No matter how hard you work, it’s not enough.You are responsible for generating leads. Lots of them.You’ve staked your reputation on content marketing to generate new qualified leads on a consistent basis. You gather whatever relevant content you have and send it out. A few leads trickle in.So you create something new. And get a few more clicks. You feel like a hamster on a wheel.Why isn't your content working like you hoped it would?Are you really clear about how content is going to generate leads? Somewhere between the order to generate leads and publishing content, most companies miss a few steps.Here are 5 suggestions that will help make it easier to create content and get better results.

1. Develop a content marketing strategy

More than half the companies doing content marketing fail to do this.Who will you talk to?Directing your content at segments is a logical thing to do. But it is not enough.Within those segments you need to identify the personas involved in the buying process and develop detailed descriptions that include their most basic aspirations beyond the workplace.Without refined personas, your content will never be engaging enough for your busy customers to care about. You’ll get few leads and feel the pressure to start making more content again.What topics will interest them?Of course, you need a story to tell. Without a story to tie everything together, you’ll be starting over with every piece of content. You’ll never get traction.Along with a story, identifying keywords to be used in all of your content will help keep all of your content creators on track. Create more than you think you need and then prioritize which ones to focus on to build up your search results and generate more visits to your site that you can convert into qualified leads.Without a thorough strategy (and the metrics to analyze your results) creating more content will always seem like the right solution.It’s not sustainable.While content marketing does require you to think like a publisher, simply producing more content won’t get you the results you are looking for.

2. Plan ahead to repurpose

Prospects consume content in many different ways. From the beginning, you should be thinking about how you can repurpose every bit of content you create for other formats. It’s much easier to do up front than to go back and try to squeeze out something useful later.Planning alternate formats will save a lot of effort in the long run by making sure you get all the information you need in the original creation. Consider turning:

• Images into Social Media posts
• Case Studies and Application Notes into SlideShares
• Slide Decks into Animated/Narrated videos
• Interviews into podcasts, whitepapers, in depth articles and blog posts

3. Reduce friction to free up resources

This requires that you step back and look at your overall lead generation goals. Then consider the amount of customization you do for every piece of content you create.Are you making custom headers for your emails and landing pages? Do they all have a unique layout? It’s tempting to create special items for the big trade show or conference, because you want to make a good impression and images are important.Keep in mind that each new creation probably requires multiple reviews and revisions. Every time someone needs to handle it you lose a little time.Over the course of a year this adds up to a lot of bandwidth that could be used in the creation of truly valuable new content for lead generation with a much longer useful life than an email promoting your event.This one takes courage. You can expect a lot of resistance here, but short term sacrifices could lead to long term gains. A marketing tool that provides good metrics will let you know what works so you'll have data to support your decisions.

4. Develop a strategy for forms

You- "Chris, are you serious?"Me- "Yes, I am."Planning out your forms in advance will help you get the information you need from your prospects in a way that you can use it. If you present the same fields on every form, you are wasting your prospects' time, possibly annoying them and definitely missing out on valuable information.Make sure you clearly understand what you need to know about your prospects and avoid asking for information unless you have a good idea of how you'll use to give them a better experience.With a plan in place, you can gather the information that will help you segment content and offers to get better response rates.

5. Rethink the way you’ve done things in the past

Do you create content because it’s on a checklist (new product brochures)? Or because it has a defined role in your lead generation or sales process?Shift your focus to achieving your goals and question the role of each piece of content. Can the goal be achieved some other way with less effort?Like everything worthwhile, content marketing takes a bit of work. And to be successful, it really requires a plan.If you don’t have a plan and are tired of the marketing hamster wheel, contact me.