8 Content Marketing Hacks That Will Boost Your Lead Generation

One of the major goals of the online marketer is getting as many leads as possible. However, it is not an easy task. So it’s important to pay special attention towards your marketing efforts and analyze the effectiveness of them. When it comes to online marketing efforts, especially in B2B online marketing, content marketing holds a prominent role. According to HubSpot, marketers who are consistent with blogging are 13 times more likely to get a positive ROI, and 69% of the most effective marketers have a dedicated content marketing team.

However, many people find it as a hard task to lay out a proper content strategy and engage with their marketing efforts. We prepared a list of 8 content marketing hacks that will assist you to boost your leads and take your business and your inbound marketing to the next level.

1.       Use in-depth articles –to succeed with content marketing, you need to use more in-depth articles. Google loves in-depth articles. And not only Google; your potential customers would also love to go through the in-depth articles so they can learn how to do things right. To write in-depth articles, run an extensive research on your topic and prepare several drafts before the finalized version. Writing an in-depth article can take some time, but the result will be worth it. You should include at least 2,000 words in your article so it will increase your chances of top ranking on search engine.

2.       Plan your content calendar – creating a quarterly or a monthly content calendar helps you to organize your work and make sure you are not stuck without ideas. It helps to create a strategy, which you can follow in order to deliver your content to your audience. If your target is lead generation through content marketing, you need to use a proper theme and call to actions, on your blog/website,  to reach your goals. For example, working with a quarterly or monthly theme will assist you to come up with new ideas that can be used to fill the entire editorial calendar. This will even tempt your visitors to contribute towards the blog. In addition, it will help your advertisers to align their advertisements perfectly well with your content. There are many great tools for organizing your content calendar. Check this list of content calendar tools.

3.       Know your audience – Profile your customer segments and personas. Understanding “What your customer wants to know” is the main question you need to ask yourself. You can check your Google Analytics to learn which pages on your site the clients had visited, and the search terms they used to understand what they are looking for. In addition, the use of analytical tools that map the user’s journey through your content and the ROI from it, is highly recommended. Talk with the sales team members and the customer success team, to understand what are the clients’ challenges and pain points, what questions they ask, and which information they would like to get. In other words, you will need to master your craft and have a good understanding of the customer journey through your web site.

4.       Re-use the existing content – transform your posts into presentation and upload them to SlideShare, convert them into infographics and present them on your blog and social channels. You will get more leads from the additional channels, and also increase your SEO ranking by embedding the presentation link into your original post. You can also re-publish them again in few months. There is always new audience that will read it for the first time. Read this post on how to optimize your SlideShare presentations.

5.       Convert your blog posts into landing pages, and promote the content itself – from a recent study that was conducted by HubSpot, it was identified that websites that have more landing pages generate more leads. It is one of the best methods available out there to increase the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. Promote your content on  Content Distribution Networks such as Taboola and Outbrain, and design unique landing pages for each post. This will convert your blog posts into lead generation machine.

6.       Hack your audience using multimedia resources – online marketers in the modern world have the opportunity of using different multimedia resources for their marketing efforts. So don’t stick to only writing blog posts or articles. Think of other marketing methods such as video content marketing. The usage of Smartphones had increased dramatically over the past few years and you can definitely increase your conversions by approaching them with the right content strategy. Mobile friendly marketing methods include videos, podcasts, speaking gigs, blog posts and slide presentations. The effectiveness of these methods is proven and you can try them without any doubt.

7.       Do guest postings – guest postings will give you the opportunity to gain a wider reach. However, you need to make sure to embed links to your blog or website.  Many online marketing experts say that guest blogging is the most effective method available out there to build your audience. It can also assist you with search engine optimization efforts since you will be getting quality backlinks from other domains.

8.       Use eye grabbing and sharable headlines – studies talk about eight seconds that it takes to grab the attention of a potential customer. The titles are the first things readers will see, and they’re the gatekeepers of the excellent content just one click away. This is what sells your content. So, make sure to write it short and sweet, include some key words (but don’t over stuff it), deliver the right expectations as for the content and make it engaging. Check out these attention-grabbing winning titles. A catchy title also inspires massive social sharing and clicks, so don’t forget to include social sharing buttons at the end of your content, and a call to action button.

Creating content marketing for lead generation isn’t an easy task. With millions of blog posts published every day, you need to make sure your content stands out, both in front of your potential clients and search engines. Using some of the tips above, as well as keep reading and monitoring the hottest topics around, can sure put you on the right track to success.