How to Improve Content Marketing Using Online Forms? (4 Tips)
Content marketing is one of the baseline elements of digital presence and marketing. When it’s user-centered and valuable, the copy can improve your visibility in search engines and drive traffic.
After this, when prospects land on your page, the right type of copy can help capture them as leads and drive conversions.
But how do you reap the most benefits? A good tactic is to maximize your content marketing using online forms. In this guide, we’ll tell you about the best ways to do this!
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a widespread digital marketing approach that focuses on crafting and strategically distributing high-quality copy. The four pillars of this approach include relevancy, quality, value, and consistency.
A winning approach to this type of marketing starts with finding a clearly defined target audience (TA) that aligns with your ideal buyer persona and has the potential to convert. After defining TA, the ultimate goal of your strategy is to engage it, build lasting relationships, and encourage prospects to complete the needed actions.
This branch of marketing can take many shapes, including (but not limited to):
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Blog posts
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Case studies
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Social media publications
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Whitepapers
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eBooks
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Infographics
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Videos
Each of these copy types can bring your business tangible benefits, as long as it reaches the right TA and is relevant and valuable. If your copy is people-centered and aims to help users first rather than sell first, it can help you:
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Amplify customer acquisition
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Improve customer relationships and ensure loyalty
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Boost sales
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Save marketing costs
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Make a copy of one of your revenue streams
Online Forms in Content Marketing
As was stated earlier, this type of marketing is almost always about helping users first rather than selling. That is, your copy should strive to address the pain points of your TA and educate them.
Yet, from a company perspective it also should always lead to the desired action (aka conversion). And that’s where online forms can help a lot.
Here are the top four ways to reinforce your marketing using online applications and questionnaires:
Content Ideas Generation
As you now know, relevance and value are among the main pillars of copy that convert. And there is no better way to understand what your TA needs than to engage with it directly.
Strategically placing feedback forms and comment boxes on your pages, for example, at the end or to the side of a blog post, can let you ask your readers directly about what they are looking for, what pain points they have, etc.
Collecting such feedback can help you ensure that you provide audience-driven articles that actually resonate and can boost engagement and conversions in the long run.
Apart from requesting topic ideas from your audience, you can further amplify your strategy by analyzing suggested topics using keyword research tools.
For example, you can do this using SE Ranking’s keyword generator tool. This tool will let you estimate the volume of searches completed on a particular topic and discover additional, high-value keywords.
Doing so will let you not only tap into topics that your audience is interested in but also ensure a more thorough topic coverage thanks to additional keywords and improve your chances of ranking high in search engines, which can bring you more traffic and more potential conversions.
Boost of Content Engagement
Online forms enable you to create interactive content—one that transforms your TA’s experience from passively consuming the information to being able to actively participate.
What does this mean for business? According to recent statistics, interactive copy generates as much as 52.6% higher engagement rate compared to static one.
Examples include:
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Surveys and polls – Encourage users to share their opinions.
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Quizzes – Add an entertaining element that keeps visitors engaged. Check out how entertainment quizzes boost website engagement and lead generation.
Take inspiration from BuzzFeed’s quizzes, which blend fun with information, keeping users engaged and increasing time spent on-site.
Source: BuzzFeed
Content Feedback Collection
Collecting feedback about existing content is another opportunity to use online forms in your strategy. When your pages don’t involve questionnaires or comment boxes, those that do can help you deepen your analytics. With passive copy, you can only tell how many people visited a page or how many of them scrolled to the bottom.
However, when you add interactivity and collect feedback, you can tell how many visitors actually read your article, how many of them clicked on buttons, and how they interacted with the page. Collecting feedback can even let you assess where users drop off.
Such a comprehensive view of audience behavior can help you measure the efficiency of your strategy and find areas for improvement. Now, wonder why the number of companies using interactive copy has nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024.
On top of that, using questionnaires and comment boxes to collect feedback can help you improve your existing copy to ensure it meets your TA’s needs better and stays relevant for a longer time.
Better Lead Generation
Lastly, online forms can reinforce your content marketing strategy by helping spark consumer interest and capture more leads, gradually taking them through the conversion journey. Here are a few popular ways to streamline lead generation with forms:
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Restrict access to content with the help of gated forms. This trick implies limiting users from seeing the whole article or its parts until they complete and submit a form. This can let you collect lead data, qualify them, and also confirm that your copy is valuable enough that people are willing to share their details to access it.
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Set up a lead capture popup to grow your newsletter subscription. When users read the content they like and see a signup popup, they might decide to opt in, which can open an excellent channel for further marketing communication and nurturing.
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Implement a scheduling form that will let users request contact with your team. Such scheduling contact forms can make your communication with prospects convenient while also letting you capture their data.
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Create special promotional forms. This type of interactive promotional content can let you capture leads in exchange for special offers, such as discounts, free services, trial periods, etc. This is a great way to drag prospects into your funnel so that you can move them to its bottom with strategic nurturing.
Summary
As you can see, online forms can play a significant role in your marketing strategy. By helping generate topic ideas, boosting engagement rates, providing you with user feedback, and supporting lead generation, such interactive forms can help you reinforce the impact of your content and gain more benefits for your business.
Leverage the four practical tips we shared with you here to start using popups, quizzes, and other types of forms in your marketing to attain greater results!