Lead generation is of great importance to any business because it essentially brings in the customers who are going to pay you money for your product or service.
It is the gasoline in the car that is your business.
Lead generation content also needs to be balanced between educational marketing content and straight selling:
- You shouldn’t write a novel about your product or service, but it does need some background information.
- It aims to establish trust with your audience and then have them do something at the end—whether that is buying your product, signing up for a class, or downloading a book.
Quality lead generation content sells your product or service to other businesses (B2B) or directly to customers (B2C).
However, writing lead generation materials can pose challenges because you need to balance two marketing strategies: making a sales pitch and promoting brand awareness.
This guide will explore all those concepts and more. Let’s get started.
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What Is a Lead?
A lead is any person who may be interested in your company’s products or services.
- Typically, leads are potential customers who have volunteered their contact information after accepting your offer, trial, or subscription. These are warm leads.
- This contrasts with cold leads—people whose contact information you have purchased from a third party, for example. You reach out and make the initial contact with them, rather than the other way around.
What Is Lead Generation?
According to HubSpot, lead generation is the process of attracting people to your business and increasing their interest in you, all with the end goal of converting them to customers.
The idea is to get people naturally interested in your company through blog posts, emails and newsletters, social media posts, and other online content (such as videos).
Many businesses will put together a content marketing funnel made up of several different parts. For example:
- Maybe their main lead generation tool is an in-depth, research-backed white paper that interested people can download for free in exchange for their contact information.
- But in order to promote the white paper, the businesses will use online advertising and blogging.
There are different types of leads depending on which stage of the customer life cycle (their journey from casual reader to buyer) they are in.
- Marketing Qualified Lead: Contacts who have engaged with your marketing but are not yet ready to receive a sales call, such as people who have filled out a landing page form.
- Sales Qualified Lead: Contacts who have taken an interest in your business—by filling out a form, for example.
- Product Qualified Lead: Customers who have sampled your product and are interested in becoming paying customers— by upgrading after a free trial, for example.
- Service Qualified Lead: Customers who have told your sales team they want to use your service—by asking for a subscription or upgrade, for example.
5 Tips for Writing Killer Lead Generation Content
While lead generation materials can be challenging to write, there are five key ways to make yours convert better than your competition’s.
1. Have a Strong Headline
No matter which life cycle stage your prospective customers are at, the headline needs to be effective at getting people to open and read your lead generation content.
Your headline should be:
- Relevant: You need to grab readers’ attention and pique their interest without lying to them or misleading them. Your headline must be relevant to your content. Misleading people with a headline that doesn’t follow through is called clickbait, and clickbait will turn off your customers instantly.
- Straightforward: Many marketers make the mistake of trying to be funny or clever with their headlines. This often backfires because while some people might “get it,” many more will not. So don’t get overly clever—and avoid vague or mysterious headlines, too.
The headline helps readers determine if something is worth their time. It’s basically a little promise that says, “Here’s what’s in it for you if you read this.” The ultimate purpose of your headline is to give your lead generation content a fighting chance by getting people to read the first few lines.
Respect your readers’ time and you can’t go wrong.
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2. Make It Personal
Once you have written your headline, it’s time for the main attraction: the body of the content. This is where you will make your case to generate interest.
The best advice?
Don’t be a robot when speaking to prospective customers.
These folks don’t want to read a list of reasons why they should buy your product—they want to connect with your business on a more personal level.
- Try to Target the Right People: They need to connect with your company if you want them to become buyers.
- Personalize the Content: Don’t write boilerplate emails that people will quickly delete. It’s a waste of their time and yours. Personalized emails get 27% more unique clicks and about 11% higher open rates.
3. Keep It Simple and Concise
Lead generation content should typically be educational. At the same time, you’re not writing a textbook—you ultimately want the reader to do something, such as schedule a consultation, ask for more information, or make a purchase.
There’s not much time to make your point. Emails should be around 200 words. Other forms of lead generation content, such as social media posts, are only a couple hundred characters long.
Don’t waste time and space with fluff. Remember, yours is hardly the only content these people are reading today.
4. Create Urgency
After letting your potential customers know that you understand who they are, what their problem is, and how you can help them, you must create a sense of urgency for them to act.
You can emphasize the importance of your product by putting a time limit on it.
Use words such as:
- “Limited time”
- “Now”
- “Hurry”
- “Don’t miss out”
For example, “Don’t wait—this deal won’t last forever.” This tactic works well with B2C lead generation.
You can also use urgency for B2B. Emphasize that there are limited spots in your webinar or that you take only a select few clients. Let them know you are in high demand and that they need to act now.
Whether B2B or B2C, your marketing content should convey a sense of urgency to buy your product or service.
5. Get Your Reader to Take Action
Finally, you need the reader to make a decision to give you the lead you want.
So far, you’ve grabbed their attention with a snappy headline, made them feel comfortable and heard, kept them on the right track, and created a sense of urgency to buy. And now? The time is ripe for your lead generation content to close the deal with a powerful call to action (CTA).
In fact, you should start the whole process with your CTA in mind.
- Offer a CTA at the beginning for people who want to take immediate action.
- Then build up to another CTA at the end using the tips above.
- Ensure the CTA button or action is clear and flows with the rest of your lead generation content. This isn’t the time to be shy or vague. Your CTA doesn’t need to be aggressive, but it should be extremely clear.
Don’t forget! Download “A Guide to Writing Killer Lead Generation Content: 5 Tips to Convert More Readers to Buyers” to keep it handy and take action on it. Click here to download it now.
Final Thoughts
Lead generation content is crucial to your business. After all, more leads means more clients, and that means more revenue and growth.
With the five tips here, you will enhance your marketing efforts and convert more readers to paying customers.
Once you’ve finished the first draft of your lead generation content, have the professional proofreading and editing team at Super Copy Editors polish it to perfection. We have been helping marketers write killer lead generation materials for years, and we know how to make your headlines, content, and CTAs convert more readers to buyers. Get your proofreading quote today.
