Lead generation is at the core of most marketing strategies—you want to create content that brings in new audiences and more revenue.
While a number of beginner strategies work well to generate leads, these sources dry up eventually.
That is when marketers need to look at advanced tactics that will give them access to new revenue streams.
We detail eight such techniques to incorporate in your 2020 marketing plan.
1. Define User Personas
- Source: Venngage
Knowing your target audience has to be the priority when you are trying to capture leads.
If you create content for users who aren’t interested in your brand, you can’t convert them into loyal customers.
You will end up spending a great deal of time and energy brainstorming and designing content that won’t result in any discernible leads.
That is why you need to design user personas—these are target groups of people who you can tailor your content to.
Creating user personas will give your content focus and direction—thus maximizing its impact on the user and boosting the number of conversions.
User personas can be segmented using the following parameters:
- A fictional name
- Age range
- Income range
- Genders
- Technological prowess
- Interests
- Pain points
- Desired solutions
Create at least 3-4 such target segments who will make up the ideal audience for your content and generate more leads.
2. Design Lead Magnets
With so much content available online, it can be a struggle to reach your audience—let alone encourage them to engage with your brand on a regular basis.
You need to offer your audience some value addition—even before you ask them for anything.
That is where lead magnets come in. These are the kinds of content that answer your audience’s pressing questions, quickly and immediately.
Some popular lead magnets include:
- Courses
- Ebooks
- Reports
- Tutorials
- Webinars
Lead magnets such as these tend to be gated—the user needs to give something to access it.
But instead of asking for a fee, marketers can use creative website popups to request users to share their email in return for access to the content, thus building their email list.
Branded swag is also a great lead magnet and incentive for customers to engage with your brand.
Social media or web contests can be used to incentivize users to share your content and attract more followers—thus boosting the company’s reach.
Prizes need not be elaborate—the appeal of branded mugs and custom t-shirts have been enough to generate interest from customers and don’t require large monetary investments.
3. Use Content Waterfalls
Gated content is meant to be exclusive—more work goes into it, after all. But because of its exclusivity, it can be a challenge to get users to access it.
While the popups mentioned above definitely have worth, to use gated content to generate more leads, one must also try another avenue—content waterfalls.
This is the process by which gated content is embedded within ungated content.
A free-to-read blog post can include calls-to-action to learn more from a piece that requires the user to sign up with their email to access it.
Because the gated content adds value to the ungated piece, it becomes more enticing for the user, thus increasing the chances of them sharing their details and becoming a lead.
4. Upgrade Landing Pages
- Source: Starbucks
Landing pages should be high-converting areas of your content marketing strategy—if your pages aren’t doing the job, they need to be reworked.
There should be minimal distractions on a page designed to convert a visitor into a lead—some text, attractive and relevant imagery, and a visible call to action button.
Remove any elements that could lead to the user clicking away from the landing page like links to other pages, navigation away from the page, or too many irrelevant elements.
Creating a landing page that is self-contained and optimized for lead generation may not be possible in one go—conduct regular tests to see what works best for your audience.
5. Use Link Building Strategies
One of the more advanced lead generation strategies that has been catching on over the past few years is link building.
This area includes a number of different tactics such as guest blogging, replacing broken links, link collaborations, and cold outreach.
A few steps need to be followed to implement a successful link strategy:
- Build an email list of potential contacts
- Draft well-written outreach emails
- Follow up regularly
- Maintain connections with contacts
- Deliver quality content
Link building takes time and practice—it is unlikely that marketers can set it up overnight.
But the benefits are immense, helping to create long-lasting connections within the industry.
6. Move Towards Video Marketing
Video has been gaining popularity in marketing circles for years now. And with more people spending time online, video is becoming an essential part of the marketing framework.
While creating high-quality video content for platforms like YouTube isn’t an option for all but the most well-funded startups, there are other ways to create high-performing video content.
Online audiences are largely looking for news, entertainment, and education. Which is why gated content like webinars and explainers are all the rage now.
You can use webinar platforms to develop and distribute webinars to your audience—most of the available software is intuitive and inexpensive.
And there are other methods to incorporate video in your strategy—live videos on social channels like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are easier to produce and very popular.
Video marketing can bring in massive views—start implementing the strategy as soon as possible.
7. Repurpose Where You Can
- Source: Venngage
Creating new content on a regular basis can be exhausting for marketers—especially for startups that have fewer resources.
To save time and energy, marketing teams can repurpose already existing content. Here are a few ways to repurpose:
- Longer blogs can be divided into multiple shorter social posts
- Create infographics or charts based on existing blogs, vlogs, or webinars
- Multiple blogs on similar topics can be compiled into an ebook or whitepaper
- Update old blogs with new concepts and information
- Turn presentations into videos or social posts
There are numerous ways to use old content in new ways that will successfully generate huge leads.
8. Balance Evergreen and Timely Content
The kind of content you create has an impact on the leads you earn.
Content marketing that is designed to appeal to a specific audience during a set time period can bring in huge leads in the short-term—because it works for a trending topic.
However, once the trend fades, so do those lead generation avenues.
On the other hand, evergreen content has a longer shelf-life—it works no matter the context and regularly brings in leads.
But evergreen pieces are also more taxing to develop—and sharing them when a particular trend is enveloping the world could do more harm than good.
A balance needs to be struck—create a few evergreen pieces that can be updated with new data, but regularly write content on trending topics.
Conclusion
Startups should slowly move towards advanced lead generation strategies—once they are comfortable with the more common methods of attracting audiences.
The eight strategies we have shared here have proven successful for companies in every stage of development—with a bit of practice and analysis, they can do the same for you.
Read more: How to Use Lead Generation Strategies to Attract More Email Subscribers