How To Convert Business Leads With Your Own Content Upgrades
How does your business currently get qualified sales leads? There are a number of strategies that vary by business and industry. The term inbound marketing refers to the process of learning how to convert business leads through building valuable relationships. There is a full methodology that builds on this concept. The inbound marketing process contains four stages to move people from interested strangers to enthusiastic fans of your business: Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight.
In this article we’ll dive into one of these stages in greater detail and explore how building valuable content upgrades can help you convert more business leads.
The Power of Valuable Content
Once you’ve attracted your target prospective customers through strong SEO content and advertising campaigns, it’s time to reward them for their attention. Most people already have an email inbox filled with unwanted messages. They’ll be hard-pressed to hand over their contact information for nothing. This is the great challenge of the Convert stage in the inbound methodology. The key challenge in the Attract stage is getting people’s attention with the right blog articles, ads, and social media posts. Once you’ve attracted your target customer, it’s time to move into the Convert stage. This is where you convince them that you are offering enough value for them to give up their contact information.
This usually means giving away more content for free. They may have been attracted by a blog article about “10 tips for cost-efficient crop dusting.” Now, as you seek to convert them into a lead, you might offer them a pdf download of your “Ultimate Guide to Crop Dusting on a Budget”. Chances are high that they’ll be interested in learning more about this free content after expressing an interest in your article.
The key to success in the convert stage of the inbound process is developing relevant and valuable content upgrades, using compelling written copy to articulate the value of your upgrade, and finally establishing effective call-to-actions to finally convert your interested prospects.
Different Types of Content Upgrades
What kind of content can you use to collect prospects’ contact information through a call-to-action form? The possibilities are endless! Here are just a few ideas:
Ebooks
An ebook is a great place to start when developing content upgrades for your business. Ebooks are valuable and getting a free ebook sounds really good to an interested prospect’s ears. They are also pretty simple to create and deliver, unlike a hardcover book. Imagine you run an accounting service. Do your prospective customers need information on how to create a business budget? You could write and market a free guide to business budgets to help convert interested prospects.
Courses
Some marketers will offer a free online course to convert leads. The purpose of a course is similar in a lot of ways to an ebook. Perhaps the information in your hypothetical budgeting ebook would be better delivered through a series of short videos. Developing a course to deliver this information may be a great next step. LearnDash is an online tool for building courses that could prove to be helpful.
Practical Tools
A content upgrade doesn’t have to be complicated or comprehensive. Sometimes a template, planner, outline, or customizable schedule can be just as valuable to your prospects. To use our example of accounting, perhaps giving away a business budget template for free, in exchange for your prospect’s contact information, is the most valuable content upgrade you could offer.
Sales Quotes
Sometimes, a content upgrade is as simple as a sales quote. It may not seem to fit neatly in the content upgrade definition but in essence a sales quote is an exchange between the two parties. The prospect agrees to give you their contact information and in return, you agree to develop an estimate for the cost of your services. This can be incredibly effective if you already know that your prospect is further along in the buyer’s journey.
And So Many More!
There are truly endless possibilities for valuable content upgrades. Here are 30 ideas from OptinMonster to get your brainstorming started.
Conquer Conversion
The convert stage takes a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Content upgrades help establish a deeper relationship between you and your prospective customers. It provides them with valuable information or tools that is relevant to their interests. It allows you to collect their contact information, like email address or phone number. As a result, you can continue to target them with more specific messaging that leads them into the next stage of the inbound process: closing the sale.
You can start today by brainstorming what kind of content upgrades would attract prospective customers and begin creating some high quality content upgrades!
IX Publishing can help bring muscle to your ideas. Want to learn more about how to convert business leads? Have an awesome idea for a content upgrade that your prospects will covet but don’t know how to get it in front of them? We can help! Use our Request A Quote form to get in touch with us.
