The Exact Content You Need to Achieve Your Biggest Marketing Goal

By Taylor Oster

It's true that content marketing works as a tool to achieve a variety of business goals. In fact, our president, Kelsey, presented a fantastic breakout session at INBOUND last year all about this very topic. Content is powerful and versatile — but you can't really just create and use the same content and expect to achieve all kinds of different goals. For content to drive results, every element should be working toward the same overarching goal.

That goal can be any number of things, and it can evolve over time (along with your strategy) as your needs change. Most commonly, though, clients come to us looking to: generate leads, build thought leadership in their industries, or improve their SEO and search visibility.

While your content can have a positive effect on each of these goals, we recommend that you choose your biggest reason for using content marketing and create content for that one specific goal. Here's what that looks like, including how content works for each of the three goals listed above and what kind of content is necessary to drive results for the one you select:

If Your Primary Goal Is Lead Generation

Content marketing is a powerful tool for generating leads — it's actually the foundation of the whole idea of inbound marketing. But in order for your content to effectively generate leads, it's got to deliver true value to your audience.

The key to delivering that value is to create engaging, high-quality content that educates your audience, answers their questions, and helps them solve their problems or make a decision. You can capture that lead information by continuing to deliver value through gated content that dives deeper and shares even more insights.

Then, use your CRM or marketing automation system to qualify leads and deliver them to your sales team for follow-up. Put your content to work enabling the sales process, and keep leads engaged over time by sending them your company’s email newsletter. 

Content You Should Be Publishing:

• Blog content: Your blog should be home to your most engaging and educational content designed to build trust with your audience and help your SEO — not the latest company updates that are only relevant to your internal team members.
• Gated content: You can turn your website into a lead-capture machine by offering visitors valuable gated content that helps them solve their problems and learn more about topics they're most interested in. 
• Guest-contributed articles: Reach new prospects by contributing articles, authored by your company’s experts, to the publications the members of your target audience read. Send them to your website (and generate qualified leads) by linking back to relevant and gated content that offers them more value.

To learn more about what makes a successful guest article, download your copy of " "

• Press mentions: Securing a mention of your company in influential online publications can help drive awareness about your company and send interested people back to your website to engage with your content and learn more.
• Email nurture content: The journey isn't finished once a lead is generated. Stay top of mind with your leads, educate them about your industry and your company, and keep them engaged with ongoing email nurturing.

If Your Primary Goal Is Thought Leadership

Publishing content that positions your company’s subject matter experts as leaders in their industry, builds trust with your audience, and enhances your credibility is a key component of building your thought leadership.

As the consumer journey evolves and becomes increasingly complex and nonlinear, more buyers are interested in doing business with brands and people they trust — which is exactly why more businesses are using this strategy to position their key subject matter experts as influencers in their industry.

Start by producing high-quality content authored by these experts and contributing it to the online publications your audience already reads and trusts. (While you can publish thought leadership content to your own website, external outlets can do more to boost your credibility.)

Do you know which publications your target audience is reading?  .

For instance, we helped this company publish thought leadership content authored by its leaders in publications like Recode, Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat — sites that were perfect fits for sharing their expertise and reaching their audience.

Reinforce your thought leadership by earning third-party press about your company in relevant online publications that your audience reads. But remember: If you want your guest content to be accepted or others to write about your company, you've got to offer valuable information. Publish rich, diverse content on your website and contribute to a variety of publications to help your audience and demonstrate your leadership.

Content You Should Be Publishing:

• Guest-contributed articles: Contribute articles that offer unique insights from your subject matter expert(s) to the online publications your audience reads and trusts.
• Press mentions: References to your company or company leaders in articles published on reputable sites that reach your target audience can help you earn third-party validation and reinforce your credibility. 
• On-site content: Continue building trust with and educating your audience by producing blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, infographics, etc. that live on your company’s website and address topics your audience is interested in. 
• A book: Once you’ve built up a bank of content, and credibility, use that momentum to produce a book that offers even more in-depth examples, experiences, takeaways, and context for your audience.
• Email nurture content: Keep your brand top of mind by sharing relevant thought leadership content, company updates, offers, and more with your audience via email newsletters.

If Your Goal Is Search Engine Optimization

Content is an essential element to accomplishing an SEO strategy. Your website won't rank for the keywords you're after without amazing, high-quality content, and you'll miss out on long-term opportunities to generate a stream of qualified website visitors if you create that amazing content without optimizing it for search.

To create content that positively affects your website's SEO, remember that your content must appeal to your audience, not search engines. Google is smart enough to recognize when you're trying to game the system.

Before you get started creating and publishing content on your website, though, lay the groundwork to set yourself up for success. First, perform a technical audit of your site to make sure it’s designed to maximize and measure your SEO efforts.

Then, conduct keyword research to develop a list of the most valuable keywords to target, based on a deep dive of your search visibility, your competitors’ rankings, and your future ranking opportunities.

Content You Should Be Publishing:

• Guest-contributed articles: Build authority backlinks by contributing guest posts from your company's internal experts to publications that your audience members read, that allow follow links, and that have a high domain authority. 
• Press mentions: Secure company mentions in articles published on reputable sites that reach your target audience, have a high domain authority, and allow follow links back to your website. 
• On-site content: Blog posts, case studies, gated content, infographics, etc., that live on your website, thoroughly answer questions and address searcher intent, and have been optimized for your keywords can enhance your online visibility.

A Word About Brand Awareness

You'll notice that I didn't mention anything about brand awareness in the goals above. That's because brand awareness is a valuable result of each of these efforts, but it's not exactly a standalone goal itself.

If you develop and execute a strategy to achieve any of these three goals, brand awareness will be a result of those efforts. So rather than focusing on awareness as an end goal, we recommend focusing on a goal that's truly impactful for your business and let the tactics discussed here increase your brand awareness along the way.

Just because content marketing can be used to achieve a variety of goals doesn't mean all your content can work toward all of them. Focus on your most important goal and develop content specifically for that one to achieve your best results.

Whether your goal is lead generation, thought leadership, or SEO, your efforts must be aligned. Download your customizable template bundle to easily align your content marketing tactics with the goal that's right for you.

Complete the form below to download your free template.