Serving existing customers and generating leads can be done through content marketing. Here are a few stats that show why content marketing is worth the hype!
Approaching content marketing strategically is very much necessary to generate leads and increase ROI. If you think content marketing is all about blogging, it is time for you to rethink! This blog is all about understanding what perfect content marketing is! I have divided this blog into three headings: Content creation, content distribution, and measurement.
Content Creation
The stages of conversion – The journey of a customer
Marketing is all about conversion. The art of converting a cold prospect into a customer is the essence of marketing. The prospect passes through various stages to finally become your customer and your content needs to be created accordingly. This is exactly why I said Content Marketing is much more than blogging. There are three stages that you should take your prospects through with your outstanding content marketing strategy:
- Awareness – Letting the prospect know why he needs to approach your business. Basically, you should inspire them and entertain them at this stage.
- Evaluation – You should prove why you are better than your competitors and what good is your business to the prospect. Lead magnets are to be deployed at this stage. You ought to generate leads at this stage, is what I am saying.
- Conversion – This is the moment of purchase. This is the stage where the cold prospect turns into your valuable customer. Content marketing conversion rates show the success of your campaign.
How to get your content ready and how to generate leads at various stages using contents?
The first step of content marketing is getting your content ready. Lead generation through content marketing is dependent on one important thing called “target audience.” The content you develop should focus on the target audience and the medium of sharing such content should also be audience specific. For example, if you have a food blog and you share videos of your recipes, you should make sure to share it in such a way that it reaches your targeted audience. In such a context, social media is one of the best places to share. This is effective even when you want to attract sponsors for your blog, say an olive oil producing company. They sponsor for your video episode and you can get your job done. It is a win-win!
Content marketing at every stage is vital and getting your content ready can be done with the help of “The Lifecycle of Contents.”
The Lifecycle of Contents: Lead generation techniques
| Stages | Content Marketing Techniques |
| Awareness | Blogs Updates on social media Podcasts (Audio and video) E-books Digital Magazines Infographics Photographs Print Magazines/Newsletters etc. |
| Evaluation | Quizzes Surveys Case studies White Papers Software Downloads Webinars etc. |
| Conversion | Free trials Demo sessions Customer testimonials Specifications sheets Events etc. |
The effectiveness of the above content marketing techniques can be well understood with the graph below:
Types of content and their connection with your goals
Creating a piece of content that gets shared on Facebook, retweeted on Twitter, and generates backlinks are the topics on which any content marketing team will likely focus on. Creating one content master piece that just pierces through all marketing platforms can be a boon but it is just not as easy as it sounds. Generating one such content that goes viral is not what businesses can do easily. So, how to create a content for marketing? Developing a strategy is what perfect content marketing is all about. Here are a few things about amplifying your content.
Goals of content marketing – “Jack of all trades, Master of none”
The goals of a content marketing strategy are generating traffic, improving rankings, and generating leads. All these goals cannot be achieved at a single go and the idea pretty much unrealistic. In an attempt to achieve all the goals, you may end up publishing something, thereby ditching all your goals. Go with a “one thing at a time approach.” Here are four main types of content that can help you achieve your goals.
- Viral content – Traffic magnet and helps in the awareness stage.
- Evergreen content – Boost your rankings using keywords. Who doesn’t like to stay on top in the Google search page?
- Backlinks earning content – Create contents that are useful enough for other sites to refer. Backlinksare definitely a plus!
- Lead generating contents – Get contact information using attractive downloadable pieces. Useful in the conversion stage.
Each and every content you create on the basis of the above four categories should help you achieve at least one of your goals and trust me, you can be happy if that is done!
Conversion of leads to customers – Give them what they need
Throughout the blog, I kept saying content, content, and content. You might be wondering what sort of content you should create to convert your leads into customers. How does content marketing generate leads and what sort of content you should deliver? I have got an answer for that too!
| Type of contents that lead to conversion | Example |
| Contents that influence the prospects buying decision | Content on “Investing in digital marketing, Good or bad?” by a Digital marketing agency |
| Content that explains latest industry trends | Content on “Are floral prints in trend?” by an online fashion boutique. |
| Tutorials on “How-to” | Content on “How to make your beard soft?”by a company producing grooming items for men |
| Case studies and real time examples to influence the prospects and convince them to become your customers. | Inserting “We have successfully implemented our Risk analytics software in XYZ Inc.” in one of the blogs |
Content Distribution
Distributing your thoughtfully crafted content is as important as creating it. Here are the various channels through which your content can be distributed. It goes without saying, be mindful of the target audience while choosing the channel of distribution.
- Search engines
- Pay per click and social ads and
- Social media
Measurement of content marketing success
Three major metrics for measuring content marketing effectiveness are:
- Bounce rates– The bounce rate means the number of users who leave your website after viewing just one page. Google analytics can help in the measurement of bounce rates. High bounce rates as you might have already guessed is not a good sign for customer retention purposes.
- ROI– If you are spending more on Content marketing than you earn as a result of such marketing, make necessary changes right away! A low or a negative Return on Investment can do no good.
- Conversion rates– The major goal of your campaign is conversions. You can track conversion rates using various methods. In the case of e-commerce websites shopping carts that are abandoned and sales are used for tracking. You can also use Google analytics to track. You can set up goals for sales, sign-ups, and downloads of downloadable pieces and track the performance of your content marketing campaign and measure the effectiveness of content marketing.
The above are the various pointers that can be used while creating a Content Marketing strategy. At the end of the day nothing can go wrong with useful, engaging, and informative contents.