In this article, I’m going to tell you exactly what the sort of process that I take when it comes to creating content that generates leads for my different businesses.
It’s all about the bottom of the funnel
The first thing you have to understand before you even start thinking about creating content to generate leads is that it all is about the bottom of the funnel. You have to understand exactly what are the differences between the stages of the funnel. If you’re talking about a traditional marketing funnel, you are going to have something called the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and then the bottom of the funnel.
So if you think about it like in the shape of like a triangle, pretty much the things at the top of the funnel are sort of broad, informational keywords that people might be searching for in your particular niche or space. And then the middle of the funnel things are where they might be considering different things around learning more about the space, but they’re not fully at the point where they’re ready to make a decision and then the bottom of the funnel is when somebody is really ready to start actively considering purchasing your product or service.
So usually when it comes to answering the question of how to create content, that generates leads, it is all about that last section of the bottom of the funnel. Well, what I mean by that is it’s all about creating pain point sort of content.
Talk about pain points
Let’s say, for example, that we ran an online service that essentially was aimed at creating automated webinars for business owners that are often running live workshops and they no longer want to run live workshops anymore. Well, in that sort of situation, you really want to be talking to some of the pain points that people are facing because of the fact they have to keep hosting these sorts of live workshops. Maybe that would mean creating a content piece that would be thinking about exactly how much time you’re wasting in your business having to run a live workshop, as opposed to automating that workshop through an automated webinar service.
Notice how what I’ve done there is I’ve essentially taken something that is a core pain point of the respective person who might be interested in my product or service. And then I’ve wrapped it around the ways that my product or service can potentially help them alleviate that problem. By helping them to connect the dots in terms of just how many hours they’re wasting every single week, running those live workshops, I’m helping them understand how much time they’re wasting and how much potential upside they’re wasting in terms of growing their business.
I’m making it easier for them to understand how an automated webinar solution might be a way to help them save some time and make more money for their business. And that’s the sort of content that you want to focus on when it comes to generating leads. So the typical approach that I always take when it comes to creating content that generates leads is by creating bottom of the funnel content for my prospect.
Create best of content around a particular category
This comes in a few different shapes and sizes, but one of the first things that I always like to do, which you can do as well is you can create best of content around your particular product category. So just continuing that example, if I were talking about an automated webinar solution, I would be looking to create long form content pieces that answer the question of best automated webinar software, or best webinar recording software.
Whatever it is that is connected to my particular domain or niche would be something that I would be interested in. If you need help, figuring out exactly what product category, your product or service falls under one of the best ways you can figure that out is by going to some software review sites or just some general review sites for your particular product or service.
What will happen is on those sites, they will typically categorize your business or your competitors into a sort of bucket. And that’s gonna be the sort of phrase that people are often searching for when they looking for your product or service. So the first things first is create product category content, and the reason why simple, if somebody is going online and searching for best automated webinar software and I ran that sort of business. I would want to make sure that I’m on page one for that sort of content, because if I am, then I get to control the narrative in terms of how somebody is learning about my product or service.
The reason why that’s so important should be abundantly clear to you. But essentially what you want to do is you want to do this for a variety of different product categories even the ones that may be slightly indirect of yours. This is actually the exact strategy that Zapier has taken in their SEO approach and I did a deep dive into their website and what they’ve done in their organic traffic strategy, but essentially they’ve created tons of best of content to speak to some of the different integrations that their tool integrates with as well as to just get a ton of organic search traffic. First things first that I always like to recommend is best of category content.
Find a way to teach your prospect
The second type of content that I really like to emphasize when it comes to creating content, that converts is content that helps up level your prospect. What I mean by that is if you can find a way in which you can teach your prospect something that relates to their day-to-day work and connects to your product that is going to be a really effective piece of content marketing.
So say for example, you were talking about that automated webinar solution. Well, in that particular example, what we might want to do is create a content piece that teaches our prospect exactly just how easy it is to convert maybe a prior recording of a webinar into an automated webinar.
By doing that, I’m helping them connect the dots of the different ways that they might use my software service and essentially make it easier for them to get to the point where they’re ready to activate a free trial for my particular service. And so these are the sorts of things that you want to think about is how can I get my prospect to better understand the sort of use cases for my product or service. Use case sort of content is always super valuable. And it’s the reason why, if you have ever found yourself looking for a particular software service, you’ve likely landed on a landing page that shares exactly how either another customer is using that product or service or how you can start using that product or service.
There are many ways that you can position that content. I find both effective in terms of either writing towards the prospect or sharing stories of some really successful customers to help inspire and motivate somebody to want to create their trial. But either way, the important thing is that you start to build out a sort of content library that speaks to the different use cases, or again, speaks to the particular problem areas and how your particular solution is helping to solve those problems.
This is what makes for really effective product marketing in that if you can find ways to connect those sorts of problems, that your prospect are often having to your particular product or service, then it’s going to be way easier for you to make content that converts.
Thought leadership
And then the third thing that I’d say is really effective when it comes to creating content that generates leads is to create what’s called thought leadership. This is where you position your organization as a true thought leader in your space where you are an authoritative source for information.
So let’s say for example, you are running that automated webinar software sort of company. Well, in that case, what you might do is you might survey thousands of creators or businesses that are regularly running live workshops. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to create a massive data study. And then from there, what you’re going to do is you’re going to collect tons of interesting data trends that you can share to all your prospects. So this might help answer questions like how many hours a week are businesses typically spending hosting live workshops, or how much time and money in all in costs, including salaries of employees, operational costs and things like that are going into these sorts of live events.
And from there, you’re going to publish the findings of that study. And you’re going to try to find a way in which maybe you team up with a graphic designer to make it visually compelling to your prospects. And the reason why you’re going to want to do this is because when you create this sort of content, it is naturally intriguing to your prospect and it really positions you as the authoritative source around this particular topic of wasting way too much time when it comes to doing live events and workshops, when you could do it through automated software.
And that’s where you really start to generate leads, because what you can do is you can start to position yourself as the owner of your respective space. And from there leads will be interested in your product or service as long as you just weave it in a very intuitive and integrated sense in your content piece.
So in the case where you were talking about that automated webinar software, and you created these sorts of data trends, what you could do is in that respective infographic that you would share with your prospects, or just at the bottom of that content piece, you would have a little blurb where it talks about how the person that’s reading this doesn’t have to experience this pain.
Simply by creating a free trial account, they can start to experience what it’s like to use an automated webinar software to take back the time that they’ve lost. Notice how effective that is. Essentially we’re telling a story through data, and that’s one of the things that can be really powerful about thought leadership.
It doesn’t even have to necessarily be in the context of data trends. It can also just be in the context of providing some opinion pieces and things like that that might really catch somebody’s eye in your respective space.
How ConvertKit uses this tactic
A great example of this in action can actually be seen from ConvertKit. ConvertKit this year created this state of the creator economy and what they did was they put together a ton of different data studies about the creator economy that people might find interesting.
This is really powerful because it draws the prospect in and from there, if the prospect wants to get the full report, they can opt into this opt-in box from ConvertKit and then ConvertKit will naturally start to share those resources while also probably starting to push them towards a free trial of their email marketing software.
So just to recap, in case you want to create content that generates leads quickly for your business, what I’d focus on first is generating bottom of the funnel content from there, building out your use case library to share exactly different ways that people are seeing success or could be seeing success with your product or service and then lastly, by building thought leadership where you’re really positioning yourself as the authoritative source for all things related to your space.
If you do this and you do it consistently with a high quality bar for the content that you’re creating, I guarantee that you will generate leads. And the reason why I say that is because I’ve consistently done this sort of three-pronged approach over and over again, and it has been super successful
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