The Inbound Growth Blog

The Inbound Growth Blog covers all topics relating to an integrated marketing strategy. We write about inbound marketing, social media, integrated marketing strategies and the sales process.

4 Common-Sense Inbound Marketing Tips To Generate High-Quality Leads

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Posted by Juanita Moreno on Oct 4, 2016 7:00:00 AM

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We all understand that generating leads is the primary goal of most inbound marketing programs. But are all leads created equal? 

To my mind, the answer to this question is no. After all, generating leads is not your end goal. Your end goal is taking the leads you've generated and turning them into customers. I would rather have ten really good leads than a hundred leads that I really don't know anything about.

So generating high-quality leads is something all inbound marketers should shoot for, particularly professional services and technology companies. Keep in mind that before you take steps to generate high-quality leads, you have to define just what a good lead looks like for your company.

Here are 4 common-sense tips to generate high-quality leads.


1. Use long-tail keywords in your content marketing

Let's first define what a long-tail keyword is. A short-tail keyword is a descriptive term that defines an industry, product or service in broad general terms. It is very difficult to rank for a short-tail keyword on Google and the intent of the searcher is very unclear. An example of a short-tail keyword is inbound marketing.

On the other hand, a long-tail keyword is a descriptive term that includes a short-tail keyword, but expands on it to be much more specific. These keywords are easier to rank for on Google and it is much easier to understand the intent of the searcher. An example of a long-tail keyword is 4 common-sense inbound marketing tips to generate high-quality leads.

If you've come to this blog post via a Google search, there's a good chance that your interested in inbound marketing and you want to learn about how to generate high-quality leads. The first step in generating high-quality leads is to create content based around long-tail keywords that strikes a chord with your target market segment.


2. Create content that resonates with your ideal customer

One of the best ways to create content that resonates with your ideal customer is to answer the questions that your client-facing people here from your customer base. If they're asking the questions, it's a safe bet that similarly situated people will be asking the same questions. 

Another group of questions to answer are those that your sales team hear throughout the sales process. Use the language that your customers use and your SEO results will follow naturally.

The questions that your sales and customer service people hear are the same ones that your target customers are typing into search engines. Creating content that answers those questions will attract high-quality leads.

Make sure to include content for all stages of the buying process on your website. Here's a description of the types of content that are aligned with the different stages of the buying process.

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3. Use lead generation forms to qualify your leads

In the lead generation process, a website visitor completes a form to access a premium content offer. 

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To generate the maximum number of leads, you should ask for the least amount of information. Many B2C companies just ask for a name and email address. But remember, our objective is to generate high-quality leads. So we're going to ask for a bit more information than just name and email address.

Notice the information we ask for in the form at the bottom of this post. We ask 3 questions that help us qualify leads:

  1. Your role
  2. Your industry
  3. Are you a HubSpot customer

These three questions help us identify if someone is in our sweet spot where we can be the most effective at delivering results. We've structured the questions so that they can be quickly answered by means of choosing from a limited set of options in a drop-down. In addition to helping us identify those leads that are in our sweet spot, this approach also lets us segment leads by these demographic factors and tailor the content we provide them based on their needs and interests.

In the case of professional services and technology companies, just asking for a little more information helps qualify leads. If someone doesn't want to share that information, are they really a high-quality lead?


4. Promote your content in the right places

Promotion is a key element of the content marketing process. Without effective content promotion, your audience will be limited.

To generate high-quality leads, promote your content in those channels where your ideal customers are. You've got to fish where the fish are. If you're writing about professional services, LinkedIn is going to be a good place to promote your content. If you're a cybersecurity company, there are LinkedIn groups and technology publications that are good audiences for your content.

If you're doing paid content promotion, you can micro-target based on your ideal customer profile in most social media platforms. You can target your advertising by industry, company size, seniority level and other demographic factors.

Part of your high-quality lead generation strategy is to have a content promotion strategy that targets your ideal customers.


It's not enough anymore to generate leads. You need to generate high-quality leads that have a good chance of becoming profitable to be successful with your inbound marketing. Try these four common-sense tactics and focus on quality, not quantity.

Topics: Inbound Marketing

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