How You Can Leverage Content To Generate Leads
Generating leads is a vital part for any service-based business. Afterall, leads are literally customers who are waiting to convert. Whether you’re in the business of selling leads to other companies or you’re converting them for yourself, the need for more leads and customers is never-ending for any business. In this blog, we’ll take a look at how you can leverage good website content and copywriting in order to generate new leads.
Writing Content For The Customer Journey
Even though we’d all like the easy job of every website visitor being instantly ready to convert, this isn’t the case. We have to do the hard work too – we have to get people to the website in the first place, we have to give them a reason to convert, and then we have to convert them.
This is a well-documented process known as the customer journey or funnel. There are three main stages of the customer journey which you need to create content for: Awareness, Consideration and Purchase.
Top of Funnel (Awareness)
Reach the customer: content plays an important role in making sure your business can actually reach new customers. Whether it’s SEO marketing in Manchester, Google Ads campaign or social media marketing, the first thing a customer sees from your business will be your written content.
You’ll want to ensure your content is engaging, relevant and make’s the user want to read more. If they don’t want to read more, they aren’t going to visit your website.
Middle of Funnel (Consideration)
Peak the interest of the customer: once your content has completed its first job of reaching the customer, it now has to peak the interest of the customer. Some people may land on your website without the intention of converting. For example, someone looking for the specs of the latest iPhone may just be looking for information and not looking to purchase. It’s now the job of your content to peak the interest of this visitor so they think “Wow, this sounds good, I think I’ll buy it.” The key here is to ensure the visitor knows that they can complete this conversion on your website – otherwise you’re just generating money for other people!
This process is known as content marketing and it can really work wonders for your lead generation. The fact is, no one likes a salesperson. People wanted to be marketed to, not marketed at. We reach the customer by offering them useful information which they are asking for, rather than giving them an invoice for something they not looking to buy.
Bottom of Funnel (Purchase)
Convert the customer: finally, your content needs to actually convert the customer. Now that the customer has been reached and they are looking to convert, your content needs to actually convert them. This is done through call-to-actions. You cannot readily assume that everyone who comes onto your website will understand what their next action should be. Call to actions should be placed strategically and sensibly.
Let’s take our last example about the iPhone specs: this user doesn’t want a big massive “BUY NOW” button to be the first thing they see, they’re on your website for the information. However, as they continue to read they may be more interested in purchasing, so a buy now button at the end of the content or perhaps even in the middle of the content will be far more useful.
Call to actions should also be marked-up well so the user can clearly see the purpose behind the action. This “BUY NOW” button is a good call to action but it could be improved more. A more descriptive call to action can be “BUY IPHONE 11 NOW” – the user can clearly see that by clicking this button the will be directed to a page where they can purchase the iPhone 11. Compare this to a button that just says “CLICK HERE” – this button clearly states what it wants the user to do, but it isn’t telling the user why they should click there. Will this button display more content? Will it take the user to another blog? Will it take the user to the product page? Who knows? Certainly not the user, because they’ve already clicked off the website by now.
Conclusion
So to conclude, content is important for generating new leads and converting customers. For the best possible results, you need to understand just how vital content is and where it is used. For the customer journey, content is probably the most important factor for ensuring a customer reaches each stage of their journey, from initial awareness to completing their purchase/conversion.