Looking to generate more leads this year? Let us help you with our full guide to lead generation strategies utilizing Quora and watch your results skyrocket!
What Is Quora
Quora is a social media platform that is designed to be utilized in real-time for questions and answers. A user will pose a question on the forum, ask for solutions and seek advice on various subjects, while other respondents will offer appropriate solutions.
The format allows for direct engagement with an audience and reaches out to potential leads by solving their problem.
How it works is this; on the platform, a potential lead poses a question.
You answer it in turn, showing your understanding of their concern, offer them a direct course of action to resolve it, and build your reputation as an authority in the process.
Another strategy is that you can pose a question and see how the audience responds as a way to engage with them. This can give you some profound insights into the marketplace and the potential that may exist.
While Quora allows you to answer the prospect’s questions, the best takeaway is that it will enable you to engage with an unknown lead and begin to create a relationship with them, allowing you to develop a relationship with them and them to trust in your expertise.
In other words, you can communicate and engage directly with a prospect who, by taking the time to pose a question or reply, is already invested in the problem and is looking for results for those situations.
Before we delve much deeper into the benefits of using Quora to generate leads for your business, we need to discuss the different types of leads and how you would want to attract them through Quora’s platform.
What Are the Different Types of Leads
When we talk about leads, there are two types of leads, and those leads are divided into three stages that they are at in their purchasing decision.
Understanding the different types of leads you want to find is obvious. Still, just as important is figuring out what stage your prospect is at in their buying process. This understanding will help you match content with their interests and save you time, effort, and money.
B2B vs. B2C Leads
The first type of lead is a business-to-business or B2B lead. This type of lead is the person directly responsible for making purchasing decisions within their organization and is the individual you want to speak with directly.
The second type of lead is business-to-consumer. In business-to-consumer, you as the business are speaking directly to your prospective customer. The tone and words you choose to convey your thoughts with them will be more conversational and different than addressing a B2B lead, which will be more professional and transactional in tenor.
Depending on your product and offer, you may be looking for both B2B and B2C customers, but again, how you message each is going to be done differently.
Now that you understand the different types of leads, you need to realize that there are three stages that all leads are at in their purchasing decision.
Cold, Warm, and Hot Stages of the Process
Some like to refer to leads as cold, warm, and hot, but it’s better to think of those as your prospect’s stages in their buying process.
Those three stages are cold, warm, and hot.
Cold Lead Stage
At the cold stage, a prospect may not have any knowledge or interest in your brand. Simply, they aren’t even sure they are in the market for what you are offering.
This stage of the purchasing process is equivalent to the “cold calling” technique, like picking up a phone and calling a person at random and telling them about what you do and how it may help them.
Usually, there’s almost no interest, and drumming up business with cold call techniques is laborious and has a low conversion rate. Typically, cold leads aren’t aware of your brand and don’t have any interest in making a purchase soon.
These are the people who may be years away from making a purchase, and how you educate them about your offer will be a different tone than how you would engage with warm and hot leads.
Warm Lead Stage
Warm leads are individuals that may have just started shopping around, looking for a possible purchase at some point in the future.
The goal here is to help educate them and motivate them to take action sooner than later with various inducements and promotions. A warm lead is in the process of shopping, whether they are close to buying or just getting started.
How you motivate them, the type of content you provide them should include an incentive that is timely and has a stated end.
Retail sale is an excellent example of using this technique with warm leads. As a customer walks into the store, the retailer has advertisements highlight price mark-downs, and the more effective ones may only offer the deal for a limited time.
Hot Lead Stage
Hot leads, then, are those individuals ready to purchase and are already aware of your brand. How you motivate them to select your offer is the objective, but a warm lead is basically asking you to take their money.
They simply need you to show them how to make the purchase. At this stage, the decision is almost entirely completed.
Making Quora a Lead Generation Source
Any social media platform, when utilized correctly, can become an excellent source for high-quality leads.
Developing an effective strategy should include multiple platforms and formats. Among them, Quora allows you to find leads of all types but specifically engage with them in a way that enhances your authority and expertise in any given field.
So how do you make Quora a tool to find and nurture leads?
There is a proven way to increase your exposure, expand your audience, and enhance your brand while developing relationships that nurture leads and help them along their purchasing journey. We will discuss this strategy in greater detail later in this post.
What this post will show you is how to create leads using the following steps on Quora:
- Create An Interesting Profile
- Find Relevant Topic Discussions, Or Create One
- Engage With The Audience
- Show Expertise
- Be Helpful, Not Transactional
- Use TrackBacks For Better SEO
- Use Quora To Create Content Ideas For Your Blog
- Share Your Most Popular Responses
Now that you know the process let’s examine each one step-by-step.
Create an Interesting Optimized Profile
When you reply to a prospect, engage with a discussion, or pose a question, the first thing readers and respondents will do is take a look at who is the person that is involved.
Having an exciting profile that can stand-out is essential, but it should also be optimized for moving leads further in the process.
You should highlight a past achievement or accolade to be displayed prominently so that a reader sees proof of your level of expertise. Include your business, titles, and credentials to enhance your authority for people clicking on your profile.
One last important thing, pick a profile image that is warm and friendly. People make snap decisions about who they see in a picture, so be clear on the type of non-verbal messaging you’re highlighting in your profile image.
Find Where the Leads Are Posting on Quora
Once you have your profile optimized, the next thing to do is find an audience. Select groups and topics of interest to your business, and search for relevant topics to engage.
What topics you choose to follow should mirror ones that your target audience would be engaged in and relevant to your offers. By targeting specific topics to follow, you’ll get those into your feed on the platform. This process will save you a ton of time as you won’t have to search out relevant discussions every time.
Engage the Audience
Now that you’ve found relevant topics, the next step is to begin answering questions, building on long-thread discussions, and engaging the audience already there.
Realize there is a best practice in answering these questions.
As you answer a question, keep in mind that you’re there to establish your authority and build trust with potential leads.
The three-step process to build your authority and establish trust with your audience is;
- Optimize your profile: As discussed, the first thing readers will do is scan who the responder is, and having an attractive, optimized profile is crucial for you establishing your credentials and authority.
- Show your expertise: In the first sentence or two of your answer, establish your bona fides or your experiences and why your best suited to answer the question at hand.
- Write confidently: Experts speak with an air of confidence. They are sure of their answers, so you must write your response with a tone of certainty and clarity.
Be Helpful, Not Transactional
Utilizing Quora as a platform to generate leads for your business must focus on your reader’s benefits after they read your response. Avoid writing replies that are aggressive in pitching your products.
The tactic is to establish a long-game strategy for you and a relationship with your prospects. So answer in the best way that addresses the question and builds your expertise and authority as a result.
It’s better to offer authentic solutions and helpful answers that build your reputation than to try and turn your readers into a quick sale.
The reason for this is that nobody likes a pushy salesman.
This tactic comes off as impersonal, and to the prospect, it feels that the sale is more important than the person purchasing.
Brand loyalty and repeat business are the gold-standards for business profitability, and you must consider a long-view strategy when approaching your target prospect.
Building relationships in the community through topic discussions broadens your reach and audience, leading to increased traffic back to your site(s) and future business opportunities.
Use Quora As a Content Creation Tool for Your Website
The greatest insight you’ll gain from using Quora is that you’ll be able to access what your target audience is most curious about and what their interests are.
Using this data, you can shape your blog and website content around the needs and concerns of the audience you’ve engaged with on Quora. This process will optimize your blog content and enhance your expertise on the topic in readers’ eyes.
Share What Is Most Popular
Now that you’re utilizing Quora as a source of lead generation on their platform and generating content on your own blog share on your other social media pages, those questions and answers are gaining the most amount of traction.
This tactic will provide “social proof” that you are indeed the expert able to address the most pressing, critical questions your audience has and enhance your reputation as an expert as well.
Use TrackBacks to Improve SEO Results
Trackbacks are Quora’s tool to share with you every time your responses and content get shared and cited within their platform or on other websites. The benefit of using this tool for SEO purposes is incredible.
By having your content “trackback” to you, Google recognizes your content as having relevance and authority, some of the most important criteria to determine the importance of the content.
Trackbacks work to enhance your authority with Google and boost the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) and SEO for your blog and website.
Utilizing the power of Quora’s platform will position you as a trusted source, improve your brand awareness, increase your blog and website traffic, and become another lead generation source for your business.
With a detailed strategy, optimized profile, and highly-targeted discussions of relevant topics, Quora can be a gold mine for generating leads.
Engaging with invested target prospects is a great way to increase your brand awareness. If you play the long-game with your lead generation strategy, you can optimize the power of Quora’s platform to create new customers.
Using the strategies outlined in this guide will help you launch your brand awareness and see your lead generation strategy skyrocket!
Quora can be a great way to generate high-quality leads free of cost. After reading your article I have also tried to generate leads through and I am happy that I am able to do so. I have generated some quality leads from there.
The tactics which are mentioned here are really tried and tested. At first, I don't have any idea of what is Cold, Warm, and Hot stage is. But after reading this I got to know when to introduce, when to attract, and when to pitch my product to users.
Thanks & Regards
Ayush Mishra
Awesome, love to see when something clicks for our members and they just move forward toward their goals. Thanks for letting us know.
Useful stuff. Will definitely try.
Thanks