Write Your Way to Lead Generation: 7 Proven Digital Marketing Strategies

Content Marketing

Do you know how to generate leads with your Digital Marketing, the ‘write’ way?

As content marketers since 2007, Write Wing Media has come across several businesses who were failing in lead generation due to a number of reasons. One of them was the absence of a clear content strategy. Therefore, if you run a business or plan to open one, here is what you should do before getting started for lead gen. Or you could schedule a call with us to get this done in auto-pilot mode for b2b lead. That’s why we exist.

Clarify your marketing message

If you are showcasing your products and services in a laundry list of items that people can buy, you are not helping them with lead generation. ‘Clarify’ also means to let one product or service stand out from the rest. For example, if you are running a multi-cuisine restaurant, highlight three dishes that are unique to your place for lead generation. Make that the ‘chef’s specials’. Similarly, if you are selling a gadget, stay away from technical jargon and say it simply. Like Apple did with its iPod: ‘1000 songs in your pocket’.

Create a lead magnet

A lead is only good if you know how to target and re-target them. Here is where ‘lead magnets’ play a crucial role in lead generation. They can be any freebie you offer in exchange for the potential patron’s email ID and other data. These could range from an ebook to a one-page PDF, such as a checklist, cheatsheet, editable template, and so on.

Write blog posts

Write 1200-3000-word blog posts on a subject that your business is all about. If it’s a restaurant, you could share recipes that people will not get anywhere. Offer value in every blog post, and people will ‘subscribe’ to your newsletter for more as your content writing acts as a lead magnet. The knowledge you share for free will turn some people into paying patrons, thereby helping with lead generation. Because they now trust you and believe in your expertise. Your personal voice in the blog posts resonates with them. Therefore, it’s important in digital marketing to not only offer immense value, but also convince the search engines that you know better about lead generation. Just google the title of the article you plan to write and read the top ten articles shown on the first page. Now, make sure your piece acts as a lead magnet by packing it with as much information that it becomes way better than the competing articles. This is how you can rank better than them and lead gen with newsletters. It’s a quality and quantity game. Write the ‘100 greatest Chinese recipes of all time’, and see how that one piece will be shared across the globe. This is content gold that will never cease to dazzle the search engines, generating organic (read ‘unpaid’) traffic to your blog or website. A prospect or new lead is only good when your lead generation campaign strikes a familiar cord with the reader. And this can be achieved with retelling a customer’s success story in a case study or testimonial.

Sequence your info in email marketing

Once someone has given their email ID, you can send emailers every 2-3 days to get the lead into the middle of the sales funnel. If any emailer isn’t working, it’s only because there is a problem with the hook, story, or offer. Keep experimenting and see what works for you. For example, ‘the greatest recipes of all time’ is your hook. The recipes are the meat of your story. And your offer could be a 20% discount coupon or a ‘buy one, get one free’ if the readers like, comment, or subscribe to your podcast. The lead generation process has to be well-framed for the potential customer. The content that you are giving for free has to generate a quality lead. Therefore, the freebie you are offering has to be exactly the solution the target audience is seeking.

Appeal to their emotion, logic and fear

Every newsletter should have a combination of one or more of these elements as emotion, logic or fear appeal to your potential lead. If you are selling a VPN service, talk about how other people are making the most of your product or service (emotion). Then talk about how it makes sense to invest in $10 for complete peace of mind in a surveillance state (logic). And then, offer them a limited time 50% discount to create a sense of urgency and scarcity. Playing on people’s emotion, logic and fear should make your newsletter resonate with your potential clients. Your reader has parted with their contact information so that they are well-informed. As the attention span of people is down to seven seconds, your newsletter should not be more than 125 words. Therefore, you can use emotion in your first three follow-up emailers, and then use a ‘logic’ driven mailer, followed by ‘fear’.

Follow-up

Once your 3 or 5 introductory mails are sent out using marketing automation tools such as Mailchimp, continue to enthral your leads with value-added information through lead generation strategy. It could be a blog posts, a video, a webinar, a podcast, or even a Clubhouse session. Make sure, you respond to the potential lead‘s every query, and even do follow-up posts on a topic they are concerned about. That’s how you show that you care, and build a community of ‘super fans’.

Paid ads

If you want to scale your business quickly through inbound lead generation and outbound lead generation, paid ads can get help a b2b marketer and a b2c marketer. There is one trick to this lead generation service, and it can only come from trial and error. Always invest $1 and get it back through the business you generate from ads. That is how you can create a profitable sales funnel that continues to grow as you scale your business and offerings.

And finally…

Content marketing is a long game with much trial and error involved in executing a content strategy. You will have to tweak your content strategy, and engage in split testing to see what content sells more than the other. Closely follow the strategies used by your competitors, and see how you can better them. Most of all, you need to be consistent. Therefore, if YouTube is your top of the funnel and podcasting is at the bottom of your content sales funnel, make sure you show up on the same day at the same time for at least 2-3 years. Consistency and never-giving-up is the name of the game.