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How to Create Content that Generates Brand Awareness and Helps You Reach More Leads

Do you want to improve your marketing ROI? Here are a few tips of how to create content to improve brand awareness and reach more leads.
Article Outline

If your marketing team is focused on improving results, chances are you invest a great amount of effort into generating content for your brand. After all, research shows that content marketing generates 3x more leads for every dollar spent, and 80% of people enjoy learning about a brand through content. So it hard not to see the brand awareness benefits it can have for your company.

Yet, despite the potential content has to improve your marketing ROI, there are many of us who are struggling to see results. The reason why is that not all content appeals to our prospective customers and motivates them to take action. If you want to create effective content, you have to be strategic about what message it conveys, where you place it to best reach your audience, and making it so that it engages and inspires your leads to keep moving through the sales funnel.

Of course, with the endless amount of content possibilities floating around, that is easier said than done. To simplify your quest of finding a content recipe that works, we’ve rounded up a few ways you can create content that generates brand awareness and helps you reach more leads. 

Take Advantage of Partnerships to Build Brand Awareness

No matter what industry you’re in, partnerships are a great way to expand your reach and attract new leads. Think about other businesses and current customers selling a complementary product or service, or any industry leaders and influencers that can serve as ambassadors for your brand. If your lead is already a customer or follower of your partner, it provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate to them how becoming your customer can further alleviate any existing pain points and improve their life.

So how do partnerships fit into your content strategy? If you and your partner sell complementary products, focus on creating content that shows how both your offerings combined can lead to better results. Create a data sheet, video or infographic demonstrating to your lead how your brands work together to solve their problems and get them the results they want to see. You and your partner can both promote this content to leverage your brands and expand your customer base.

If you’re collaborating with an expert in your industry, create content that both enables them to share their expertise and communicates the value of your brand. For example, a webinar provides a platform in which you can both explore a topic relevant to your customers, address their pain points and questions, and explain how you can help them achieve results. 

Establish Your Company As a Thought Leader in Your Industry

Did you know that 9 in 10 decision makers find thought leadership important when making a purchasing decision? And 75% of decision makers either gave their contact information or followed up with an organization after engaging with thought leadership content during the awareness stage of the decision-making process?

The reason thought leadership is so effective is because it helps establish trust in your brand, which then enables your leads and current customers to regard you as a leader in your industry. Content promoting thought leadership allows them to see you’re not just selling a product or service, but also understand the source of their pain points and have the expertise to help them solve those problems.

One thing to keep in mind with thought leadership is that it needs to be a continuous effort. You can’t just publish one piece and expect your current and prospective customers to revere you as a leader. Instead, you need to build trust over time by constantly providing your audience with advice, updates on trends and other insights that will help them accomplish what they want to do.

At Act-On, we create content on our blog and social channels featuring our executive team providing insights on how we are transforming and improving our own business and marketing efforts to help other marketers do the same. We realize empowering marketers to amplify their marketing goes beyond just selling a marketing automation platform. We need to lead by example and acknowledge all the pieces that come into play in order to run a successful organization.

Make Content Your Audience Wants to Share

Your content is only useful in generating brand awareness and attracting more leads if it gets seen. Luckily for us marketers, we work in a day and age where the internet allows us to push out content anywhere from our website, social channels and even print.

But because it’s so easy to share content that also means everybody else, including our competitors, are doing the same. Therefore, we have to compete to be seen by creating content pieces eye catching and useful enough to inspire our readers to engage and share them with their peers.

For example, on social media where things tend to move rather quickly, videos, graphics and even a catchy headline are a great way to attract the attention of your leads. These elements can feature quick stats or bits of a story that inspire your audience to click through to more detailed content letting them know what you’re all about.

So how do you determine what works with your audience? You’ve probably heard about the importance of developing a buyer persona time and time again, and this is one of those times where it comes in handy. Refer to those profiles and think about what motivates your audience, what kind of topics are most likely appeal to them and what format will be the most useful to them.

Invite Customers to Rep Your Brand

Getting your customers to chime in on how amazing you are is a great way to generate brand awareness and inspire interest in leads. A good way to feature the voice of your customers is by creating case studies or success stories. Start by identifying customers that have achieved great results or have reached out to say they love your brand, and schedule a time to interview them. Then work with them to create and promote content that tells a story of how they have benefited from being a customer.

But, you don’t always have to be involved in the making of content. User-generated content can also have a huge impact, with research telling us 64% of customers actively search user-generated content such as product reviews before making a purchasing decision.

And the great thing is getting your customers to create user-generated content is as easy as sending them an email asking them to write a review or promote a hashtag. Although not all will choose to participate, there will be those out there who feel passionately enough about you to give you some praise. If you’re interested in learning more, here are a few ways you can make the most out of user-generated content.

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