10 Ways Your Content Marketing Can Generate Leads and Close Sales

Content Marketing Lead Generation

Con­tent mar­ket­ing is a valu­able way to gen­er­ate leads that con­vert to sales. Whether you active­ly use a con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy or have yet to get start­ed on pro­duc­ing con­tent, now is a great time to devel­op and refine a strat­e­gy for ensur­ing that your con­tent ben­e­fits you as much as possible.

How Content Marketing Drives Sales 

Con­tent offers one of the few con­sis­tent puls­es of brand­ing, edu­ca­tion, and infor­ma­tion to con­sumers. Con­tent arrives to cus­tomers in a vari­ety of modes, and all extend an oppor­tu­ni­ty to recite one cohe­sive, ongo­ing nar­ra­tive that guides con­sumers far­ther along their con­sumer deci­sion journey.

Leads in Marketing Come From Content

As con­sumers read, watch or engage with con­tent, they reach out with ques­tions, share with friends, inter­act in com­ments, and save pro­files or pages to return to in the future. All of these touch­points gen­er­ate sales leads for your business. 

10 Ways Your Content Marketing Can Generate Marketing Leads and Close Sales

1. Peak inter­est and queries
2. Check­list con­tent sets a sta­tus quo
3. Estab­lish indus­try authority
4. Enhance online visibility 
5. Gen­er­ate buzz
6. Wel­come new customers
7. Gen­uine­ly edu­cate consumers
8. Pro­vide a favor to earn a favor
9. Boost sales
10. Increase web­site traffic

Peak Interest and Queries

Con­tent does an excep­tion­al job of peak­ing con­sumer inter­est and gen­er­at­ing new queries about a com­pa­ny, brand, and range of prod­ucts. These ques­tions and curiosi­ties are often the first steps a con­sumer takes toward devel­op­ing a rela­tion­ship with your brand. 

Checklist Content Sets a Status Quo

As the con­tent pub­lish­er, you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to define cer­tain prod­uct fea­tures as essen­tial in the deci­sion-mak­ing process. If you set your prod­uct fea­tures as nec­es­sary ele­ments to have or con­sid­er before buy­ing the said prod­uct, this check­list can quick­ly become the sta­tus quo. By requir­ing cus­tomers to look care­ful­ly at a set of product/service fea­tures, you invite your com­peti­tors to improve, con­sumers to pur­chase with greater dis­cern­ment and con­ve­nient­ly, to see that your brand checks all the boxes. 

Establish Industry Authority

Edu­ca­tion­al con­tent helps to estab­lish voice author­i­ty in your indus­try. By pub­lish­ing con­sis­tent­ly, dis­cussing cur­rent events, and keep­ing research up-to-date, you can pro­vide a go-to source of reli­able con­tent with­in the indus­try that sur­rounds your prod­uct or ser­vice. Con­sid­er inter­view­ing experts, lever­ag­ing in-house tal­ent, hir­ing con­trib­u­tors or reviews on pub­lished con­tent, and part­ner­ing with author­i­ta­tive influ­encers to fur­ther boost your con­tent credibility.

Enhance Online Visibility 

As you pub­lish con­tent on a con­sis­tent sched­ule, your search rank­ing boost, traf­fic site increas­es and all online exten­sions of your brand receive atten­tion. Col­lec­tive­ly, these fac­tors push your brand’s web­site to the top of search rank­ings and sug­gest­ed sources of author­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion. Piece by piece, you can increase your online vis­i­bil­i­ty, open­ing up access to more con­sumers from more touch­points through­out your brand’s dig­i­tal footprint.

Generate Buzz

Great con­tent makes a great impres­sion on cur­rent and future cus­tomers. A piece of con­tent that gets shared (or bet­ter yet, goes viral), cre­ates an instant brand impres­sion on con­sumers you have not met and it rein­forces the pow­er of your brand name to con­sumers who already pur­chase your prod­ucts or con­sume your con­tent. Gen­er­at­ing buzz is a pos­i­tive way to get more web­site traf­fic, estab­lish mar­ket author­i­ty and gain a more loy­al following. 

Welcome New Customers

New con­tent offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to invite new cus­tomers to your web­site to browse and get to know your brand a bit bet­ter. When you share excep­tion­al con­tent, loy­al read­ers tend to pass it along, shar­ing with fam­i­ly, friends, and peers they know might be inter­est­ed in your prod­ucts or ser­vices. This con­tent acts as a touch­point and an open door for con­sumers to step inside your company’s online expe­ri­ence and make an ini­tial intro­duc­tion with your brand. 

Genuinely Educate Consumers

View each piece of con­tent you cre­ate as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to edu­cate your con­sumers. Choose a top­ic — mar­ket, prod­uct, ser­vice, indus­try — and ful­ly divulge your insight on the des­ig­nat­ed issue. In order to con­sume intel­li­gent­ly, shop­pers thought­ful­ly read and ana­lyze the con­tent they con­sume from brands. Remem­ber, you’re not the only com­pa­ny pub­lish­ing con­tent in an effort to win a consumer’s appre­ci­a­tion and loy­al­ty. At the same time, you don’t want to get wrapped up in com­pet­ing so aggres­sive­ly against brand peers that you begin com­ment­ing on areas out­side of your exper­tise. Instead, approach each con­tent oppor­tu­ni­ty as a chance to shed light on one use­ful top­ic relat­ed to the goods and ser­vices you pro­vide. Your cus­tomers will appre­ci­ate this, and reward you for it. 

Provide a Favor to Earn a Favor

Offer­ing free con­tent is essen­tial­ly offer­ing a favor to clients. As you con­tin­ue to pro­vide edu­ca­tion­al, enter­tain­ing, and infor­ma­tive resources to cus­tomers, they devel­op an innate sense of want­i­ng to return the favor. Because you’ve gone out of your way to cre­ate and cir­cu­late high-qual­i­ty con­tent, con­sumers will be more apt to select your prod­uct or ser­vice when the time comes to make a deci­sion. It’s worth not­ing here that in order to be in a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial read­er-writer or con­sumer-brand rela­tion­ship, the con­tent must con­sis­tent­ly sur­pass read­er expec­ta­tions. Work­ing with pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers, edi­tors, and mar­keters is essen­tial to this success. 

Boost Sales

Pend­ing a job well done, con­tent leads con­sumers fur­ther along the pur­chase fun­nel and leads to sales. Every instance of con­tent is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to edu­cate con­sumers on the respec­tive mar­ket, prod­uct, and/or ser­vice. It is a chance to explain why what you have to offer is supe­ri­or and to estab­lish cred­i­bil­i­ty around your opin­ions and insights. Pub­lish­ing con­tent con­sis­tent­ly will help boost your brand’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and author­i­ty, lead­ing more cus­tomers to remem­ber your brand name at the time of a pur­chase decision. 

Increase Website Traffic

As your web­site earns more promi­nent place­ment in Google web search­es, more con­sumers start check­ing out your site. The more traf­fic to your site, the even high­er your search rank­ings rise. Increas­ing rank­ings has a pos­i­tive cycli­cal effect that ben­e­fits your busi­ness. Addi­tion­al­ly, for every piece of con­tent you pub­lish, you can expect a por­tion of con­sumers to vis­it your web­site in hope of find­ing out more about the prod­ucts or ser­vices you dis­cussed in the recent arti­cle, guide, ebook, or case study. While the num­ber of vis­i­tors could seem small per con­tent piece, it will build up over time and help estab­lish an author­i­ta­tive search ranking.

Comment Below

Have you explored con­tent mar­ket­ing as a part of your sales strat­e­gy? If so, be sure to let our read­ers know how it’s gone in your expe­ri­ence. Would you rec­om­mend it? Did you see the results? Any insight you have might influ­ence the next busi­ness own­er and help them make a suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing decision.

Rosy Strategies

Our team is here to help you wher­ev­er you’re at in your mar­ket­ing jour­ney. Whether you need guid­ance on under­stand­ing what con­tent mar­ket­ing is all about or you’re ready to exe­cute a strat­e­gy with auto­mat­ed pro­grams, we’re here for you. Reach out to us to get start­ed on using con­tent to dri­ve traf­fic, gen­er­ate leads, and achieve greater sales.