Content marketing is a lucrative and effective means of engaging your target buyers, directly addressing their questions and concerns, and generating more lead enquiries and sales. But content can be time-consuming and expensive to produce, involving a fine eye for detail and a deep understanding of your target market, as well as knowledge of best practices for writing for the web. With this in mind, what are the best types of content to assign your time and budget to, to give you the greatest chance of generating sales?
1) Blog Articles
The humble blog post, once the preserve of journalists and hobby writers, is now the number one form of digital marketing content for B2B businesses and has been for many years.
Why A Business Blog Is Great for Lead Generation
- Your business blog is your newsletter, customer service channel, conference platform, and sales brochure all in one. The flexibility of blogging enables you to tailor your content to the precise needs of your target audience, with a range of articles to support your brand, educate your prospects, and demonstrate your commitment to customer service and technical excellence.
- Each blog article is a stand-alone webpage, so having an active blog will quickly build your web presence. When you optimise your blog articles for relevant keywords, each post increases the chance of your website being found in organic searches by your target audience. Moreover, an active blog boosts your domain authority, increasing the prominence given to your site in searches by Google bots.
- Once published, a blog post remains online indefinitely until it is taken down, so a successful blog can generate leads and social shares for years after publication.
- Your blog allows you to tailor your content marketing strategy to tightly defined buyer personas, all within the same channel, with relevant content for each buyer type, and material targeted at each stage of the sales journey for each persona.
- By including a call to action (CTA) and contact form on each blog post/page, you increase your lead enquiries through your website and give website visitors the opportunity to sign up for your email newsletter or gated content.
2) Gated Downloadable Content – Ebooks, Guides, White Papers
Gated content is any content you make available to prospects in exchange for an email address, phone number, or other information. Popular gated content types include downloadable guides, e-books, free email courses, white papers, product brochures, special offers/discounts, and webinars. The opportunity to sign up for the gated content is usually given through a discrete pop-up window that appears when the visitor accesses a particular landing page or blog article. Some LinkedIn adverts can also link directly to gated content.
Why Gated Content Is Great for Lead Generation
- Gated content provides an incentive for website visitors to provide their contact details – the quickest and most cost-effective way of building an email marketing list for lead nurturing.
- E-books and guides provide detailed technical information about your products and services, addressing customer queries and boosting the chance of sales conversions. They are a good way of expanding on the information provided in a blog post.
- Gated content is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your authority in your field by providing free knowledge and support to your prospects.
- When used alongside a marketing automation platform, gated content allows you to segment your email list according to the website visitors that sign up for different guides for example. You can then follow these requests up with relevant material that supports the guide, creating a dialogue with your prospects.
- The gated content strengthens the appeal of a landing page, increasing conversions from pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and organic SEO.
3) Video Content
The types of video content used in digital marketing are wide and varied, from instructional product videos posted on YouTube, to in-depth recorded webinars, and live Q&A sessions hosted on Facebook.
Why Video Content Is Great for Lead Generation
- New video marketing platforms, such as Vidyard, make video content cheap and easy to produce using a phone or tablet, avoiding the need for expensive studio equipment and software.
- Video is a fast and easy way to access information for people who don’t want to read blog posts, or don’t have the time.
- Visual content reinforces your written messages and encourages memory retention, leading to improved brand awareness.
- Video content is easy to access through small smartphone screens, increasing the appeal of your business to mobile users.
- Video content can be delivered by email, posted on social media feeds, and embedded into web pages and blog posts for maximum visibility and social currency.
- Videos hosted on YouTube are indexed by Google, driving traffic to your website.
Find Out More
As content marketing specialists for small businesses, our team of experienced writers and content producers can help you create the right marketing mix of content to maximise lead generation and online sales.
To discuss your requirements or to find out more about our services, please call JDR today on 01332 343281.
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