This is Part 3 of Lead Generation
What is content and why is content important for lead generation?
Part 1 – How do I get more sales leads from my website
Part 2 – How does Social Media work in getting sales leads?
Overview
Wow… this is like opening a can of worms! Big fat juicy worms!
Firstly Geospatial Marketers, Content Marketing is nothing new! We have been producing content for many many years! You could call it publishing, the difference is you are doing your own content generation in house and reaping the benefits of sales leads, I hope?
Content Marketing is about focusing not on your products, but on the informational “needs” of your target customer first!
What is Content?
Content is written information that satisfies your target audiences cravings! In other words its information that your audience finds of use, of interest, of importance to them, which they can use at an advantage.
Content is a big deal! If you don’t get this part right, nothing else will matter! Not even your social media strategy! Nope, nadda!
7 Top Tips to take away
So, lets start at the beginning and give you some tips to take away.
- GROW MY AUDIENCE!
Firstly, you have to set a goal and that goal should be to ‘GROW MY AUDIENCE’. An audience that LOVES your content! They love it so much they sign up or better still; call you! They keep coming back! This is why content is so important to a business! But… she says, it has to be the right content……
- FOCUS ON YOUR CUSTOMERS PROBLEMS
So, you want to GROW your audience. What does your target audience want to know more about? What? Write this down. What are their problems? They want to know how to fix them? Correct? Like you are reading this now because you want to know the secret sauce to getting more sales leads? And this piece of content is all about ‘why’ content is so important to gaining more sales leads. So, focus and I mean focus, on the problems, not on what you sell! The client doesn’t give a toss about what that widget does, they care if its going to make them money by saving them time (for example)
“Your customers are exposed to over 5,000 marketing messages per day. Are your messages cutting through the clutter and making impact?” Joe Pulizzi
By focusing on the problem you are answering a valid question. Just think about yourself and how you find something out! That potential customer does the same!
- MOBILE IS TOP OF YOUR AGENDA
Yes Sir, its going to go more and more down the mobile route! So if you are not mobile friendly, again, you will miss out and your competitors will pass you by with flying colours. So to help your content get out there, make it easy to be found via mobile devices!
Read more about the trends in 2016 here The Drum highlight the trends in 2016
- RE-USE ALL YOUR CONTENT
Everything you have ever written, re-use it! Re-publish all of it! Yes Sir! You might not necessary have time to create new fresh content every day, so re-use what you have used before. Great piece from Penny here
Remember for new content, answer peoples questions!
- RENT TO OWN CONTENT STRATEGIES
You want more audience but how can you find them? Pair up with others who have a similar audience. Do this through webinars, sponsored content opportunities and blogs. You are automatically putting your brand in front of a potentially large target audience. These could be with LiDAR News, Laser Scanning Forum, Groups on LinkedIn, Other people’s blogs etc etc. (I’m calling it advertising rehashed but its another way to do something differently!) Read more here
Again if the content you are sponsoring is great for your target audience, your own content will get noticed (ps: remember to measure it!)
- ASSIGN AN EDITOR
Sign someone who can tweak the content your team write. The team may not be good storytellers or just need the grammar checking. So having a go-to person to finalise the content, is worth its weight in gold! While we at EBTM implement peoples content, we like to have a go-to person in house in order to finalise anything and sign off content planners. Just ask us what to do click here
- FOCUS ON THE READER
When you have written something, re-read it like you are the ‘visitor’. Even ask your close customers to read over some of your content. Get their perspective. You don’t have to do it with everything, just a few pieces. See what they think! If the content is ‘ok’ than its going to be a waste of your time and not valuable in attracting you more sales leads!