According to 61 percent of marketers, lead generation is their biggest challenge. Furthermore, 53 percent report spending over half their budget on lead generation.
Do these statistics resonate with you? Are you struggling to generate leads and grow your business?
If so, your content marketing strategy might be part of the problem. Luckily, we’re here to help.
This guide will teach you everything you need to know about attracting the right leads with your content marketing strategy.
How Does Content Marketing Affect Lead Generation?
Most businesses know that creating content is important if they want to rank higher on Google and improve their SEO Optimization efforts. They aren’t always familiar, though, with how content marketing affects lead generation. The following are some specific ways that this works:
Increases Credibility: Quality content shows that yours is a legitimate business and makes it easier for people to trust that your products or services are the real deal.
Strengthens Relationships: Regularly publishing content creates more opportunities for you to connect with your target audience, learn more about them, and build stronger relationships.
Encourages Engagement: Regularly publishing content also encourages more engagement from your target audience; it gives them chances to connect with you and visit your website, click on your links, and learn about your products or services.
Over time, all of these outcomes can boost your business’s bottom line. This will make it more profitable and successful in the long run.
Content Marketing Tips for Better Lead Generation
Clearly, a good content marketing strategy is key if you want to improve your lead generation efforts and attract the right kinds of leads to your business. Here are some specific content marketing and SEO content tips you can implement today to see these kinds of outcomes:
Get to Know Your Audience
The more you know about the people for whom you’re creating content, the easier it is to get them to engage with that content, become more interested in your business, and eventually invest in your products or services.
If it’s been a while since you’ve done some customer research, now is a good time to revisit this information. Take some time to learn about your target audience and learn the answers to these questions:
How old are they?
Where do they live?
What is their gender?
What is their job?
What is their income level?
What are their interests and hobbies?
What social media platforms do they use?
What kinds of content do they engage with most often?
Conducting surveys is a good way to find the answers to these questions and learn other important details about your audience. Send them to your mailing list or use the polling features on social media to gather data.
Focus on Search Intent
The term “Search Intent” refers to an internet user’s primary goal when they’re typing something into a search engine. There are 4 main types of search intent:
Informational: Looking for an answer to a specific question or looking for information on a particular topic (for example, “chocolate chip cookie recipe”)
Navigational: Looking to visit (or navigate to) a specific business’s website (for example, “Nike”)
Transactional: Looking to make a purchase (for example, “iPhone 13”)
Commercial: Looking for information to help them make a purchase in the future (for example, “best washing machine” or “best French press”)
When you focus on search intent when creating content, you can ensure your content shows up in the search results of the people who need it most.
This will help them to build a positive relationship with your brand. It will also increase the likelihood that they’ll eventually want to buy what you’re selling.
Create for Search Engines
In addition to creating content for your target audience and focusing on their specific search intent, you also need to think about the search engines they’ll be using to find your content.
A solid SEO (search engine optimization) strategy will work in your favor when it comes to generating more leads with your marketing content. Here are a few specific SEO best practices to keep in mind when creating any type of content:
Keyword Research
Use keyword research tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to find the keywords and phrases that your target audience is most likely to be using when they search online. This lets you know what kinds of words and phrases you should be incorporating into your content to boost your search engine ranking.
Keyword Usage
Speaking of incorporating keywords, using keywords and phrases in the right places throughout your content is also important. For example, you should always use your target keyword in your title, meta title, meta description, and in at least 1 heading in your content.
Beware of overusing keywords, though. This is also known as keyword stuffing, and it can be a red flag for search engines.
If search engines see that you’re using tons of keywords — especially if you’re using them unnaturally — they might assume you’re trying to juke the stats. As a result, they will penalize your content with a lower ranking, which will also affect your lead generation efforts.
Content Readability
Finally, make sure your content is easy to read. This involves using short sentences and short paragraphs. Nobody wants to be hit with a big wall of text when they visit a new website, right?
Use headings and subheadings to break up your content and make it easy to skim, too.
It’s not uncommon for a person to spend less than 1 minute on a particular webpage, so you need to make the most of that minute.
If your content is easy to skim and provides quick answers to users’ questions, they’ll be more inclined to return in the future and become more loyal to your business.
Create Content Consistently
Your target audience is more likely to visit your website regularly — and eventually become paying customers — if you are consistently creating and publishing new content. Consistency and a high frequency of new posts send positive signals to search engines and help you to achieve a higher ranking.
Keep in mind, though, that you shouldn’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
If you’re so focused on putting out a new blog post every day or several times per week that you start to publish low-quality content, you’re not going to see the kinds of results you’re hoping for. People will be disappointed with the lack of information or the lack of quality writing and will start looking elsewhere for information.
Diversify Your Content
Blog posts are not the only type of content you can create to attract new website visitors and generate more leads. In fact, diversifying your content is a great way to build your audience, increase brand awareness, and get more people interested in what you have to offer.
If you’ve only been focusing on blogging, perhaps you need to shake it up and add some video content to your website. Video is highly favored by search engines, especially Google (after all, Google owns YouTube), so it’s an excellent choice for businesses that want to improve their ranking and increase online engagement.
You may want to consider other types of visual content, too, such as infographics. Infographics are highly shareable and will help you to gain more traction on social media platforms. This can lead to more people visiting your website and checking out your products or services.
Level Up Your Links
Improving your link-building strategy will bring new people to your website and help you to grow your audience.
If you can get links to your website embedded on high-quality, trustworthy websites, you’ll get people interested in what you have to offer. After all, if a site that they already trust has added a link to your content, that must mean your business is credible as well.
Start reaching out to authoritative websites and asking for guest blogging opportunities and other link-building opportunities. You can also get in touch with other brands that are similar to yours and ask if they want to collaborate.
Monitor Results and Adjust as Needed
Finally, make sure you’re monitoring your results regularly and carefully.
Pay attention to the types of content that generate the most interest, for example, or find out where customers found your business after they make a purchase online. The more you know, the easier it will be to fine-tune your strategy in the future and make better content creation decisions.
Start Attracting Better Leads Today
As you can see, there are lots of ways you can level up your content and generate more leads. Follow the content marketing and SEO best practices discussed above so you can start making positive changes today.
Do you need more help generating leads and improving your digital marketing strategy? If so, we can’t wait to help at Boral Agency.
From teaching you about the latest Google updates to helping with content creation, we offer a wide range of services that will yield great results.
Contact us today to set up a consultation.
