Lead generation content is the most important, but most overlooked, part of a lead acquisition process.  It’s easy for most businesses to focus on things like email marketing, advertising and buying leads.  These can all be effective lead generation strategies but…

They all focus on outbound marketing – you taking your message out to prospective customers and clients.  Lead generation content focuses on bringing business to you.

What is Lead Generation Content?

It is content in any form that is designed to educate or entertain and that encourages people to find you and engage with your business.

It can include:

• Website content
• Lead generation articles
• Webinars and webcasts
• Podcasts
• Whitepapers

The focus is on education or entertainment – rather than selling. When people search for products and services online they want information that they can use to help them make better decisions.  Great content is that kind of information.

What are the Benefits of Lead Generation Content?

Creating great content has three main benefits for businesses:

1. It helps and encourages prospects to find you
2. It can encourage them to want further information (and provide their contact details)
3. It helps ‘pre-sell’ your prospects by demonstrating your expertise

Lead Generation Content: Helping Customers Find You

When someone searches online for a product or service, their first port of call is often the search engines. Search engines scan the Internet to find the most appropriate content – not advertising – to display in the search results.  If you create content that is based on the kinds of questions and keywords that your prospective customers are searching for online, you will do better with the search engines and get found by more prospects.

We cover this in more detail in our free lead generation report on search engine optimization.  In addition to the search engines, your content can also be displayed in directories, on other people’s websites and in social media – all encouraging people to check out your website and your business.  You can use the same ideas to make your content work offline too.

Lead Generation Content: Encouraging Prospects to Take the Next Step

If you use your content effectively – and provide useful information – you encourage visitors to your website to want to find out more.  As part of a smart lead generation strategy, you can use this as a way to ask your prospects to provide you with their contact details.  For example, you could use a free report, a monthly newsletter or a special webinar to gather contact details.  Once you start building this list of interested prospects, you can focus on lead management to help turn interest into buying.

Lead Generation Content: Positioning Yourself as a Trusted Resource

People are often confused by the amount of information and competing claims of different businesses.  Ideally they want to do business with someone that they trust and have some kind of relationship with.  You can use great content to demonstrate your expertise in your area and show how your business can help them achieve their goals.  This helps make you a trusted resource in the eyes of your prospects and it’s only a short step from being a trusted resource to becoming a trusted supplier.

What Next?

• We Do It For You: If you’d like help using great content to market your business, click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide

• Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download our free report

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