7 Ways To Use Thought Leadership Tactics For Lead Generation

Any business, whether big or small, must continually generate leads to increase its customer base and grow revenues. Marketers are always looking for ways to generate quality leads. Although there are many lead generation strategies, companies are increasingly appreciating the power of thought leadership in generating highly qualified leads.

Thought Leadership And Lead Generation

Essentially, thought leadership involves creating and disseminating top-tier educational content that positions a business as an authority in its industry. The content may use different formats, including videos, blog posts, white papers, and reports. Thought leadership pieces must carry a unique voice on a topic, be relevant to the target audience, and be well-researched to generate leads. 

When creating thought leadership content in the form of videos, adding captions is important for enhancing accessibility and engagement. There are platforms and tools that can assist and easily add subtitles to videos online, ensuring that the content reaches a wider audience. By including them, you enable viewers with hearing impairments to understand the message, and it also helps non-native English speakers follow along more easily. This simple step can greatly improve the overall impact of your thought leadership videos and contribute to effective lead generation efforts. 

Companies that use thought leadership are able to establish credibility in their market, causing people to trust their products or service offerings. They also connect with their audiences better, allowing them to build long-term relationships. 

These benefits make thought leadership an effective content marketing tool for companies, enhancing their ability to achieve long-term lead generation goals. If your company plans to use thought leadership tactics to generate leads, here are seven things your marketers can do to realise results:

1. Automate Lead Collection

Capturing lead information is the most effective way to generate leads through thought leadership. As your audience visits your website or social media pages to read your thought leadership content, ensure that you capture their content information so you can keep them engaged. 

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Automation is one of the most effective IT lead generation ideas your company can use to capture and nurture leads. Automating your lead generation process increases your efficiency in capturing lead data, tracking email campaigns, and scoring leads. You may choose to visit Caltech, an IT company in Dallas to start automating your lead generation. That is if you’re near the area.

2. Use Landing Pages and Lead Magnets

Another way to generate leads with thought leadership is to link thought leadership content to high-converting landing pages. You can strategically place relevant call-to-action buttons in the content to encourage your audience to take a specific action. 

Additionally, you can generate more leads with thought leadership content through lead magnets. Also referred to as lead baits, lead magnets are resources companies give online visitors to incentivise them to share their contact information. 

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Examples of lead magnets are content upgrades, downloads, and discounted webinar registrations. You can also create informative brochures using a brochure maker and use them as a lead magnet. By utilising lead magnets, companies build trust with their audiences, increase their brand awareness, and generate quality leads that can be nurtured into paying customers. 

3. Create SEO-Friendly Content

Thought leadership content can only generate leads for your business if your target audience can find it easily. With millions of content pieces published online daily, your target audience has little time to search for your thought leadership pieces. 

You can make your thought leadership pieces easy to find by making them search engine-friendly. Find out what keywords and phrases your audience uses to search the internet and strategically include them in your content. 

Additionally, include an optimised meta title and description on your content to give it an organic ad that search engines can use to rank your site. Make your content easy to read by structuring it using headings, sub-headings, lists, and bullet points. Include visuals in the content to guide readers and keep them engaged. Interlink your content with other internal and external sources to give readers a better experience and rank your pieces high on search engine results. 

4. Focus More On Quality 

Another way to generate leads using thought leadership is to focus on quality instead of quantity. Thought leadership pieces should provide the target audience with value and insights. Although it takes time to develop this kind of content, it's what your business needs to build trust and drive the results you desire. Your company is better off creating a few high-quality content pieces that your audience finds invaluable than publishing numerous articles that offer little to no value.

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5. Promote Your Content On Various Platforms   

Thought leadership content should reach as many people as possible to generate desirable leads. You can enhance content reach by promoting it through different channels. For instance, you can share the content through your social media pages to reach your followers. 

An effective way to do this is to include a commentary that compels your followers to click a link to access the content. You may also promote the content through email. Email allows you to deliver content pieces directly to your target audience. 

Read more: Why Content Marketing Doesn't Work

Utilise your subscriber list by sending email newsletters with links to your thought leadership pieces. To ensure recipients open, read, and click the content links, use clear subject lines highlighting the value in the content and what readers should expect. 

Better still, segment your email database so that you share content that resonates with the different groups of your audience. 

6. Create Shareable Content

Another way to use thought leadership tactics to generate leads is by creating shareable content to spur the interest of your target audience. Shareable content enables your company to reach many people by encouraging readers to send the content to their network, giving your brand more exposure.

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There are various things you can do to make thought leadership content shareable. These include repurposing long-form content into infographics, converting webinars into blog articles, and creating short video clips. 

7. Empower Your Sales Team With Quality Content 

Besides generating organic top-of-the-funnel leads, sharable content is a powerful tool that your sales team can use to generate leads. Sales representatives should be able to access top-quality content to get prospects interested in your products or services. 

Giving your sales team access to a range of white papers, videos, infographics, blog posts, and other thought leadership pieces allows them to supply prospects with the relevant information they need to become leads. 

Final Thoughts  

Thought leadership is invaluable in building a solid brand and attracting quality leads your business needs to grow sales revenue and stand out from the competition. The insightful, high-quality content that marketers develop creates a chain reaction in your company as it reaches different segments of your audience. Your business can turn prospects into highly qualified leads by applying the seven strategies discussed above.

About Author: Anna James is a Content Marketer with 10 years of experience working in developing and disseminating thought leadership content for B2B companies. She frequently shares her knowledge on content marketing through podcasts, blogs, and guest posts. When she’s not working, Ms. James enjoys cooking, traveling, and swimming.

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