Written by At the start of lockdown, a crucial question was being widely asked. Now that conferences are postponed, how do I generate leads from content marketing.
To be honest, the answer is the same whether on lockdown or not, it’s just that when physical events are cancelled, it has become all the more important to address content marketing strategy.
I chatted to a whole bunch of experts for a series of articles in Digital Doughnut which were put together as a white paper by London Research called “Coping With Coronavirus: How Martech Companies Can Maintain and Grow Pipeline”.
What is key to effective content marketing?
The nub of any piece of content is to start off by providing insight but then taking it further and addressing a specific pain point.
Savvy content marketers are now seeing they need a macro, grand theme. This could be an outlook for an industry in the year ahead. I think everyone in digital PR and marketing has seen reports on privacy or customer experience being the main challenge for brands in 2020, and beyond.
What the really smart content marketers are doing is taking this a step further.
How can white papers drive lead generation?
The simple truth is you get better response to content when it sheds a light on an entire industry or then, through further iterations, applies itself to a niche within that industry. That’s why content marketers who want to generate leads start with a big theme and then narrow it down.
In subsequent, smaller white papers, infographics or pieces of content, perhaps webinars, the big picture is distilled into the smaller picture.
If we’re on privacy, for example, it might be, “how do fintech sales execs flourish in the age of privacy”. Or “how do challenger banks marketers build a single view of the customer in an industry so heavily regulated?” Higher up in seniority, maybe we’d be looking at “5 privacy questions the C-Suite should know the answer to”.
Content marketing and the sales funnel
The big ideas are great for driving awareness and showing a business has great insight into its industry. That is where you can start building awareness at the top of the funnel.
Where you move more into the consideration is by having these micro themes speaking to job roles in the industry and answering the challenges they face.
We then come onto booking demonstrations at the buying end of the funnel. That only happens, though, when a macro theme has shown a business understands an industry and follows it up with micro content that answers real quandaries budget holders are facing.
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