Getting No Leads? Here’s Why.
Every client tells us, “We need more leads.” So, they hire us to write blog content and produce a content calendar.
We get it done, the clients love it, but the leads don’t pour in. What gives?
“You wrote the content, but we’re not getting leads.”
Meanwhile, their brand has 78 followers on Facebook and 29 Twitter followers.
Here’s the hard truth: No reasonable amount of money is going to get your content in front of the right audience. Facebook doesn’t know where the leads are and their audience targeting is, at best, a guess. As users become more tech-savvy, they’re able to spot ads quickly and scroll right by.
What’s a brand to do?!
Is this what your content lead pipeline looks like?
Modulate your expectations
This is the most frustrating aspect of marketing efforts in general: They take time. Most people don’t know you exist. Why would you expect them to give you their money right away?
The sales funnel is essentially the marketing funnel. Remember that someone doesn’t happen upon a blog post and think, “I must purchase this immediately” and then purchase it. It takes time to take people from awareness to consideration to decision.
That blog post is there to answer their questions. It’s there to educate them, demonstrate your expertise, and help them realize that not only do you understand their problem, you can help fix it. Your content, no matter what kind of content it is, is there to build trust.
Once you build trust, your audience will respond. That’s when you’ll see content driving leads and converting. But there’s one key piece: Your content must be engaging.
Have you tried making engaging content?
Writing engaging content and building a community is tough. It took me seven years of constant work to build an audience of 16K followers on my YouTube channel. This includes regularly posting to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and producing videos for YouTube. It’s exhausting. And there’s rarely a meaningful payoff.
There’s a reason brands (and individuals, for that matter) don’t usually have thousands of followers.
Producing engaging content that builds a following is really hard work. It takes time. And no, you can’t just “make a viral video” or “write a viral tweet.” Like anything else, getting good at content takes practice, repetition, mistakes, failures, analysis, and an honest look at why your content isn’t performing.
This is what boring, unengaging content looks like.
“Sage on the stage” talking at the audience instead of engaging with the audience. Too many brands think this is the way to go.
Brands don’t usually produce content people like. But they sure do love producing content that they want people to respond to. There’s a big difference.
When I ask a client, “Would you read a piece of content you’ve been putting out? Like, if you didn’t work at your company, would you want to read an article called How Data Stream Got Started?” Usually, our clients laugh a little and say, “No. I would never read that.”
If you wouldn’t read it, don’t post it! You’re more interested in your work than 99% of your potential audience. So, if you wouldn’t read it on a day off or after you leave your company, then what’s the point? Posting for the sake of posting?
Boosting posts isn’t content marketing
Even with the strongest editorial calendar filled with awesome blog posts and killer social content, boosting it won’t really provide much meaningful return on investment. Without an interested audience, clicking the “Boost” button does little more than give Facebook money. If you have no organic reach, then it’s likely your content isn’t interesting enough even for your current audience.
Boosting and promoting social media posts is helpful when used for the right reasons. But, it takes the right content to fit those right reasons. For example, if you’re running a promotion for the next month, promoting that post is great — unless the post sucks. Have a good graphic and some attention-grabbing text.
Engaged audiences want to participate!
Make your readers and viewers put their hands in the air by resonating with them!
Don’t forget that increasingly-savvy audiences are learning to spot and ignore ads. Even great campaigns can go nowhere. The promoted post will continue to show up in people’s timelines, reminding them that the promotion exists.
You won’t generate leads by posting and promoting. It just doesn't work that way. You need an engaged audience who cares when they see your post. They need a reason to care about your posts.
If you constantly promote your company or your products and services, no one will care. You need to give them a reason to care about your brand. One way to do that is to remind them that you can solve the specific pain points they’re experiencing.
There’s no meaningful difference between promoting a social post and running a newspaper ad. Yes, you might increase your reach, but if the content is irrelevant or self-centered, it might as well be buried on page A13 of The Middletown Times.
How to build an audience
I learned something really important from a social media course by Zuby. People are online for three reasons:
To be informed
To be educated
To be entertained
If you’re not informing, educating, or entertaining the people who see your posts, you won’t get anywhere. sts that inform must be clear and concise. Posts that educate must teach. Posts that entertain must make someone feel an emotion (laughter, sadness, joy).
More importantly, your brand needs to participate and engage! Posting every day is meaningless if you don’t reply to comments or people sharing the content. If you care about your content, you’ll care about the people who engage with it. Your target audience will come to you!
Be consistent, post what your audience cares about, and engage. It’s not easy, but it is simple.
Get help building your audience and producing content
There’s a reason we are in business: Brands usually struggle to produce engaging content. They know it. We hear it every day. “We can’t do it.” “We’re not staffed for it.” “No one reads what we write.” Doing this is not easy.
It’s okay to admit that you need help.
Get started with our Top 7 Tips For Good Content Strategy guide. See what resonates. Then send us an email to get a call scheduled. Or just ask some questions. We love helping people.
Here’s some of what we do: search engine optimization, video content, case studies, white papers, content marketing strategy, social media calendars, website copy, and a lot more. Need any of that? Set up a 30 minute consultation with us — it’s free and we’re pretty enjoyable people.
