Content Strategy for Lead Generation — Review

When I started this particular course as part of my Growth Marketing Mini-Degree from CXL Institute, this was what Andy from Orbit Media wrote on the first ever video.

“It’s about brains, not budget. It’s about durability, not speed. Content marketing is the opposite of advertising. We don’t buy attention, we earn it.”

I always think of content marketing almost as a rite of passage for any sort of marketer, ultimately, you do use well written content in ant sort of marketing, whether is Influencer Marketing, Paid Advertising or even Account Based Marketing: there is just no avoiding it. However, as widespread as its usage may be, it is far from easy and there are so many things that can also go wrong.

So let’s start by talking strategy: from just a content marketing point of view, what do you need to keep in mind and what is the way to lay a strong foundation?

Content Strategy

Content strategy is about designing the creation, promotion, and measurement of content. This content attracts visitors to your website, creating meaningful interactions that meet the needs of your audience and your business.

Really, strategy is just a fancy word for plan. So a content strategy is a plan for content marketing. It’s the plan for attracting visitors and inspiring them to take action. It’s the plan for generating demand by using content.

While laying your plan, there are a few important things to keep in mind to set a strong foundation:

• Audience
• Mission of the company
• Topics/Products/Services
• Keywords to associate with your brand.

If you have any experience in content, these are familiar practices, things you always know you have to do, but in practice, do we really implement it?

Where does Content Strategy go wrong?

In my personal experience, I think the struggle in implementing a content strategy comes about because of the following reasons:

• Lack of a Content Calendar
• Inefficient way to repurpose content
• Failing to perform audits
• The struggle to stay abreast with trends and
• The keyword dilemma.

To elaborate on these a little better:

A Content Calendar: A content calendar organises your publishing schedule by date so you can keep track of deadlines, better manage your content creation team, and create transparency with all parties. While this was a concept created for social media, I have found it incredibly useful to also chat out your general content strategy, set monthly goals and keep to schedule.

To look at some great templates for a content marketing calendar, check out Hubspot!

Inefficient way to repurpose content: What I absolutely love about CXL Institute Courses is the fact that each instructor is an industry expert who ultimately shares incredible resources in addition to the general course. In this case, Andy Crestodina shared an absolute gold mine of information: the periodic table of how to repurpose content

A guide to understanding the chart:

• Elements at the top of the chart are small and have a shorter half-life.
• Elements at the bottom are larger, slower to create and last longer.
• Elements to the left appear everywhere, on millions of sites and locations
• Elements on the right are more likely to be on your site.

Periodic Table of content repurposing

Failing to perform audits: Measurement is the third aspect of every content marketing program and it is critical. If you don’t measure, you can’t optimise. In this blog I won’t be diving too much into measurement because it requires an in depth dive into Google Analytics (which I will write about in detail in a separate blog).

You can check out this site by Orbit Media for a guide on how to perform an audit.

The struggle to stay abreast with trends: Staying updated all the time is not easy, what’s harder is also pushing out content in the same archaic fashion without any variance. As a content marketer, I understand how it can be frustrating to try to approach copious amounts of content in a new way each time, therefore to make life simpler, we have collaborations, influencer marketing and networking.

To make sure you get a broader reach and drive in more leads you need to look at:

• Research and outreach: connecting with the most relevant influencers
• Co-creation and cross-promotion of content
• Mentions, thank-you’s and friendship.

For influencer marketing, check out my previous blog post where I did a deep dive into the basics.

The keyword dilemma: This is one area I always struggle with: learning to use keywords in context without making it too obvious. Like most of you probably know, there is a different way to write copy for each channel, and something i’ve found useful with keywords is making short sentences with keywords and elaborating on them based on the type of copy you need to write.

Where does Lead Generation come in?

Now that we’ve covered some basics of content strategy and what not to do. we can explore how content connects to revenue: by generating marketing qualified leads.

Lead generation and content marketing work side by side, as evident from the quote at the start of the page. Content marketing drives in leads organically and this is one of the most important functions of the team. By keeping some of the simple steps in mind as mentioned above, you can create an incredible presence on the internet that drives in customers, keeps them engaged and get’s them to convert. Here’s an example of the funnel:

Marketing Funel

Steps in Lead Generation:

1. First, a visitor must discover your business organically through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
2. That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action. Usually downloads or signing up for an event.
3. That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a separate page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.
4. Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Finally, the MQL is created on your CRM where the individual or company receive updates and are nurtured to be converted to sales qualified leads.

To go into detail about how the first step is carried out (i.e attracting customers through SEO) will take another blog post. So stay tuned for when I break down SEO in lead generation as well.

For more in detail information about content strategies for lead generation, visit CXL Institute and sign up for the course