Lead generation plays a vital role in driving traffic, attracting high-quality prospects, improving the bottom line, and building business visibility, credibility, and trust. No wonder over 91% of marketers say that lead generation is their most important goal.
To achieve this, businesses leverage various lead-generation activities, including email marketing, social media posts, ads, exit-intent popup forms, and gated offers, to name a few. Among them, publishing blog posts is one of the most effective methods to gain quality leads as they offer great value to readers.
Read ahead to discover how blogs can help you with more leads and discover what types of blog posts can serve as the best lead-generation content for you.
Blog posts can drive targeted traffic to your website and give users a reason to visit your landing page by giving them free, no-commitment information related to the challenges they might be facing.
As per statistics, small businesses that consistently blog get over 126% of lead growth than those that don’t, and companies with a successful blog generate more than 67% more leads in a month than those without one.
Relevant SEO-optimized blogs can help you attract more organic traffic, build authority, and let visitors decide if they want to go further into the sales funnel. They can also give visitors a reason to return to your website and, hopefully, convert as they learn more about your business.
If you are consistent with the quality and frequency of your blog posts, it can establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry by showcasing your value and knowledge.
High-quality blog posts can drive traffic and leads for months or even years to come (if potentially relevant for that long), making them evergreen content because even after you are not actively promoting them, they can get shares from random readers and rank in the search results. This makes them an incredibly cost-effective long-term marketing strategy.
For instance, a blog about using a new Facebook feature will lose its relevance after the platform gets its next update. But a post about using Facebook to enhance marketing strategies will attract readers for a longer time. Additionally, you can repurpose blog content into posts to maintain a social media presence and strengthen your reach.
You can even pitch blogs as guest posts to leading sites. This can help you earn authoritative backlinks or inbound links, which the Google algorithm considers a crucial SEO factor when ranking a site on its SERP. Ensure that you avoid spamming and that the blogs are relevant to the site you are pitching to.
Gaining relevant backlinks builds your trustworthiness as it acts as a form of recommendation and vote of confidence from popular websites. This will make your content SEO-optimized, improve your overall search engine discoverability, and build domain authority.
Organizations are often tempted to stick to one or two forms of lead generation content because it is a tried and tested formula. But it is only through diversifying your blog formats that you can truly leverage their comprehensive benefits and help more people find you.
This is not only because variety appeals to the readers but also because different forms of blogs suit specific situations and audience needs. Here are some of the best types of blog posts to elevate your content marketing strategy and generate more quality leads.
Landing pages must be your top priority for lead generation content when launching a new product or promoting an offer. They act as quickly accessible and shareable content for your readers. You can get real-time insights into how the audience consumes that content and optimize it accordingly.
Include a contact form or any other function for information capture on your landing pages, along with a useful and relevant special offer (downloadable content, invitation, or any exclusive offer). This will give your audience a compelling reason to share the personal details that you need from them.
Customer success stories are some of the most versatile lead-generation content you can leverage to capture attention, drive action, and enhance overall business growth. They show how your product or service works and how it can be effectively used in different environments or sectors. You can also use case studies to showcase your client base and demonstrate trust and credibility.
Compelling case studies will drive your leads to imagine achieving similar success through your brand offerings. Keep them concise and use statistics, direct customer quotes, and images to provide more value to the readers.
Statistics show that over 91.4% of organizations that leverage thought leadership prefer creating blog posts over other forms of content (webinars, whitepapers, reports, research, podcasts, infographics, etc.).
Thought leadership blogs can encapsulate the knowledge and experience of experts within your organization and your industry. With correct execution, they can establish your company as a knowledgeable leader in your industry and increase the prospects’ trust in both your content and the brand.When the audience recognizes you as a reliable source for relevant and credible content, they are likelier to try your brand offerings in the future.
Through thought leadership blogs, you can demonstrate your deep understanding of your business, the target audience’s needs, and the marketplace surrounding the profession.
The audience craves new, unique, and thought-provoking business content. If your thought leadership blogs are insightful and well-researched, they will attract leads who seek real value. Expert insights are an effective way to gather such content. Every company has some subject matter experts who each have a storehouse of knowledge and experience.
You can leverage their wisdom in the form of business, industry, or market predictions, opinions on important issues, etc. You must then combine them with your in-depth research about the market and your audiences’ needs, credible sources, emerging trends, facts, reasoning, etc., to better educate readers and provide them with substantial answers to their questions.
As per recent statistics, how-to guides are the most popular content among bloggers (77%), followed by listicles (57%). This is not surprising, as today, most people go online when they want to solve a particular problem. As a B2B writer, you must include how-to guides as long-form articles in your company’s blog and base them around your target audiences’ prominent pain points.
By clearly laying out an action plan for your readers to tackle their challenges, you can gain their trust and improve your credibility. With quality and consistency, you might even become their first choice whenever they face a new problem. Keep in mind not to include too much information in one guide.
Consider making separate guides for each product function, feature, or process. Include external links for further reading and clarifying complex statements.
The reason listicles are popular is that the list format enables the brain to process information in chunks and retain it for longer. A captivating headline with relevant statistics captures the readers’ attention more effectively.
Readers find such blog posts quick to read and easy to digest. By observing the industry trends and market pain points, you can publish listicles on various topics, be it important tips and tricks or common mistakes to avoid.
Videos can be a valuable addition to your websites, eBooks, and guides. Including videos in your blogs can help you break up and sometimes replace otherwise lengthy and confusing segments of text. It makes content impactful and increases engagement, not to mention significantly affecting sales. Mentioned below are a few ways you can use video content to your advantage in your blogs
A webinar blog is an effective way to promote your upcoming events (conferences, webinars, etc.) and educate your audiences once they are over. You can repurpose a lot of valuable information discussed in the events into multiple blog posts based on their content and relevance to the audiences’ situations.
One of the most common ways to do so is to share the summary of the event’s discussions and the key takeaways. But you don’t have to be limited by that. You can post a blog highlighting key questions about the events that might be most relevant to your prospects’ challenges and the latest market trends.
Posting a series of video blog posts with short webinar clips or blogs driven by important quotes from the event can also be effective lead-generation content for you.
Product blogs are a great way to showcase your brand offerings and highlight their features and benefits. It can give your audience a closer look at how your products work and how they can solve their pain points. You can also use such blogs to
Q&A blogs are interview-style posts featuring either in-house experts or industry leaders. Besides being effective lead generation content, these blogs can help build your brand authority on a particular subject matter and establish your brand as the go-to place for distinctive, credible, and reliable industry-relevant information from expert sources.
An ideal Q&A blog post concentrates on specific questions about the audience’s pain points. Thus, such posts can often contain relevant and valuable keywords to better help with their SEO optimization.
Besides Q&A/interviews, roundups are one of the most successful blog types. They feature various expert insights on a common theme, a panel of experts answering common questions, or several products or services in the same category. Some topics that can be great for roundups include-
You can also post a compilation of your most popular posts as ‘the best of’ your blog, or share with the readers some of the best blogs that you read recently that are relevant to contemporary trends and market pain points. Moreover, if done right, roundups on industry tactics and tips and tricks can serve as great evergreen posts for your blog.
Besides the ones mentioned above, other effective forms of lead generation content include-
Successful lead generation demands valuable, intelligent, relevant, and memorable content. Get in touch with us to know how you can leverage high-quality content to reach prospects, gain their attention, and present your brand as the right choice.
References
https://www.upliftcontent.com/blog/types-of-blog-posts/
https://bobellabrands.com/5-reasons-blogging-is-a-powerful-lead-generation-tool/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-benefits-of-business-blogging-ht
https://www.foleon.com/blog/lead-generation-content
https://www.clearvoice.com/blog/what-content-types-are-most-effective-for-lead-generation/
