It goes without saying that content is king in the marketing world. Marketers who effectively leverage content marketing in their campaigns are much more efficient at driving business success. The main reason why content is so well-received by online consumers in general is because it offers value to them through information, education and entertainment. The more creative and entertaining your content is, the more engagement you’re able to get from your audience.
However, not just any content will yield the best results for your business. The content you provide to your customers must be highly relevant to them and of top quality as well. Providing the wrong content to your target audience will be counterproductive and it will only result in dissatisfaction from your consumers. What’s more, content can help you generate leads who can later be converted into trusty and loyal customers. That’s why it’s important to plan out your content marketing strategy well so that it can have the biggest impact on your customers. Here are a few ways you can create content that will generate leads for your business.
Conduct in-depth market research
Oftentimes, many business owners and marketers simply neglect market research when creating content for their audience and go with their gut feeling. If you want to create amazing content that will boost customer engagement and encourage them to choose your business over others, you must back up your strategy with facts. That’s where market research comes into play. By researching your audience, you’ll be able to understand them better.
You’ll also know what their preferences are, as well as their needs, demands and expectations when it comes to consuming online content. You must research their demographics such as their gender, age, income, location, purchasing habits and so on and so forth. That way, you’ll have a better understanding of how to craft content that will appeal the most to your audience. For example, if your audience is primarily male, then providing them with content related to topics women are interested in won’t be as effective as you’d hope it to be. It’s important to understand your audience well in order to tailor your message to their taste at all times.
Add stunning visuals to your content
Visual elements play a vital role in your content marketing strategy. People are generally visual beings, which means that they prefer elements such as videos and images over plain text. The human brain can process visual information 60,000 times faster than it takes to process simple text. In addition, people retain only 10-20% of the information they’ve read, whereas if that same information contains visual elements, they’re able to retain 65% of it. Moreover, visual content is more welcomed by online consumers, and it can generate up to 94% more views.
You don’t even have to go too far to ensure engagement and views. Sticky notes with creative imagery can be enough to amuse your audience and make your content go viral. Also, as there are billions of pieces of individual content being produced every day, you’ll need to enrich your content for it to stand out from the crowd. Implementing visuals can vastly improve your marketing efforts. The main reason is that it can generate seven times higher conversion rate due to its overall popularity in the digital world.
Read: Boost Your Digital Marketing Results by Creating Useful Marketing Images
Focus on video
Videos are gaining more and more momentum in both the online world and content marketing campaigns. The main reason is that modern consumers prefer watching videos to reading textual formats. As a matter of fact, four times as many consumers would rather watch a video than read an article on the Internet. According to Cisco, video traffic will be 82% of all consumer internet traffic on a global scale by 2021. Including video in your content can not only help you generate more leads but also boost engagement from your customers.
Product and demo videos are a good way to present your products and services to your target audience. The fact of the matter is that 90% of consumers state that product videos are very helpful with their purchasing decisions, while 64% of consumers are more willing to buy a product after watching a video about it. Not only that, but mobile users prefer video as well. In fact, 53% of mobile users prefer to do business with companies whose mobile sites and apps offer content with video formats. In addition, including videos in your email newsletters can increase the click-through rate by 200-300%.
Read: 10 Content Marketing Stats Every Blogger Should Know in 2018
Distribute your content
A general rule of thumb in the marketing world is that you must be where your audience is. That means you must distribute content across various marketing channels in order to make it more effective at generating leads. For example, make sure you distribute content on social media, email, your own website and blog, as well as guest blogs on other reputable sources. That way you’ll extend your reach with content marketing and encompass as many audience members as possible.
Read: 7 Ways to Promote Your E-commerce Product without Being Salesy
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If you have passive audience members, you can also adjust your content distribution to cover more traditional means, such as direct mail, catalogs and magazines. Wherever you decide to distribute content, make sure you include lead magnets as well. Lead magnets are incentives such as eBooks, courses, seminars, industry reports, product samples and so on. Simply put, anything of value that will capture people’s interest and turn them into leads.
Meet consumer needs
Online consumers are oftentimes faced with certain problems. They conduct online research for products and services offered by various businesses hoping that some of those offers will address those specific issues they’re having. You can take an advantage of that by researching your audience to determine which problems they most commonly face and redesigning your products and services to meet their needs.
Through good content marketing, you can help solve any issues your customers may have, which can help you generate more leads. Whitepapers and infographics among other pieces of content can help your audience understand how your products or services work and how they address a particular problem. Your audience will be much more interested in doing business with you if you provide them with viable solutions.
You may also like: Best Ways to Anticipate Your Customer Needs
Wrapping Up
Content is a very powerful tool for any marketer, but only if you design it the right way. Content marketing can be very effective in attracting potential leads and eventually encouraging them to become customers. However, in order to achieve that, your content must be top quality, highly relevant, creative and innovative to help boost engagement from your audience.
