How to produce great content that generates leads

Do you want to generate more leads with your content? Smart content marketers know that going in with a clear strategy is key to your success. In this guide, we’ll show you how to generate leads with your content marketing, step by step.

You’ve probably heard the adage, “Content is King”. That’s because great content attracts an audience. With an audience, you can generate leads. And once you’ve captured those leads, you can market your products and services to make sales. However, without great content, you’ll have no audience and no leads, and you won’t be able to make sales online. So, what is great content, and how do you generate more leads with it? By the end of this 6-step guide, you’ll have a clear roadmap for creating content that generates leads and sales every time.

Ready to get started? Let’s go!
Step 1: Research Your Customer

The first rule of great content is that it must appeal to your ideal customer. If it doesn’t, it won’t attract leads (or it will attract the wrong leads, which is just as bad). Before you create a single piece of content, make sure that you have a deep understanding of your ideal customer.

Step 2: Choose Your Content Types

There are lots of different content types, but some are more suited to lead generation than others. For your content to generate as many leads as possible, you should plan to include at least two primary types of content:

1. Traffic generating content: Traffic generating content is important for getting eyeballs on your website and growing your audience. You can’t generate leads without traffic.
2. Lead generating content: Lead generating content is content that you package into lead magnets: valuable resources that you give away for free in exchange for someone’s email address. Lead magnets are a non-negotiable for generating leads. People don’t want to give their email address out to just anybody, so you must give them a good incentive.

Step 3: Choose Your Content Distribution Channels

Your content plan is really starting to shape up now! You know which types of content you’ll create for them. In this step, we’ll decide where you will distribute that content. Although there are many different content distribution channels, they all boil down to two distinct methods: organic and paid. Simply put, if you want to get eyeballs on your content, you’ll either need to invest time or money.

Step 4: Map Out Your Content Plan

Now that you’ve decided on your content types and distribution channels, it’s time to pull everything together into a cohesive content plan. A good content plan maps out what content you’ll publish, by whom, and how frequently. How many days per week will you publish blog posts? When will you offer live webinars? How frequently do you plan to promote your content on social media? Which team members will be creating and promoting the content? You may also want to create an editorial calendar to map out your blog posts and keep track of what’s coming down the pipe.

Step 5: Write High-Converting Blog Posts

As we said before, blog posts are a non-negotiable part of any content marketing plan. Now that you have a lead magnet, it’s time to write some high-converting posts to grow your audience and get eyeballs on your lead magnet.

All high-converting blog posts have certain characteristics too. Let’s go over those so you’ll know how to write an effective blog post every time. (By the way: these characteristics apply to other types of content too.)

Step 6: Optimize Your Blog for Lead Generation

The first thing you need to do to optimize your blog for lead generation is to add opt-in forms. At the bare minimum, I recommend installing a sidebar option form and an exit-intent popup on all of your blog posts. A sidebar option is just a simple opt-in form that lives in your sidebar, like this.

Once you have those basic option forms installed on all your blog posts, you should monitor which posts are generating the most traffic and leads. Good Luck!