Every startup needs a constant flow of leads to generate more sales and grow its business. One of the best ways to generate high-quality leads is through content marketing.
Content marketing costs 62% less and generates three times as many leads as traditional marketing.
Here are five ways startups can generate leads using content marketing:
1. Create Lead Magnet Content
Lead magnet refers to offering an incentive to potential customers in exchange for their personal information like an email address.
Here are some of the most reliable types of lead magnet content for startups:
- Ebooks: These types of content offer in-depth knowledge about a specific topic to readers. For example, Hubspot offers tons of ebooks for free in exchange for details like name, email, phone number, and website URL.
- Original research reports: People always look for the latest research reports. Make sure to conduct research and offer the report for free to your target audience.
- Infographics: Create infographics full of facts and statistics in the form of a lead magnet. For example, Satmetrix releases research reports in the form of infographics. However, to get access to it, you will need to fill in your personal details, such as name, business email, phone number, etc.
- Free courses: This is yet another great way to attract potential customers. Create educational videos (or written content) on something that your ideal customers are most interested in learning.
- Free templates: Offer downloadable, interactive templates to make it easier for your target audience to do their work. For example, if you are in the digital marketing business, you can give templates related to email marketing, SEO reporting, or a social media calendar.
2. Host Webinars
When it comes to generating leads, webinars can prove very effective because of their high perceived value. Besides, webinars are easily accessible as compared to traditional seminars, thereby attracting more leads.
Follow the best practices while conducting webinars to generate more leads:
- Address your ideal customer’s biggest pain points in the webinar.
- Promote your webinar at least three to four weeks before the day of the event.
- Leave some time for a question and answer session in your webinar. 92% of webinar attendees want a live Q&A session at the end of the webinar.
- Follow up with participants to check how their experience was with the webinar and if they wish to access the offline version of the event.
- Use webinar software, the best of which allows you to automate email marketing (to promote the event), supports chat functionality and offers split-screen features to add co-presenters.
3. Use Interactive Content
Interactive content refers to the content that requires input from the readers. Quizzes are one the examples of interactive content that you can use to generate leads. You can then ask users for their email addresses to send the quiz results to them.
Here are some more types of interactive content for lead generation:
- Run a contest and offer your customers something for participation. One of the most recent examples of this is the OnePlus Nord PopUp Contest. To buy the OnePlus Nord before the official release date, customers need to create an avatar and share it on Instagram with the #NordPopUp. In the end, OnePlus asks users to share their email addresses so they can inform them if they win an invitation code to early access to the sale.
- Create a tool related to your industry that you think would be beneficial for your target audience. For example, if you are in digital marketing, you can create a calculator that helps customers predict the ROI of their ad campaigns.
- Create interactive infographics that provide valuable information to your target audience quickly. It also gives the flexibility of exploring the data in detail to the viewers.
4. Publish Highly-Valuable Blog Posts
Blog posts help educate your target audience and demonstrate your expertise in the industry. This is essential, especially for startups who need to convince prospects to choose them over other big companies.
Here are some of the qualities that every highly valuable and converting blog post has:
- An enticing headline: Ensure that your content’s headline is compelling enough to make potential customers click on it.
- Actionable tips: Remember, your ideal customers are looking for solutions to their problems. Give them solutions that can be implemented instantly.
- Relevant visuals: Publishing text-only content makes the blog boring. Make sure it has suitable visuals that make your posts more engaging.
- Links to high-quality resources: Add links to external (and internal) valuable posts on the topic. This makes your content more useful for your target audience.
- Is not sales-oriented: It might be compelling to add your company or product details in the blogs you publish. But, the highly-converting contents are just the opposite. They focus solely on adding value to the reader’s life.
Also, make sure each blog post has an option that allows readers to subscribe to your newsletter.
Tip: Create blog posts related to the topics you have covered on the lead magnet to encourage readers to download it.
5. Distribute Content Through the Right Channels
Now that you have created highly-converting content, it’s time to distribute them. If it doesn’t reach your ideal customers, all your efforts will go in vain.
However, it is crucial to choose the right distribution channel. By “right,” I mean the platforms your ideal customers are using.
Here are some ways and channels you can distribute your content:
- Send it to your email subscribers to nurture them until they convert.
- Repurpose the content and share them on social media (along with a link) to drive customers to your website.
- Run paid ads to widen your reach and get more people to view your content.
- Consider Quora marketing. Answer the questions related to your content and add a link at the end for users interested in learning more about the topic.
- Consider re-publishing your content in “Medium,” along with a link to your website.
Final Thoughts
Generating high-quality leads isn’t tough, especially when you have a solid content marketing strategy in place. Follow the five tactics discussed in this article to generate leads using content marketing. Don’t forget to measure each channel’s performance to determine what’s working the best for your business. Happy Lead Generation!
