Lead generation is an important aspect of content marketing. Without lead generation, you?re basically just publishing and promoting content, hoping that people are going to buy or sign up for your products! 

While this sometimes happens in real life, that is, some people will buy things on the spot, the truth is the majority won?t. 

You need to have a lead capture system in place, so you can continue reminding your target audience that your brand exists. You can get in touch with them later on to share your news and updates, and to persuade them to move down your content marketing funnel. 

1. The Content Marketing Funnel

Before I discuss the top 5 lead generation methods, let me share with you first what a content marketing funnel is, and why it?s so important in the overall scheme of your content marketing strategy. 

 

Generally, a content marketing funnel has three broad levels:

? Awareness stage - this is when your target audience first becomes aware of your brand. They become your leads. 

? Evaluation stage ? this is where your lead evaluates whether your product or service is good for them or not. At this point, your lead turns into a prospect. 

? Purchase stage - this is when your prospect decides to subscribe to your service or product. Your prospect finally becomes a customer.

When you plan out your content marketing strategy, your end goal is basically to put your brand in front of people who?ve no idea who you are and turn them into customers. Sounds like a pretty tall order, right? That?s because it really is, but it?s very much doable.  

Content marketing is basically a numbers game. You want to get your brand in front of as many people as possible (belonging to your target audience, of course). This is because only a small percentage of your leads will turn into prospects, and an even smaller number of prospects will turn into customers. 

2. Top 5 Ways To Generate Leads Quickly

So, here are the top techniques you can apply to help you generate leads quickly. 

1. Offer lead magnets 

Lead magnets are one of the best ways to get people to sign up to your mailing list. You?ll often hear this mentioned in the online marketing community, ?The money is in the list.? Many successful marketers stand by this saying. So, if you want people to subscribe to your list, you?re going to learn how to use lead magnets.

Now, technically lead magnets are ?bribes.? This is because you?re basically ?bribing? people to give up their contact details, such as their email addresses or phone numbers, in exchange for your lead magnet. 

You can, of course, just put up a sign on your website asking people to enter their name and email address or any other info you want. However, people are going to ask, ?Why should I give you my details?? or ?What?s in it for me??

And this is where the magic of lead magnets come in. When you offer people a ?bribe? they can?t resist, something so valuable and so useful to them, they?re going to be so much more willing to give up their contact info. 

They?ll tell themselves, ?I really, really need this eBook or this guide. The information is really useful. I can?t believe they?re only asking for my email address in exchange for this life-changing information!?

Do you see what happened there? People are more easily convinced to follow your call to action if you give them what they want! 

There are many kinds of lead magnets you can use. The most common ones you?d see on the Internet are downloadable PDF eBooks, reports, white papers, checklists, etc. You?ll also see some brands offering email courses or video courses in exchange for people?s email addresses! 

To find out what the best lead magnet is for your brand, you may need to do some split testing. The important thing to note is that the best lead magnets answer people?s pain points. Ideally, it shouldn?t be something they can easily Google the answer to. 

Go all out on your lead magnets. Make it valuable and rewarding enough, so that your audience will feel like they really have no choice but to give up their contact details! 

 

2. Guest blogging

Guest blogging is a popular way of getting new people to learn more about your brand and your business. You?re essentially publishing your content on someone else?s website. You get instant exposure to highly targeted traffic, and you?re able to immediately expand your network (basically widening your content marketing funnel!). 

Now, guest blogging may sound easy. But there?s a ton of work that happens behind the scenes. For instance, not all your target sites may accept guest posts. You would need to look for sites that are highly relevant to your own industry. 

You need to have a good track record, too. This means you?re not going to get accepted as a guest blogger if no one knows who you are. So, you need to have published some valuable blog posts on your own site (or others) to even make other webmasters consider your request.  

They can easily be referred to your portfolio. From there, you can see for yourself how much you can contribute to your website.

You have to do your research when you pitch your request to webmasters. You should check whether they have guidelines for content. You must also know what content your audience likes. Think of yourself as someone who writes for the website regularly and cares for the public.

It is the most difficult part to get your guest postal application approved. Most of the sites to which you reach you probably won't hear from them. But as soon as you hump it over, and start to work on your content, the real fun starts!

Certain sites have to follow strict publishing guides. For example, throughout the post you can only use one link, or you need certain words, or you can only link to your website via the author's box.

You would have to consider all these things, and figure out how to write your content so that people would be curious enough to learn more. This will make people want to go to your website and join the community.

3. Goal for keywords of long-tail

Blogging is one of the bases of a successful content marketing strategy. And the longer and more valuable the content is for your blogging, the better it will be for your SEOs. If you optimize your content by SEO,

You then have better chances of high search engines ranking.

Keywords are not equally created. It is important to mention. Keywords and long keywords are available. Keywords are 1-2 words long and keywords are 3+ words long.

Tons of shorttail keywords compete as you can imagine. The websites appearing on the first search result page of Google are normally well-known sites with hundreds or thousands of other websites!

How do you think that you can retrieve these authorities when only a few months or years ago, and you only have a few backlinks to your site?

Here are the keywords of long-tail. You basically follow keywords with lower search volumes, but also with far less competition when you aim long keywords.

This will mean you have better chances of placing your target audience on the first page of search engines!

You have to consider the intent behind every keyword when choosing which long keyword to target. There are three fundamental types of search intention:

? Navigation keywords - these are brand or website searches

? Keywords of information ? these are searches for a certain type of information (not commercial in nature)

? Transactional keywords ? searches in which the user intends to carry out certain business transactions

Of course, transactional keywords are the most profitable types of keywords. These are the keywords behind them for commercial or purchasing purposes. Ideally, you would like to target these types of keywords because these are the people who are willing to buy!

But not everyone is just waiting to buy or spend their money on an online random product. Instead, the vast majority of the searches are info-based.

You will focus on both information and long-tail transactional keywords for your content marketing strategy. This is what we are talking about.

This is the best way to enter and become your leads in the most search traffic!

4. Customer-centered pages for landing

A landing page is the ultimate tool for lead generation. It is basically a single page that aims mainly to obtain the email address of the visitor or other contact details. Lead magnets and landing pages work together very well.

You would have a lead form on your landing page to provide people with their names, e-mail address, etc. They get access to the promised lead magnet once they enter their details.

Everything is in nature very simple and simple. But you need to follow the following tips if you want your landing page to have good conversion rates.

? A killer call for action should be made (CTA). Don't just use a 'submit' or 'subook' generic button of CTA. This is no longer 2012! You must be extremely persuasive if you want to persuade people to register for your list.

You can also use the highest advantage of your lead magnet as your CTA landing page! Don't be scared to try. View how your audience works best.

? Specify what your guides will get, exactly. Don't play coy here with thin words. Your "this is" moment is your landing page. List the reasons why your lead magnet cannot be passed on.

Say to them how they can benefit and how their lives can be changed or their business improved! Use strong and convincing words to persuade people to follow the CTA.

? Use in your landing page more than just text. Text is strong, but sometimes a visual medium is needed to help people move over to your side. If you can add to your landing page a brief, personal video, do this. It will help people to be connected with you and you will appear to be much more human.

? Important design. You can waste your time if you don't think about the design of your landing page. A badly designed landing page can quickly turn off visitors to ensure that your landing page is attractive visually.

Only then will people read your copy of your landing page and see if it's right for them.

5. Make use of video power

It's because YouTube is the second largest website in the world. This is because video is much easier than text to consume! And even in high-end professional video equipment you do not have to invest thousands of dollars. You can start filming yourself and make your brand known worldwide only with your smartphone camera.

There are so many places where video power can be leveraged. Upload your videos to YouTube to get started. In your blog posts or on your landing pages, you can then enter your video link. On your social media properties, you can also link to it.

Just make sure that you add a link to your website or landing pages to the description of your video when you upload to YouTube. In order to encourage people to visit our site, you can also add annotations to your video.

The great thing about video is that you can create it easily! You can insert and share your videos in many locations online. This means that people can learn a lot more about you and your company.

3. Finding

The production of leads should take center stage in your marketing objectives of content. You could waste your full content marketing campaign if you do not have a system in place to capture your leads.

In this short report, you will be much closer to achieving the success you have always dreamt of with the five techniques we outlined.

So these are tips on what content marketing can help you generate leads for your business. We have further content marketing tips we think you should check out further. Check out in our newsletter below for further content marketing tips.