Digital Inbound Marketing Blog

Lead Generation Tip: Why It's OK to Have Your Content Consumed But Not Acted On

Posted by David C Aaronson

Sep 12, 2016 7:00:00 AM

Lead generation


You research, write, and promote exceptional content. Ultimately, your goal is to draw in leads and to turn them into customers. You hope that over time, your content will be one of your best sales pitches, helping your customers understand your business and deepening their connection with you. While it's ideal to have your content lead to a customer conversion, it's also fine to have those who never become a customer consume your content as well.

Your Content Plays Many Roles

When you develop content for your site, you do so to draw people in. It's a tried-and-true inbound marketing technique, and with the appropriate landing pages, sales funnels, understanding of personas, and keywords, you'll develop the tools you need to turn your content into a way to convert leads to customers. However, your content plays many roles. It isn't just a way to get people to buy a product or add their name to your newsletter. Adding new content keeps your website vital, adding more keywords and increasing your search rank on websites. This happens no matter how many of your visitors convert to customers.

Content

Those who browse may not buy, but they can share.

Creating Shareable Content

Some of your visitors will browse, while others will buy. However, those who browse can be great tools for social media engagement, even if they never purchase your product. They may love the idea of your product, or they could have friends who really need it. By creating invitations to share in addition to invitations to buy, and by developing a strong social media presence, you'll engage these browsing leads as part of a strong word-of-mouth advertising network.

They'll Understand Your Reputation

Even if an individual doesn't purchase your products, every time you interact with someone you're developing your reputation in their mind. They are connecting you with the persona and the information that you project in your blog posts, your social media posts, your ebooks, and all of the other information that you send out online. There are many reasons why people won't purchase your products. You might be outside their price range. They might be doing research for a friend, but they're not motivated to purchase themselves. Nonetheless, the reputation that you develop is important, because when their friends ask them about the best baby clothes or the best personal development coaching product, they'll send those friends over to you. Strive to make an impression, even on those who will never buy, as your impression becomes your reputation.

Less Cultivation for the Fallow Field

You'll always have some people who will download your free ebook or take your free webinar and never enter your company's ledgers as a customer. That's fine, and it's a regular part of doing business. You can still appreciate these people, but you don't need to cultivate them as intensively as you would a prospective customer. Track the routes of different individuals through your site and create personas that tell you about the interests of those typical individuals. By monitoring the typical behavior of a buyer and a browser over time, you can make a note as to whether a person is a good sales prospect. If they're not, spend less time cultivating that future sale, but continue to provide excellent content that anyone can enjoy and share. The benefit of excellent content is that it doesn't cost you anything more to have 10,000 people access than it does to have 100 access it. Your browsing leads can enjoy your content, and when you focus your energy on those who are motivated to buy, you'll cultivate the necessary connections to help your business success.

As you develop your content strategy, talk with Digital Inbound. From your first blog post to the launch of your improved website, we can help you plan how your content can draw in and convert your leads. Contact us today and request a free Website Competitive Analysis report.

Sun Tzu says that competitive knowledge is our best combat material

Topics: content marketing