in content marketing at one point or another, whether you know it or not. But, did you know that content marketing is one of the best and easiest ways to generate leads for your company? In fact, content marketing can generate up to three times more leads than other forms of marketing. Knowing this, it’s difficult to resist the idea of using your content marketing to help generate leads. But, before we dive right into how you can use your content marketing to help with lead generation, we need to go over a few basics.
What is Content Marketing?
The term content marketing is pretty broad. There are dozens of different forms of marketing that are included under the content marketing umbrella. Including but not limited to blogging, videos, and infographics. After you create the content, you can advertise it on your website, on social media channels, exchange content with others, and more. There are a number of ways that content marketing can benefit your company. including increasing brand awareness, social media engagement, and ultimately generating leads. Keep reading to learn tips for specific types of content marketing.
Types of Content Marketing
The type of content that you use will change how you market it. Therefore how you can generate leads from it. In addition, each type of content that you create will drive a different quality of lead. Keep this in mind when creating your content. This is because you want to focus on generating the highest-quality leads that have the potential to become paying customers.
Blogging
Blogging is one of the most popular forms of content marketing, for good reason. By writing high-quality and optimized blog articles, you have a good chance of increasing your website traffic. And, if you’re consistent with your posting schedule, you can double or even triple your traffic. Blogging can be very useful for companies of all sizes and all ages. But, it can be especially useful for newer companies that are struggling to drive traffic. Pair your high-quality blog articles with a strong call to action, and you have a chance to drive a few conversions along the way. However, blogging doesn’t always drive the most qualified leads. This is because anyone searching the web can read your articles. Including students doing research and people who are just curious about the topic and not looking for a solution.
Gated Content
If you’re looking to generate leads and contact information, gated content may be the way to go. Gated content is a pretty broad term, as many forms of content can be included under this umbrella. Including datasets, tutorials, advice, trends, and other pieces of content that are exclusive to your industry. And not many others would have access to, or have had the time to put together. The more exclusive your information is, the more likely people are to submit their contact information to gain access. If you’re interested in learning how to use gated content to generate leads, take a look at this article.
Video Content
Over the last few years, video content has become one of, if not the most consumed form of content. In fact, 54% of consumers in the US want video content over other forms of content. And, there are a ton of different ways that you can create video content depending on your company. Tik Tok, YouTube, and Instagram Reels are the most well known, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Webinars, tutorials on your website, and a video series are all great options for B2B companies to experiment with video content. Ensure you include some sort of call to action. Like where to find more information about your company, or another relevant video. If you’re interested in video content, but you’re not sure how to get started, check out Hubspot’s YouTube channel for some great examples.
Customer Success Stories
Customer success stories, also called case studies or testimonials, are fantastic ways to generate leads. And, they can be used in more ways than you might think. After you have created the perfect case study, you can use it on your website, social media channels, YouTube, and even paid advertising. One of the best ways to use your customer success stories is with remarketing ads. Once someone has visited your website, you can show them a quote or video clip from your customer success stories to show them why your current clients are so happy. By doing this, your prospects will have a hard time saying no! If you’re not sure how to build customer case studies that are optimized for lead generation and conversions, check out otrillo for help.
Infographics
Infographics are a type of content that a lot of companies don’t take advantage of. They can come in all shapes and sizes, and can be as long or as short as you need. Here at Visitor Queue, we have found a lot of success with infographics. Our top ranking blog article, Average Cost Per Lead for Different Marketing Channels, is paired with a concise infographic. This infographic gets the point across quickly. Our readers can visualize what marketing channels typically yield the best results without combing through the entire article.
In addition, if you build high-quality infographics, you might notice that other companies will use your image or quote your stats in their article. You may even come across your own infographic on LinkedIn or Pinterest. Now that you’re familiar with some of the most popular forms of content marketing, let’s go through how you can use this content to your advantage and generate leads for your company.
Social Media Marketing
Like I mentioned before, when most people think of content marketing, they also think of social media marketing. Social media marketing and content marketing go hand in hand. Each of the types of content mentioned above, as well as other types of content, can be used on social media in one way or another. One of my favorite ways to use content marketing and social media marketing to generate leads is with retargeting ads. As an example, if you have increased your website traffic with blog articles, you can retarget them on social media channels. This is helpful when you consider that the average prospect takes 8 touchpoints with a company before they convert.
Content Exchange Opportunities
A great way to get your company in front of relevant prospects while building domain authority is to exchange content with other companies. There’s a good chance that you have received emails from other companies asking you to do a link exchange or write blog articles for each other’s website. But, did you know that these small tasks can eventually have a big impact on your website? The more legitimate websites that link to your website, the higher your domain authority will be. This will help your website rank higher on search results, which means more visitors to your website.
Increase Website Traffic
Most forms of content marketing will help you increase your website traffic. Increasing your website traffic can help you get in front of people who may be interested in what your company has to offer. By having a strong website with relevant calls to action, this increase in traffic can increase your chances of driving leads and conversions. Keep in mind that some forms of content may drive more qualified visitors to your website than others. Track your website traffic in your Google Analytics account, and compare it to other stats and trends. A few of the most common analytics to compare your traffic to is how they were acquired, bounce rate, and conversion rate. These numbers will help you see if your content marketing efforts are driving the right people to your website.
Choose Content Smartly
In order to generate leads that are actually interested in what your company has to offer, you need to ensure that you choose your content smartly. This means building and creating content that is highly relevant to your target audience. If you don’t craft your content with your target audience in mind, you may get a lot of engagement, but it might not be the people that you want to engage. As a result, you might generate a negative return on investment. You probably have a general idea of what your target audience responds best to. But, it’s important to stay up to date on trends in your industry to ensure there isn’t something better that you could be doing.
Enticing Call to Action
Regardless of what content marketing strategy you’re using, you’ll need to have a call to action. There are a ton of different ways that you can use a call to action. And, it will all depend on your target audience, your content, and how you are sharing your content. As an example, if you are sharing an infographic on LinkedIn, you could ask your followers to engage by commenting their thoughts and evoke the conversation. While engaging with your audience like this may seem small, you can use this to your advantage by building a relationship and social selling. Plus, you can use retargeting ads to people who have previously liked or commented on your content.
Identify Your Website Visitors
Like I mentioned earlier, content marketing is a great way to increase your website traffic. But, you can only get so much information from Google Analytics. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could identify all of these new website visitors? With Visitor Queue, you can. Visitor Queue is a B2B lead generation software that can identify the companies that visit your website. Including how they were acquired, what pages they visited, and how long they spent on each page. Additionally, your team will gain exclusive access to information about their company, including employee contact information to help you reach out. Content marketing is a vital part of increasing your website traffic. Visitor Queue can help you turn those new visitors into paying customers. Start your 14-day free trial of Visitor Queue today and stop losing leads.
What’s Next?
Whether you’re a small local business or a billion dollar corporation, virtually every business can benefit from content marketing in one way or another. And, if you create your content with lead generation in mind, you can increase your company’s revenue. My biggest tip is to ensure you are setting goals specific to how you are going to use your content marketing to generate leads. This is because it can be difficult to visualize how your small pieces of content lead to large conversions. And, by setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, you can track and analyze exactly where you succeed or fall short. If you have any questions about how Visitor Queue can help you identify your website traffic and increase conversions, don’t hesitate to reach out.