Nurturing Leads with Content Marketing

[Shaha Noor]

Nurturing Leads with Content Marketing

If lead scoring is the backbone of a successful online marketing strategy, then content marketing is the muscle. In a marketplace where buyers are increasingly wary of ads and increasing self-educating through the funnel, content marketing has stepped up to the place to give brands a voice

Simply put, content marketing is the process of creating relevant and valuable content—from blog posts to infographics to video—that attracts, engages, and serves your audience. Buyers are already scouring the web for answers to their questions and solutions for their problems that brands are uniquely positioned to provide. Content marketing welcomes them at every stage of the buyer's journey, and helps move them through the funnel.
Content Marketing and Email
Despite the Wall Street Journal's preemptive obituary, and the Gmail tab scare of 2013, email marketing is still one of the best ways to communicate with an audience

74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email (Merkle).
Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300% (Direct Marketing Association).
Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. (Jupiter Research
Email is the most direct way to get specific content to a specific lead, but effective email marketing needs to be five things

Trusted—A smart opt-in process sets up accurate and happy expectations, which means your content will be well received in someone's inbox.
Relevant—The days of email "blasts" are over. Segment your audience as much as possible, and send small, highly-relevant campaigns.
Conversational—Give your buyer a chance to respond, and make sure your next round of content takes that response into consideration.
Coordinated—Email content should be the hub that connects social and website content.
Strategic—Opens and CTRs are good, but you want sales. The system you use for emailing content needs to be able to deliver some kind of ROI metric.
Content Marketing on Your Brand's Website
Your brand site is, of course, your online home base. With a robust SEO strategy, it will be the first impression your audience gets of your brand, and should be a constant, continual resource for leads at every stage of the buyer's journey.

There are three areas of your website that should be the focus of a content marketing strategy:

Strategic landing pages—Develop strong landing pages that make strategic use of keyword/user intent combinations, and that demonstrate authority on a topic of interest (as opposed to just one keyword).
Blog—The branded blog is a key tool for keeping website content fresh and updated.
Resource Center—An online library, your brand's resource center collects all of your content on every topic, and strategically organizes and presents it to create a killer user experience.
Content Marketing on Social Media
aking a content strategy to social media requires a different kind of creativity, but every social channel is another outlet for branded content

Strategic social marketing doesn't mean producing all the content for all the channels. Match your target audience demographics to the demographics of the major networks, and determine which types of content (images, video, ebooks, etc.) work best to tell your brand's story. Focus your social content strategy where the two overlap, and remember the golden rules of social marketing:

Don't take yourself too seriously.
Inbound is not enough.
You must have good content and solid offers.
You will need a strong CTA.
Always add value.
Never forget that social is a two-way street.
Peer-to-peer sharing is the best way to get your message heard.

Source: Marketo