Strategic content writing to generate hot leads.
You publish content to generate new leads.
Leads can manifest in multiple forms. There are hot leads and cold leads.
Hot leads are those people who contact you for the purpose of buying from you or hiring you.
For example, if someone submits my contact form for the purpose of hiring my content writing services, that person is a hot lead.
But if someone subscribes to my newsletter, he or she is a cold lead. Or if someone shows interest in my content writing services on a social media platform but right now doesn’t hire me, he or she is a cold lead.
When you are writing and publishing content to generate more leads, you need to be careful of what type of content you are publishing.
When I had a web design website – in my previous life – I ended up attracting the wrong traffic because although I was writing and publishing lots of content and consequently, generating lots of traffic, the traffic never converted. I was not generating the right leads.
Back then I was smitten by educational content. I didn’t put my energies into explaining my services as a web designer. All my content writing consisted of teaching people how to achieve things using HTML, ASP and JavaScript (back then I didn’t know PHP, which I know now).
How to strategize content writing to generate hot leads?
You need to find out why people are searching for you, when they are searching for you.
Obviously, people who are looking to buy something, or hire someone, or use a software service, are not looking for educational content, at least not knowingly.
For example, if you are looking for someone who can help you improve your search engine rankings and you are not aware that optimized content writing can help you improve your SEO, my blog post titled 5 reasons why content writing is important for SEO can reveal something that you don’t know.
For that matter, even a blog post like 10 SEO content writing tips for your small business can be quite helpful.
You may ask, if all I am doing is teaching people why content writing is important for SEO or how you can write content for your small business to improve your SEO by yourself, how am I generating hot leads for my own business?
Even if your writing is seemingly instructional content, you need to write in such a manner that the central message – your open for business – shouldn’t be lost.
To generate hot leads, you need to create precise web pages, landing pages and blog posts. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity. You shouldn’t club multiple messages under the same web page. When you club multiple messages, the central objective of your content is diluted and people end up getting confused.
Seriously consider search intent to generate hot leads
Not all type of search intent gets you hot leads but writing and publishing content keeping search intent in mind can definitely improve the number of hot leads your content generates.
What is search intent? You may like to read What is search intent and how knowing it improves your SEO.
Most of the information about search intent that I have published on my website and blog is about improving your search engine rankings, but writing your content centered around the appropriate search intent can also help you generate more leads.
Writing content for searcher intent helps you be with your customers and clients throughout their buyer journey.
Again I will give you my own example.
Someone is researching for ways to improve search engine rankings and comes across my blog that talks about how content writing can help you improve your search engine rankings. The person has been informed.
The search intent here is informational. The person isn’t looking for someone to hire. He or she simply needs information that can help him or her improve his or her search engine rankings.
Once a person has read my blog post on how content writing can help improve search engine rankings, he or she finds out that I provide such content writing services, through another web page or blog post. The other web page or blog post has been written keeping “commercial intent” in mind.
These days I’m getting lots of traffic for “content writer for accounting services” or “content writer for life coaching services”. These searches are carried out with commercial intent.
Accountants or accounting companies are looking for a content writer. People providing life coaching services are looking for a content writer. The intent is clear. Search traffic generates hot leads for me
On a related note: do hot leads always convert?
Not necessarily. Hot leads are people who are ready to do business with you but they haven’t yet committed.
Maybe they won’t like my samples. Maybe they won’t find my rates acceptable. Maybe after contacting me, they come across someone else who they think is a better match. There are multiple reasons why even a hot lead may not convert, but that’s a different matter.