We all want our content to work, right?  And a quick Google search revealed this simple straight-forward step-by-step fail-proof process:

1. Research your customer avatar
2. Choose your content types
3. Choose your content distribution channels
4. Map out your content plan
5. Create an irresistible lead magnet
6. Write high-converting blog posts
7. Optimize your blog for lead generation.

Wow!  Glad I looked it up, lol.  Does that clarify anything for you? Any ONE of these steps is a world to explore in and of itself.  But I just wanted the ANSWER.  In truly “do this…” fashion.  Something that would move me in the direction towards success.  I don’t have MONTHS!  I need to get this done in a few hours to a few days and get things moving!!

Don’t you?!

I get it – so I created this simple process (with an available download) so you can start creating content that generates quality leads.

#1.  It is important to have a sense of who is your perfect potential customer. 

I won’t lie – without getting this nailed down and clarified, creating content that will generate quality leads for you will be a hit-or-miss situation and frustrating experience.

There are TWO ways you can approach this:

A. Ask people who are your perfect potential customers a few questions – it’s a 15 minute live conversation with each of them. Record it (easy with Zoom or Skype).  Get it transcribed.  I label these The 5 Golden Questions – download the 5 questions and get started.

B. Answer these Four Key Questions for Irresistible Offers (see button below) – the benefit of this approach is that you don’t need to interview people, and can use your knowledge and expertise of your market to generate the ideas.

If you do both, even more awesome will be your results.

What does this yield?  A clear understanding of the challenge, and the content that will move them forward that you can provide, that applies to their situation.

If you take path “a” – you will also have the language of your perfect potential customers and likely have a host of ideas that will help you create content over a longer period.  It is DEFINITELY the road less traveled, because I’ve learned that you likely don’t want to take the time to do this – or you can’t find anyone in your target marketing who will talk with you for 15 minutes (definitely worrisome).

If you take path “b” – you will likely move a bit faster, utilizing what you know about your market, but focusing and framing it up in ways that you can get things out there potentially faster.

#2.  Create your Irresistible “Attractor” – aka lead magnet/free gift. 

If you’re interested in the key questions you can ask people live, or the four questions you can answer yourself based on your expertise of your market, then you’ll likely take me up on my downloads that I’m offering above.

Use the insights to pinpoint your perfect Attractor – it can be a checklist, quick start guide, eBook (keep it brief, not a novel), assessment, infographic, etc.  Something that can be consumed in no more than 15-20 minutes max, and then applied.

Here are a few quick tips on your Attractor:

1. Use Canva to design it so it looks FANTASTIC.  You can get someone on Fiverr or other freelance sites to do this for you if you aren’t able to or don’t have the time.  If you have them use your Canva account, then you’ll be able to make edits and mods as needed – and then export a PDF that you can easily use.
2. Don’t boil the ocean. In other words, what will move someone forward – without overwhelming them (like the 7-steps did from my Google search).  The 7 steps weren’t helpful to me for what I wanted NOW… What might seem straight-forward to you may not be to your perfect potential customers – so go at THEIR pace, not yours.
3. Make sure your attractor achieves the promised outcome – so you generate leads, AND build trust and authority with your new leads. Making sure you give true value, has leads come back for more.

#3.  Create Your Attractor / Free Gift Opt-In Funnel. 

There are three things that make up an Attractor Opt-In Funnel (aka a Lead Magnet or free gift Funnel):

1. A Landing Page with a lead capture form.
2. A Thank You page.
3. A fulfillment email that is sent automatically when the form is submitted.

You will need these three items so that you can drive traffic to your opt-in.  There are variations of this, which you can see (remember above where I made you two offers, a or b?) – one goes to a landing page (in a new window), and the other is just a quick Pop-Up right on this page – with a confirmation message – and you’re left right on this post.

Now you’ve got the first part done – the ability to attract and capture a high quality lead.  But now you’ve got to create interest, and drive traffic to that landing page.  What are your options?

#4 Set yourself up to engage and drive interest over time…

If you’ve not realized this yet, content is EVERYTHING – and it’s FOREVER.  So coming up with content that works and engages your perfect potential customers is critical (and why it’s #1 on Google’s list as well as ours).  One of the BEST ways to do this is with a blog.  Top marketers and businesses that want to grow, all have one – it’s what allows your site to work for you… even while you sleep, because Google will index those posts. A good blog can be your greatest asset.

To set yourself up to engage and drive interest, you will write some blog posts that answer questions.  These are questions that your perfect potential customer has – and that you can help them think through.

If you’re attracting leads at the top of the funnel – then these are questions people have who are realizing they MIGHT have a problem.  They’re doing research to clarify whether they do, and how they would know.  They might want to understand the impact of the issue, so they can gauge how important it might be to solve it.

If you’re attracting leads mid-funnel – they are engaged in research and gaining more information about how to solve the problem – what others have done, and looking for different perspectives on the issue/challenge confronting them.

These are the two best places to focus when creating content that will generate quality leads.

In your blog post, you’ll want to have a call-to-action that leads to your Attractor / Free Gift opt-in page, or to a pop-up with a lead capture form, like we did above.

#5 Send an Email To Your List With A Link To Your New Blog Post

In our Email Engagement Blueprint, we call this your “Heartbeat” series – where a new email is generated based on your new blog posts – with a target of once per week.  You’ll be surprised that as you start to add value for your perfect potential customers, they also share and forward these emails to their colleagues and others who will benefit – helping to drive more engagement and generate MORE quality leads for your business.

Ideally, you want this process to be automated – so you only have to focus on creating the blog post, and the rest takes care of itself.

So – get started with the steps outlined above.  Stay tuned for our next post that will give you options for driving traffic and leveraging your Attractor / Free Gift.