How To Provide Value To Your Audience
Building a strong relationship with your audience is a crucial part of your lead generation strategy. Remember that leads become customers. First, you have to introduce yourself and entice visitors to your website. Then you can nurture that relationship and, as people begin to know, like and trust you, they’ll be more willing to buy from you. And you can do all this through content marketing.
If your content doesn’t provide value to your audience, you’ll lose them. The key to creating solid content that’s part of a successful lead generation process is capturing the attention of your audience and holding their attention with high-quality content that’s interesting and evokes emotion.
When creating content, choose topics your target audience wants to know more about so that they’ll find you when they’re searching for information. To help shake up your content balance, here are 7 types of content you can create to provide value to your audience.
FREE Download: 5 Step Content Strategy
1. EBooks
EBooks are popular forms of content that you can use to generate leads, educate your customers and prospects, and build authority in your industry. However, it takes time to create a high-quality eBook. So choose a topic that will make your prospects move from downloading your eBook to having a productive conversation with you.
EBooks are an incredible way of providing value to customers. But be sure to choose a topic that’s worthy of comprehensive coverage to your target audience. Creating an eBook full of valuable information will raise your prospects’ opinions of you and your business.
2. Demos
If your leads and prospects are ready to learn more about your products or services, make it easier for them to schedule a demo with you. Place a call to action link to a demo on key pages of your website, such as your home page. Demos are valuable on sections of your website that explain the different features and benefits of your product or service. Once the prospect is intrigued, make scheduling a demo seamless.
3. Blog Posts
Make sure you publish your blog posts regularly to generate leads and nurture your prospects. Every blog post is another opportunity for prospects to find you through organic search. And a regular schedule helps you create new content consistently. This keeps your customers, leads, and prospects informed on what you’re offering. Creating high-quality blog posts that offer solutions that readers are searching for are an important part of building value in sales.
You can use informative blog posts at the final stages of a sales funnel. Since blog posts are sales enablement tools, you can use them as high-value references that can educate leads. And you can use them to nurture your prospects and close a sale.
4. Comprehensive Guides and Checklists
Guides and checklists are evergreen content and they generate leads by expanding on a topic they’re interested in. When creating value for customers with guides and checklists, do your topic research, and make sure that the topic has high interest and hasn’t been exhausted. If you find a lot of comprehensive content on a topic and you don’t think you can add more value to it, then don’t waste your time creating a guide for it.
5. Case Studies
Case studies are crucial to your brand’s success because they show prospects that you can deliver results, just as you have done for other customers. They’re proof that your target audience can trust you.
Make your case studies as diverse as possible so that more prospects can relate to what you’ve done for customers similar to them. Also, make sure your case studies reflect something particular about how your products work and why they’re valuable to your customers. Bear in mind that a case study won’t be complete if you don’t highlight your results.
6. White Papers
Creating white papers takes a more academic approach than other forms of on-site content. They’re geared towards professionals who are seeking what you’re offering, and you need to speak to them as such in your white papers.
To create a great white paper, it’s important to be persuasive and authoritative. The white paper should give an in-depth report on a specific topic by highlighting a problem and offering a solution.
Most of the time, prospects who are interested in white papers are invested in the topic. They are therefore willing to provide their basic information such as their name and their email address in exchange for access to the white paper. That means your white paper must be superb and it should offer your prospects actionable takeaways. If it’s not, you’ll disappoint them and they may not want your products or services any more.
7. Interviews/Podcasts
This is your chance to shine as an expert and create value! Impress your leads and prospects by speaking authoritatively while still being conversational. Don’t pass off a chance to be interviewed, because it helps you show off your expertise and promote what you’re offering.
Interactive content such as interviews and podcasts helps you market your business and show how you get results, while offering true value to your customers.
Free Checklist: A Content Strategy To Provide Value To Your Audience
The goal of most marketing strategies is to generate maximum exposure for brands. You can gain this exposure by creating high-quality and valuable content that boosts the chance of brand mentions, link shares and sales.
When you develop your value-driven content marketing strategy, it’s important that you understand who your audience is, while also knowing what your brand is and what you want that brand to represent and to whom. When you put your customer value and satisfaction first and focus on problem-solving, the more that customers will be attracted to you.
For maximum effect, experiment and see what content performs best in your content marketing. If you continually create conversion-driven content, it won’t take long before you see the results. For more information on how to provide value to your audience, download my free checklist, The 5 Step Content Strategy and discover the best practices used by the most successful bloggers and online entrepreneurs.
