6 Content Marketing Tactics Proven to Generate Leads

Lead generation is consistently listed as one of the biggest challenges marketing departments face. In an increasingly saturated market, how can you stand out from your competitors?

The top lead generation tactics point back to content marketing. In fact, content marketing produces more than three times as many leads as outbound marketing. And it costs 62% less.

But creating content that actually resonates with your target audience is much harder to accomplish. To successfully generate leads from any type of content, you need to:

• Conduct extensive market research
• Know your audience
• Find out which channels they use most

This information will lay a foundation for your strategy and how you’ll deliver your content. Then you can execute the following lead generation tactics to win your audience over.

1. Write an ebook—with a twist.

There’s no substitute for longform, quality content. That’s why, no, ebooks still aren’t dead. Do extensive research to truly understand your customers’ pain points. Your ebook’s performance will reflect your content’s ability to address customer needs.

Take Brianne Rush’s ebook on storytelling. The original PDF version was downloaded 3,361 times. The updated webpage version was downloaded an additional 721 times. The bottom line: put an interesting twist on a topic that your audience is interested in and then hone in on their challenges.

In addition to promoting through social media and email, highlight your new ebook to your website visitors using lead generation tools that will help drive them there directly. This will help feature your content across all of your digital channels.

2. Conduct a webinar with industry leaders.

Almost three out of four marketers say webinars are a reliable way to generate leads. Considering the average webinar session time is about an hour, there’s no other content that drives as much engagement.

Your attendees are actively tuned into what you have to say. And if you’re smart, you’ll include a live Q&A at the end (like 92% of attendees expect you to). They trust your credibility.

This is especially effective if you partner with other companies in the industry. You can piggyback off of the clout your co-hosts have with their audiences and grow your reach. This Content Marketing Institute webinar does a great job of combining the expertise of various thought leaders to maximize its reach.

3. Develop interactive quizzes.

More than just clickbait, a good quiz piques readers’ interest and keeps them engaged until the very end. To accomplish that, you need to know exactly where your reader falls in your sales funnel. That way, your quiz will enable you to take the information a reader provides to better segment your audience based on how they answered specific questions.

And statistics show that curiosity converts. The website T1Q increased their subscriber rate 1900% just by adding a quiz. There’s a reason why Buzzfeed quizzes are so popular, right?

4. Make landing pages for each campaign.

As a content marketer, you know more isn’t always better. But creating specific landing pages for every campaign will actually increase the chances you have to win over a specific audience. In fact, companies with 10 to 15 landing pages increase leads by 55%, according to Hubspot.

And while the average landing page conversion rate across industries is a little over 2%, the top 25% convert at 5% or higher. The secret? Those top performers include just one offer and one call to action, like the following example from PayPal.

The best ecommerce landing pages not only generate high-quality leads, but also boost your search engine rankings. Make sure to research and incorporate your target keywords throughout your page to make the biggest impact in search results.

5. Include content upgrade offers.

Content upgrade offers are a natural but extremely effective “upselling” lead generation tactic. If a website visitor is most of the way through a blog, chances are they’re invested in the topic and what you have to say about it.

Why not weave in an offer to download another related piece of content? All they have to do is provide their email address.

Aimtell’s content upgrade offer on their blog does an effective job of standing out without being obtrusive to the reader’s experience. They place their guide on web notifications in between sections within a relevant article. That way readers see it at a natural break in the article and can take immediate action if interested.

6. Create a mini online course.

If you have a skill, create a short online course to share your expertise with a broader audience. This tactic serves two important purposes:

• Creating thought leadership in your industry
• Generating leads that trust your thought leadership

Hubspot Academy excels at this by providing short, valuable courses that participants can complete in less than a day. They can hone their skills and even earn a certificate to show off their new knowledge. Whenever they share their certificate, Hubspot’s brand is shared along with it, increasing the chances more people will register for their courses.

Of course, to get to this level, you need to promote your online course! Just because you offer a course, doesn’t mean people will just become leads. Give people a reason to sign up. Explain what they’ll get out of the course. You also need to make sure your landing page design is optimized to capture email leads.

While this certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, these lead generation tactics are proven to work. With a little creativity, a lot of research, and even more drive, your content marketing and lead generation strategies will align well and keep your pipeline full.

What are some other tactics you’ve found success with?

Jacel Booth leads content at AddThis. She has more than 8 years of experience in marketing and communications across the nonprofit, startup, and tech industries.