Over the past few years, content marketing has been a widely accepted method for lead generation by businesses all over the world. In fact, 90% of B2B marketers believe that creating valuable and relevant content is an effective strategy to attract new business prospects.
Is your company considering whether or not to use content marketing as part of a comprehensive lead generation campaign? If so, you need to consider how you can best leverage this technique in order to help drive awareness towards your brand and incite action from viewers.
Here are 8 creative ways you can use content marketing for lead generation: Paul Haarman
1) Blogging Platforms –
In the blogging world, there are various platforms that you can use to host your content. Some of the most popular are WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, and Type Pad.
2) Slide Share –
This is a great social media platform that is used for hosting presentations in order to build awareness of your brand.
3) EBooks –
If you’re creating an eBook then remember that it’s important for businesses to know exactly who they are trying to target with their message, which is why readers must be targeted by demographics and company size. There are many different eBook formats out there including ePub, Mobi file format, PDF document, or Word document files. When choosing this option however you need to ensure that whatever your choice of format happens to be that it can easily be distributed on all major smartphones, tablets, and computers in order to remain accessible for your potential leads.
4) Free e-newsletters –
If you regularly send out newsletters then it’s important that they are informative, concise, and contain valuable content in order to inspire people to take action on whatever links are contained within them. Some examples of this could be links to articles you wrote were the thoughts expressed align with the reader’s own thoughts or asking open-ended questions which can help provide perspective or lead to a conversation with one another.
5) YouTube Videos –
By creating one of these types of videos you have an opportunity to show off your business’ personality by including employees in videos who are genuine, honest, funny, and most importantly know how to talk about their products or services in a way that is convincing to potential leads. Remember though if you are posting videos on YouTube that it’s important to choose carefully which ones you want to be viewed by the public and which should remain private.
6) Podcasts –
This type of media can help inspire people with topics surrounding your industry while helping you reach out to new contacts that might not have otherwise discovered your brand. A great example of how podcasts are used for a lead generation would be through interviews, where speakers are introduced as experts in their particular field. If they are interviewed by an expert in another chosen technology, technology professionals who hear this interview may find this guest speaker credible enough to consider hiring them for upcoming projects.
7) Facebook –
You need to regularly post new updates to keep fans interested. You can also use this social media platform for posting videos or sending out promotional offers to attract even more leads.
8) Twitter –
When using this type of site, you should try your best to post valuable information to followers whenever possible. This could be anything from links that are interesting, retweets of informative articles, or coupons offered only to those who follow your company’s feed.
Tips:
1) If you’re planning on creating a blog, it’s important not only to have one but also to ensure that the content is updated frequently so as not to lose any credibility with readers who might otherwise have been willing to hire the services of your business based off what they read at first. It’s best to have a blog that is created by multiple authors for this very reason so that there is always fresh content being added.
2) If you’re not necessarily tech-savvy or into video creation, you can hire third-party companies who offer services in these areas at a fraction of the cost of what your company would need to pay someone internally to do the same job. For example, if you want a specific video made but don’t have editing software or talent on your team, agencies such as Shootsta have qualified employees with backgrounds in marketing and social media presence who are highly skilled in both creating and promoting videos on various platforms including YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook Live Video Producer, Twitter Streaming Media Producer, Pinterest Feed Content Producer among others.
3) It’s best to keep the content on your business’ Twitter feed limited to one or two new posts per day at most. If you’re tweeting more than this, it’s possible that you are spamming other users who will not only unfollow you but also report your account. Only tweet when there is something important or valuable for others to see.
Conclusion:
The bottom line is if you want to make the most out of your social media campaign, you need to create content that is both informative and entertaining; something that will make followers excited about following your business on different platforms, as Paul Haarman noted.
