5 Tactics to Generate Leads With Content Marketing

With the tremendous growth of digital channels over the past decade, it’s no surprise that the shopping journey is saturated with content. Brands publish fresh content virtually by the second to engage target audiences, with rapidly increasing hyper-personalization for identified customer segments. Without a winning content marketing strategy that cuts through this noise, it’s easy to get lost amidst the steep competition in Toronto.

Still, brands need content. It’s how you stay on top of search results, social feeds, email inboxes, and other key customer touchpoints. More importantly, it’s how you reach the right audiences and demonstrate long-term value: you’re not just here to sell, but show customers the lasting value of investing in your brand as a trusted resource. And it’s only then that you generate leads with content marketing.

How Content Marketing Generates Leads

What’s your lead generation strategy? For most brands, it’s a combination of core digital marketing tactics, like SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and a compelling, conversion-focused web design.

If it isn’t central to your lead generation strategy yet, now is the time to start thinking about content marketing. Simply, content marketing touches on all of these digital marketing components. It’s a higher-level strategy that focuses all your key messages on demonstrating your unique value propositions to customers through compelling content pieces.

Why You Need a Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is a focused strategy for creating and publishing engaging, relevant, and timely content for clearly defined target audiences. It involves a combination of different content formats, from articles and case studies, to infographics, videos, downloadable resources, and more, all geared towards interested audiences. 

As a cornerstone of inbound marketing, you can generate leads with content marketing by catering to customers at various stages of the customer journey, ultimately highlighting how your unique offerings meet their needs and interests. When your content resonates with them, target audiences are inclined to take action and progress through the sales funnel as qualified leads.

Find out how to develop content that converts. See how an effective content marketing strategy successfully engages customers and increases their lifetime value:

5 Ways to Generate Leads with Content Marketing

1) Understand your target audience

Before developing any content, you need to know who you’re creating for. Content marketing generates leads when you have a clear, focused strategy for reaching the right audience and engaging them with relevant content.

Look at your analytics and sales data, and create user personas to guide the development of your content calendar. From there, you can find out your key audiences and their interests, and tailor content to their shopping habits and preferences.

2) Tailor content creation and distribution

Your content marketing strategy is as much about publishing as it is about promoting it for maximum discoverability. Your strategy should extend to distribution by looking into the best channels for sharing the latest content, in ways that engage target audiences.

For instance, B2B content marketing generates leads on LinkedIn, where content is tailored for business decision-makers. Meanwhile, consumer goods perform well on Instagram and Facebook, where product discovery content quickly reaches ready-to-buy demographics. The bottom line is, you generate leads with content marketing by choosing the right distribution channels.

3) Personalize throughout the sales funnel

One of the major drivers of content marketing is its flexibility. Essentially, there’s no shortage of content you can leverage to cater to different customer segments at various stages throughout the sales funnel.

Personalization can take on different forms. Whether it’s adding an email newsletter recipient’s first name, or sending exclusive content to qualified but stalled leads, content marketing offers endless possibilities. Check out some of these examples:

• Welcome emails to new subscribers, with promo codes or coupons for their first purchase
• Downloadable resources like case studies and white papers on industry trends for business decision-makers, building brand authority and credibility in the process
• Personalized emails for celebrating customer milestones, with exclusive offers like discounts as a thank-you for their loyalty
• Blogs and videos for customers searching for how-to guides, product reviews, and more.

4) Offer exclusive content

Customers need a hook: a quick incentive for progressing through the sales funnel following their first click and view. Content marketing allows you to nurture these budding customer relationships and convert them to qualified leads by offering value right away. The best part is, you can get creative: there’s more to lead generating content than just reading an article, with the hope that a reader submits a contact form to learn more.

Here are some creative content marketing ideas for offering exclusive content:

• Offer downloadable resources: Let’s say a potential customer wants to know about a certain product and finds yours on search. You can nurture this lead by offering a downloadable ebook, guide, or free trial once they complete an email sign-up. Then, maintain regular touchpoints to move them along the sales funnel and convert them into a paying customer.
• Host events: Content marketing isn’t exclusive to reading. A major part of lead generation is educating customers, empowering them to make informed shopping decisions. You can offer free webinars or create online courses that they can access, and prove options for scheduling a discovery call afterwards to maximize conversions. By then, they’re inclined to convert, since you’ve successfully demonstrated unique value and credibility.

5) Make it visual

Content marketing is a highly visual experience, so make every piece worth looking at. The most common ways that customers consume content are reading and watching, but it’s easy to lose interest in copy alone. Instead, create highly engaging experiences with visually impactful content. Check out some examples:

• Educational videos: Embed educational videos in product pages, and promote these across your digital channels. Feature a product demo, review, quick hacks, and more that fulfill customers’ need for information, and offer educational and entertainment value.
• Infographics: Does your latest article or white paper break down industry trends, product uses, and other possibly complex and extensive information? Make it digestible. Utilize content highlights in an impactful and engaging infographic, designed with your uniquely memorable brand identity. Plus, earn opportunities to rank on image searches and build new conversion pathways.
• Illustrated summaries: Similar to infographics, adding illustrated summaries to standard content marketing pieces can quickly reinvent them and make information accessible. Generate leads among engaged viewers, and simplify their shopping journey by creating more opportunities to make informed purchasing decisions.

Start Generating Leads in Toronto with an Impactful Content Marketing Strategy

Tired of the standard sales pitch? We are, too. At Consultus Digital, we share your passion for always looking into new ways of engaging target audiences in Toronto. And in a digital market already saturated with content, we help you stand out with a proven content marketing strategy.

We offer a full suite of content marketing tools and strategies geared towards generating leads and building lasting customer relationships. Together, we’ll revamp your editorial calendar to optimize the flow of customers along the sales funnel through reinvented blogs, interactive infographics and videos, downloadable resources, events, tailored distribution, and more. Discover the power of content that generates leads — and content that converts.

How do you generate leads? Let’s talk about your lead generation and content strategies — and see why you need a combined content marketing strategy for generating leads. Contact Consultus Digital in Toronto today.