Lead generation is the goal of your content strategy—and to jump-start your lead generation you will need to develop content assets to attract traffic to the top of your marketing funnel.
As a content strategist, I’m asked this question all the time on social media and during conversations with clients.
I stress consistently that building a content funnel (and/or sales funnel), even a basic one, is essential to your lead generation.
And more often than not, I find marketing teams just simply haven’t started with a funnel opt-in piece, and they’re not doing anything to acquire new contacts. And to capture that information at the beginning.
I encourage you to start sooner rather than later with this nurturing journey and lead generation strategy.
Don’t over complicate it
Many marketing teams don’t jump on this lead generation opportunity simply because of TIME, NO IDEAS, UNAWARE OF ITS IMPORTANCE…. #insertexcusehere
But I want to make something clear in this blog post. Your first content asset piece for the top of the funnel doesn’t have to be complicated.
- It doesn’t have to be a robust ebook guide starting at 5,000 words.
- It doesn’t have to be a two-hour webinar on a complicated topic that you can’t get your product lead to commiting to scheduling time to attend.
It can simply be a content type like an Infographic or a checklist. It can be simple.
But most of all—it has to come from a place of value. It has to be valuable to your audience, and it has to be directly linked to a specific pain point or challenge of your ideal audience.
And honestly, once you’ve developed that one content asset opt-in. You are golden for the next quarter—and you can position the majority of your content awareness efforts to pushing traffic towards that download piece.
Typical content assets to fill the top of the funnel
Are you ready to commit to creating a content asset to jump start your lead generation strategy?
Great, I’m proud that you’ve moved it up in your content priority timeline.
There are many different types of content assets that are great for the top of the funnel. As we know, the top of the funnel customers are stuck in “awareness”.
They’re having challenges, pains, and emotions, but they haven’t quite understood that there is a possible solution to solve what they’re experiencing.
They’re in the investigation process—and because of this, they’re asking themselves specific questions that are within this “awareness” level.
What are those questions?
This is a great question to work on answering during your Intelligence Gathering meeting with your c-suite, sales team, and current customers. What are your customers asking at this level in the journey?
I stress this point because it’s essential to creating a content asset piece that resonates with your audience.
Don’t put effort into something that won’t bring results. Avoid the guesswork and gather intelligence for your topic.
You have your topic, now what are typical content assets that work well for the top of the funnel efforts? Here they are:
- Infographics
- Mini-guides
- Checklists to improve something (i.e. think specific challenge)
- Entry-level topical webinar
- Quizzes
- Mini-email courses
And if you’re still not sure, ask your audience. Ask your audience what type of content assets they like to consume.
Granted we can guess based on B2B industry experience (i.e. checklists, guides, webinars)—but poll tools on social media platforms like LinkedIn now provide us with a very easy and quick way to engage our audience.
