According to HubSpot, 63% of marketers say traffic and lead generation are their top challenges. While marketers agree that content marketing is an effective solution, the actual execution of this strategy is less clear. When it comes to creating content, choosing marketing content topics to convert leads is just as important as creating high-quality content. So how do you know if you have the right topic? What makes the difference between content that sits on your site unseen and content that is tweeted, posted, and shared?
How to Choose Marketing Content Topics to Convert Leads
Solve a Problem
Content that converts leads is different than content designed to drive more traffic, position your company as an industry authority, or build brand loyalty. Content used to convert leads should answer a potential customer’s question or solve their problems. If you’re not sure what these are, consider the following;
- What questions in your industry do you find yourself answering again and again?
- What obstacles do your customers often come to you to solve?
- What mistakes do you see your customers or competitors making?
- How can customers save time, money or energy?
Let’s say you have a landscaping company and you want to choose marketing content topics to convert website visitors into leads. You want to focus on problems or questions your customers have related to their lawns or gardens. Maybe they have problems with insects. Maybe they need landscape design inspiration. At the lead conversion stage, the content should be designed around solving these problems, not selling the landscaping business. A sales pitch at this stage is likely to turn prospects off.
Do Your Research
While you have some idea of the questions or problems your customers have, your research will turn your guesses into reliable marketing content topics. Here are some quick and easy research methods to get you started;
- Keyword research: Learn how to use Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool to generate keywords related to your industry, product, or service. This will also help you write your content for SEO. Try to focus on specific problems or questions (long-tail keywords) and not broad concepts.
- Autocomplete: This requires no tools other than a search engine, and can be enormously helpful in content creation. Use question words (who, what, when, where, why, how) with topics in your industry and autocomplete will show what questions users are asking and what you can answer.
- Market Research: If you’re working with a specific campaign or market segment, you may already have all the research you need. If you have sent surveys or questionnaires, organized product testing, worked with beta testers or used focus groups, you already know problems and questions your customers have.
- Competitive Analysis: Looking at content your competitors have already created can show you what topics are effective, but these will only be as good as your competitor’s content strategy. If you use this method, be careful not to imitate your competitors too closely and cross into plagiarism.
Using the landscaping business example, you determine through keyword research that a lot of people are researching landscaping ideas. Using autocomplete, you find a more narrow topic; landscaping ideas around pools. Since it has a high search volume, doesn’t have too much competition, and a lot of potential customers in your area have pools, this seems like a solid marketing content topic to convert leads.
Choose Your Content Type
Now that you have a topic you know potential customers are asking about, you have to choose your format. There are many ways to go about this and it’s important to keep your goals and customers in mind. Here are some content formats you might choose.
Written: instructional guides, blogs, ebooks, case studies
Visual: infographics, diagrams, videos, photos
Interactive: Webinar, checklist, constructive app
For your landscaping business, you’ve determined that your content should help homeowners wondering about landscaping around pools. For your content format, you might make a photographic design inspiration guide showing different poolside design concepts. You could help homeowners plan their landscaping design with a guide detailing the right plants, soil, or landscaping features.
Keep in mind that some formats, like blogs, are great for getting more traffic, but more in-depth content, like guides and webinars, are better for converting leads.
Make Your Content
Now that you know what you’re making and how you’re doing it, it’s time to execute your content idea. You might do this yourself, ask an employee to help you, or outsource the job to design, video, writing, or marketing experts. Whatever you choose, make sure your content is high-quality, or all your content planning will go to waste.
As you move through this process, make sure the time and money that you invest in your content and research is in line with your overall strategy. Also, remember that content is only a part of your marketing strategy; use your content as a part of advertisements, email drips, and social media to maximize the reach of your content marketing.
How do you ultimately choose marketing content topics for your marketing strategy? Do they convert leads? Leave a comment and tell us.