Con­tent makes the world go round, espe­cial­ly in the world of lead gen­er­a­tion. Com­pared to tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing efforts, con­tent will dri­ve 3x as many leads. This blog will explore 7 dif­fer­ent types of con­tent and help you decide which is best suit­ed to your busi­ness’s lead-gen­er­a­tion efforts.

Let’s dive in.

1. Blog posts and articles

The most effec­tive (and unfor­tu­nate­ly some­times the most dif­fi­cult) form of con­tent mar­ket­ing is the blog strat­e­gy. Blogs top the SEO world too, often being the first advised step when want­i­ng to opti­mise your website.

It’s not sur­pris­ing that hav­ing a blog is invalu­able. In fact, busi­ness­es with blogs gen­er­ate 67% more leads than busi­ness­es that don’t. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, even a week­ly blog strat­e­gy is a big invest­ment. Most busi­ness­es strug­gle to finance the rig­or­ous plan­ning and cre­ation need­ed to pub­lish a high-qual­i­ty blog. Often busi­ness­es will need to out­source free­lancers and cre­ate con­tent that stands out in an already extreme­ly com­pet­i­tive space.

Nev­er­the­less, blogs remain a pow­er­ful chan­nel for lead gen­er­a­tion as organ­ic search isn’t let­ting up.

If you decide it’s time to get start­ed on your very first blog strat­e­gy, check out our begin­ner’s guide to learn the best prac­tices you need to fol­low. You’ll also do well to cre­ate ever­green con­tent, which can keep costs down when you’re just start­ing off. And final­ly, read our arti­cle about not pur­su­ing every key­word – this can eas­i­ly trap busi­ness­es new to con­tent and SEO and be a big drain on resources.

First of all, is your busi­ness even suit­ed to a blog strat­e­gy? Some aren’t, and that’s OK. It would­n’t do to get start­ed and waste resources if anoth­er form of con­tent would be better.

Blog strate­gies are best suit­ed for busi­ness­es in con­tent-heavy indus­tries such as dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, health and well­ness, finance, lifestyle, and tech­nol­o­gy. Does your tar­get audi­ence use search engines reg­u­lar­ly to learn about your indus­try? If your ide­al cus­tomers are like­ly to look for infor­ma­tion that you can pro­vide, an organ­ic blog con­tent strat­e­gy is ideal.

Can your busi­ness pro­vide valu­able, infor­ma­tive, and engag­ing con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis? You’ll need a mod­er­ate bud­get for this – as well as a writer and some­one to man­age the con­tent. You’ll need some­one to nav­i­gate a key­word research tool, and this is a fair­ly spe­cialised skill set.

Though users will be able to find your blog through organ­ic search, it helps if you can pro­mote it. Email or social media is great for this, but that would count as lead nur­tur­ing. For your blog to effec­tive­ly gen­er­ate new leads, you’ll need to utilise key­words effec­tive­ly and opti­mise your web­site for SEO (check out our guide here). These actions will bol­ster your site’s author­i­ty and increase the like­li­hood of rank­ing high­ly in the SERPs.

2. Email marketing

Email con­tent is anoth­er pow­er­house in lead gen­er­a­tion. In fact, it dri­ves 50% more sales com­pared to oth­er lead gen­er­a­tion efforts.

Arguably, email mar­ket­ing may count as ‘lead nur­tur­ing’ since you’ve already achieved the first step and obtained the sub­scriber’s email address. How­ev­er, email mar­ket­ing can be used in sev­er­al ways to reen­gage dis­en­gaged leads or obtain new ones.

For exam­ple, cold leads can be enticed with new and improved email cam­paigns. Redesign­ing your emails or using per­son­al­i­sa­tion efforts can total­ly change the game for dis­en­gaged sub­scribers, effec­tive­ly turn­ing them back on and see­ing your brand in a new light for the ‘first’ time.

Addi­tion­al­ly, you can use email con­tent to gain refer­rals – espe­cial­ly if you offer leads an incen­tive in exchange for shar­ing your brand with a friend.

Email is espe­cial­ly valu­able when you’re launch­ing a new prod­uct or ser­vice. Your pre­ex­ist­ing sub­scriber list is like a gold­mine at your fin­ger­tips when you want to gen­er­ate leads and inter­est in your new offering.

If you want to give your email con­tent a new lease of life, there are lots of ways you can improve it. Con­sid­er a redesign – your font size or use of colours may be turn­ing off sub­scribers. Sec­ond­ly, con­sid­er what con­tent you’re shar­ing via email – might your sub­scribers enjoy a week­ly newslet­ter con­tain­ing the lat­est indus­try news? Per­haps your cam­paigns could share more per­son­al details about your busi­ness’s team or its ‘behind-the-scenes’ activities.

The best email con­tent is easy to digest and deliv­ered in a non-inva­sive man­ner. Noth­ing says ‘unsub­scribe’ quick­er than a twice-dai­ly email sched­ule. Learn more about email best prac­tices from our guide.

Email mar­ket­ing con­tent is a good invest­ment for all kinds of busi­ness­es. Plus, it can be pret­ty cheap to run. Busi­ness­es both big and small can afford an email mar­ket­ing cam­paign, so it’s an all-round win­ning choice for lead generation.

3. Podcasts

Per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, pod­casts are one of the top three con­tent types (along­side blogs and videos) in their abil­i­ty to dri­ve leads from the Aware­ness to the Con­sid­er­a­tion stage.

You could do two things with this infor­ma­tion. First, you could start your own pod­cast. Sec­ond, you could appear on some­one else’s. Obvi­ous­ly, the first option is much more resource-inten­sive. Though pod­casts are rel­a­tive­ly cheap to pro­duce, they’re a big time invest­ment and you’re unlike­ly to see sig­nif­i­cant leads for a while. Com­par­a­tive­ly, appear­ing on an already pop­u­lar pod­cast could give you a big influx of new leads almost instantaneously.

Pod­cast con­tent is ide­al for busi­ness­es that exist in indus­tries where in-depth dis­cus­sions are com­mon­place. For instance, the health indus­try is in con­tin­u­ous debate about new fads and sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies, mak­ing pod­casts a vibrant space for hash­ing out dif­fer­ent view­points. Anoth­er dis­cus­sion-heavy indus­try is the tech space – espe­cial­ly with recent AI devel­op­ments shak­ing every­thing up.

The audi­ences of these indus­tries like to lis­ten to expert inter­views and will hap­pi­ly engage in long-form audio con­tent to stay abreast of the lat­est devel­op­ments. If you can see your busi­ness con­tribut­ing to that, then this may be the next choice for your lead gen­er­a­tion efforts.

If you choose to cre­ate your own pod­cast, be mind­ful that it isn’t dom­i­nat­ed by salesy pro­mo­tion­al con­tent. It will need to be firm­ly infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing before you can even con­sid­er pro­mot­ing your com­pa­ny. Since it won’t gen­er­ate new leads quick­ly, it’s bet­ter suit­ed to large busi­ness­es with lots of resources to play the long game.

4. Videos

As men­tioned above, videos are one of the top three con­tent types in dri­ving leads from Aware­ness to Con­sid­er­a­tion. Busi­ness­es best posi­tioned to use video con­tent for lead gen­er­a­tion have tar­get audi­ences that are already tech-savvy and engaged in dig­i­tal content.

Addi­tion­al­ly, video con­tent strate­gies are best suit­ed to busi­ness­es that deal with visu­al­ly appeal­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices. For exam­ple, retail and real estate brands can real­ly show off their offer­ings through video. Sim­i­lar­ly, busi­ness­es in the fit­ness and online edu­ca­tion worlds are well-posi­tioned to use video to show­case their offerings.

Check out our guide to learn some video mar­ket­ing best prac­tices. Video is a com­pet­i­tive space, depend­ing on your brand’s niche, so it will be impor­tant to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty con­tent. Sim­i­lar­ly to email, video strate­gies can be done cheap­ly or expensively.

5. Social media content

Social media plat­forms have a vast glob­al user base, allow­ing busi­ness­es to con­nect with a wide range of poten­tial cus­tomers. Nev­er­the­less, social media tends to be best suit­ed to busi­ness­es with younger tar­get audi­ences. Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s becom­ing more impor­tant that busi­ness­es post ‘relat­able’ lifestyle or com­ic con­tent to engage with leads. As a result, cer­tain more ‘seri­ous’ busi­ness­es may not be well suited.

The excep­tion to this is, of course, LinkedIn – offer­ing a space for the more strait-laced and B2B brands. LinkedIn pro­vides lead-gen­er­a­tion tools for pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing and B2B out­reach, as well as oppor­tu­ni­ties for Thought Lead­er­ship content.

If you choose to invest in social media con­tent for your lead gen­er­a­tion efforts, you’ll do well to take advan­tage of the B2C inter­ac­tions that the plat­forms offer. Through com­ments, likes, shares, and direct mes­sages, busi­ness­es can engage in real-time con­ver­sa­tions, answer ques­tions, and pro­vide per­son­alised respons­es to indi­vid­ual fol­low­ers. If your busi­ness is capa­ble of engag­ing with leads in this man­ner, your social media lead-gen­er­a­tion strat­e­gy will do well.

A com­mon fear around social media strate­gies is that they’re too much of a big invest­ment. While there’s some truth in this, it’s still pos­si­ble to see results after a short time. At the moment it seems cre­ativ­i­ty is a must. Poten­tial cus­tomers are engaged by con­tent that is unique, cre­ative, or enter­tain­ing. Your input does­n’t have to be exces­sive. In fact, 66% of mar­keters were able to gen­er­ate new leads by com­mit­ting just 6 hours of their week to social media.

6. Case studies and customer stories

Case stud­ies show­case the bril­liance of your prod­ucts or ser­vices through the real sto­ries of your cus­tomers. Offer­ing tan­gi­ble proof of the val­ue of your prod­uct or ser­vice, this type of con­tent is best used by busi­ness­es that sell high-tick­et items. If cred­i­bil­i­ty and trust are high­ly impor­tant for your leads to con­vert, this con­tent type will be very help­ful for your business.

Busi­ness­es that pro­vide com­plex, high-val­ue prod­ucts or ser­vices, such as B2B com­pa­nies, SaaS providers, con­sult­ing firms, and health­care ser­vices, are best suit­ed to using case stud­ies and cus­tomer testimonials.

Case stud­ies should be high­ly vis­i­ble on your web­site or email cam­paigns, and it should be clear to leads that they are gen­uine. Use links to real cus­tomer reviews or dis­play brand logos to con­vey this. When dis­trib­ut­ing your suc­cess sto­ry con­tent (whether via email, social media, or on your web­site’s hero page), write relat­able pain points in the most vis­i­ble place. This will attract the most qual­i­fied leads.

7. Free templates and tools

Offer­ing prac­ti­cal tools such as tem­plates, cal­cu­la­tors, or check­lists can attract leads by pro­vid­ing them with imme­di­ate, action­able val­ue. These resources are often high­ly appre­ci­at­ed as they help solve spe­cif­ic prob­lems or stream­line tasks.

Busi­ness­es in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, soft­ware, edu­ca­tion, and finance are best suit­ed to using free tem­plates and tools for lead gen­er­a­tion because the tar­get audi­ences of these indus­tries are in great need of them. In addi­tion, they com­mon­ly oper­ate in com­pet­i­tive mar­kets so will ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from some­thing that high­lights their val­ue to leads.

Busi­ness­es look­ing for cost-effec­tive lead gen­er­a­tion efforts will be well-suit­ed to this approach as free resources can be dis­trib­uted dig­i­tal­ly with min­i­mal costs.

Final thoughts

So, there are sev­er­al types of con­tent you could choose to help with your lead gen­er­a­tion efforts. Depend­ing on your busi­ness’s bud­get, tar­get audi­ence, and indus­try, its opti­mal con­tent type will vary.

Whichev­er type you pick, the exe­cu­tion of your strat­e­gy is most impor­tant. Automa­tion is one way you can opti­mise your exe­cu­tion, as it ensures your busi­ness is engag­ing with leads at the opti­mal times in the sales fun­nel. In fact, mar­ket­ing automa­tion soft­ware can help increase qual­i­fied leads by 451%.

Automa­tion is a high­ly valu­able tool in lead gen­er­a­tion because it 1) saves you time by han­dling rou­tine tasks, 2) scores your leads, 3) per­son­alis­es mes­sages for indi­vid­ual leads, and 4) can mon­i­tor the per­for­mance of your cam­paigns. Learn about automat­ing your lead gen­er­a­tion efforts by read­ing our guide.

To get help gen­er­at­ing the qual­i­fied leads you’re aim­ing for, reach out to us at pur­ple­plan­et. We have a whole host of ser­vices that can help with mar­ket­ing, automa­tion, and more.

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