The webinar on ‘7 Killer Content Marketing Strategies for 2015’ conducted by our expert content marketer, Meenu Joshi and LeadSquared CEO, Nilesh Patel was a huge success. We saw a record number of registrations for the webinar. Those of you who missed it, here’s a summary of some of the questions asked during the session.
You can watch the webinar recording here:
Question 1
We are offering online courses. Which platforms should we use, apart from Google & Facebook, to generate leads?
You can find a list of 56 online sources & tactics for education lead generation, here.
You would probably be spending money on Google and Facebook ads. If you have video tutorials, you could upload them on YouTube as well since YouTube videos are searchable. There are several other video sharing channels that you could look at, like Dailymotion.
You should look at blogging as well. From what I have seen, whatever education clients we have worked with, blogging has worked really well for them, especially quizzes. Students generally search for stuff online. If you write high quality content, you can succeed with that.
For instance, if you offer a course in one particular category, like GMAT, and you publish articles around that, like news articles – that will get you some traction because people would be searching for that kind of stuff in the peak time. That would get traffic to your website. Then you could have some offers on your website which could be downloadable or put behind a form, so that the traffic that your blog posts are getting you, could turn into leads as well.
Question 2
Does video marketing help in lead generation for school businesses?
I think video marketing would help school businesses. You could include the testimonial pieces depending on what kind of school it is. An example would be testimonials of parents. It would help people learn more about the business or school in this case.
The video would basically include a story and if they (views/prospects) like the story, they would sign up. YouTube would make a good channel because it’s easy for videos to rank there. Identifying those keywords (for video titles/names) is the key.
One of our customers who is into corporate training has used video marketing and seen good results. His conversion increased by 600% after using videos in landing pages.
Question 3
I have a Facebook page for my company which offers online courses for healthcare, business, management, arts, etc. If I write a post about management, I’m always afraid it might not be relevant to healthcare audience and the rest. So how do I create content in such a scenario?
You need to have a blog.
- If you have multiple kinds of audiences, you could have a dedicated blog which could have a different domain name or it could be a sub-domain, on which you host that blog and make sure that the content is basically relevant there.
- To make it simpler, you can have different categories for different courses. If it is properly segregated, it would be easier for the audience to find content that is relevant to them.
- With respect to Facebook, if you have a wide variety of courses and your audience understands that your company offers a lot of things, they would certainly benefit from all content that you share and people who want to pick certain content, will pick content that is relevant to them.
- You could also even out the content by writing multiple contents for multiple categories. Then you could share that on Facebook multiple times and find out which posts are getting you most traction and at what times of the day.
We have also seen people opening different Facebook accounts but that probably wouldn’t be a good idea, because you have one brand or one business name, and you are operating multiple accounts. It’s something you need to try out and decide what’s working.
- If you are promoting content, you can use Facebook Custom Audience and other methods to segregate the audience. However, if it’s organic content, you can’t really do that.
- Also, if you are sharing content online, you could use hastags with specific keywords like, #heathcare, #management, and so on, making it more relevant for that particular audience.
Question 4
For online financial skill training, which tools do you suggest to get learners and which tools would help me prepare videos?
To get learners, you need to invest in marketing. Do content marketing. Spend money on ads. Since you are talking about financial skill training, I’m assuming it is targetted for graduates and above, so you have to find that audience online.
For offline, you can check the partnership model – you find other institutes or companies who are not offering competitive programs but have something which they can offer to their students in partnership with you.
Use tools like LeadSquared to organize your marketing, especially if you are dealing with large volumes of leads. You should use tools to organize your marketing, otherwise, it is just going to be unmanageable after a while.
Also, make sure your call telephony is integrated with a marketing system like LeadSquared. We have seen consumer businesses, who use cloud telephony, lose leads due to lack of integration. Cloud telephony tools like Super Receptionist will help.
When it comes to tools for preparing videos, I think Articulate is a good one. For more options, take a look at this post on 9 Video Marketing Tools for Marketers.
Question 5
What is the ideal platform for broadcasting webinars to large audiences?
GoToWebinar has worked out well for us. You could also check out Google Hangouts. WebEx is another one.
Question 6
Is blogging useful for content marketing and website promotion? How many blog posts should I write per week/month?
Content marketing would definitely help you, depending on the kind of industry you are in. You should have a proper website. The frequency of the blogs would depend on the quality of the content. For our education clients, we used to blog about 8 times a month. It depends on the quality of the content rather than the quantity. If your content is not of high quality, neither Google nor people would appreciate it.
Question 7
If I want to run a contest for a software company, which platforms should I use – Pinterest or Facebook?
Not Pinterest is what I would say as it is more visual. If you have a contest idea where visual content would help, you can use Pinterest. Otherwise, try Twitter and Facebook. You would need to test it.
Question 8
Are case studies a good way to connect with readers? What platforms, apart from the company website, can be used to leverage these client case studies?
Case studies are definitely a very good way to connect with your prospects. We publish case studies in different formats for different purposes. Case studies that we publish on blogs drive highly relevant traffic organically. To assist our sales team, we also publish them in shareable formats, like PDFs. It helps further sales conversation, and close the deals faster because people from a particular industry are generally interested in knowing how their competitors are benefiting from the solution.
This would apply to all the different businesses, B2B and B2C. Prospects would trust a solution more if they are able to see a problem that they identify with getting addressed.
You could send it to the clients in different formats like videos, PDFs, testimonials, etc., and of course, have it on your blog. Sometimes, 3rd party reviews and discussion platforms help as well, because that’s where people generally go to compare alternatives.
Question 9
What should be the frequency of sending mailers on a monthly basis?
What’s important here is what you are sending and are your recipients interested in what you are sending. If the content that you send is all self-serving like “buy my stuff” or “this is our discount”, people would not appreciate it. The more informative, conversational, and relevant your content is, the higher could be its frequency – a week or more.
We had a client in education who was sending 2 emails a week, and there was a very low unsubscribe rate on that list. It created a good ‘top of the mind’ with the prospects. The content that was being sent, was for the benefit of the students, like video tutorials and so on.
Question 10
How do you think one should plan an email marketing campaign for a B2B company?
Identifying the persona and interests, is the first place you should begin. In most of the B2B companies we have seen, when it comes to email campaigns, they typically create a list and expect the prospect to respond. Seldom or few companies have invested in content marketing or created an organic list of subscribers. It’s hard work and a lot of effort needs to be put into that. Also, you need original or differentiating content.
One of our customers who is in IT business focuses on Groovy and Grails – they write blogs and some of them are fairly technical in nature. Their audience is CTOs of fast-growing companies who use one the most advanced technologies to build their product. In spite of that, their blog is always among the top searched items and that’s how their audience (CTOs) contact them.
Coming back to the question, once you connect with your prospects, you can send them white papers in email campaigns or any other relevant content. However, the planning for email campaigns will be secondary. What is important is identifying the right kind of audience and finding them online.
For more inputs on B2B Email Marketing, take a look at this webinar recording and blog post on B2B Email Marketing Best Practices.
Question 11
Which blog site should I use to publish my blogs?
WordPress is one of the best content management systems (CMS) and you should definitely consider it to publish your blogs. For more inputs on blog sites, check out this post on the Best Blogging Platforms.
Question 12
What kind of questions/engagement should we initiate on Facebook/Twitter?
In case of Facebook, try to use images to enhance or initiate engagement. Holding online contests will also help. Take a look at this post on 5 Social Media Tactics for Lead Generation to understand how you can leverage social media to generate revenues for your business.
In case of Twitter, you should catch trends that you could jump in with and create conversations around that. If you do that, you will get noticed. However, you have to be careful about that as well. Sometimes, brands have tried to do this and it backfires.
For more inputs on Twitter, take a look at this SlideShare presentation on 10 Ways to use Twitter as an Effective Marketing Tool.
Question 13
We are in the real estate industry. How we should promote our projects?
You should be watchful of the trend of how people are buying. We recently conducted a webinar session on How to be a Smarter Real Estate Marketer. That session would probably give you an answer to your question.
Question 14
Will content marketing be helpful for corporate training business? Currently we are using Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, but not webinars for lead generation. What are the other alternatives that we can use?
Blogging will help, apart from the channels that you have suggested. I think webinars would also be useful. I know of a gentleman who was in corporate training and is doing webinars, and that is really helping him. Someone else I know from ‘Patent Services and Advisory’ explained to me that people appreciated her webinar sessions where she talked about subjects relevant to that industry.
Question 15
For a SaaS product, what should be the CTA to ensure registrations/visits on a page? We are a SaaS tool for Cloud users. It’s an analytics tool.
You can test out multiple things. “Sign up for a Free Trial” or “Take a Demo” are the most common ones you would begin with. But keep testing.
Question 16
We want to experiment with guest blogging but since we have not done it before, can you suggest a way of engaging bloggers to write on our blog?
You could start off by implementing the ‘Influencer Strategy’. Find people from your relevant industry using tools like Grin or Followerwonk and then approach them. But good bloggers don’t appreciate it a lot. So make sure that when you are connecting with them, you research them properly, and offer them something that they would appreciate in return.
Question 17
Is it a good practice to publish content and showcase them alongside a landing page? When people land on our website, is it good to show them content, even if they don’t convert into a lead? (I mean, engage them even if they aren’t interested in your product.)
It is not a bad idea. Knowledge sharing is used by many businesses to engage with visitors, even if they don’t convert. It also acts as a nurturing medium, slowly generating interest in someone who may not be ready at that point of time.
It also helps establish the brand/business identity. For instance, if someone lands on your landing page or form, finds the content beside it interesting, he/she may share it with others through word of mouth or mention it on social media/social forums. Now, although, the visitor may not have converted into a lead, he/she promoted that content, making it visible to a larger audience.
However, too much content alongside the landing page is not good. There’s a difference between the kind of content that should be put on a form and behind a form. For example, testimonials are suitable content for the form while E-Books/Whitepapers are suitable behind the form (after form-fill).
Here’s an example of the kind of content that you ‘can’ have alongside a landing page. In this case, the content alongside the form includes other offers which would be worthy of sharing:
For more webinar content, visit our blog to access all our previous webinar recordings.
Update : It’s almost 2016! And we’ve got a little gift for you to begin the new year on a productive note – a free, exhaustive and super-handy blog promotion checklist! Hope it helps :)
