Tejaswi Raghurama, Marketing Manager for Typito (video creating software) conducted a webinar in collaboration with HelloMeets where he showed a step-by-step technique to use Quora for marketing and how Typito used it to generate revenue.
This article will show you the steps to follow when you start using Quora as a marketing channel.
What is Quora? Quora, is a platform to ask questions on any topic and connect with people who contribute their insights and knowledge.
Why use Quora for marketing?
Quora can not only help you generate traffic but also help you generate attributable revenue. If you type any question on google, the first three-four links you’ll see will be of Quora. The top five countries that generate the most traffic on Quora are USA, India, UK, Canada and Australia. If your target customers are from these countries, then Quora is an attractive marketing channel that can help generate leads.
Note that Quora takes time to show results. It’s not a quick reward scheme that promises you a 70% increase in revenue.
Hours of research and content creation were spent only on one platform to give valuable and highly contextual answers at Typito.
Spend time on making engaging answers that are rich in content for best results. The team at Typito observed that the traffic coming from Quora had a relatively high chance of converting to customers. UTM (URL Tracking Module) codes help in tracking the exact source of traffic.
Tracking your work by analysing the UTM codes will help in knowing which answers are getting the most traffic. To select the right questions you will have to select the right keywords related to your industry and organisation. Selecting keywords is the first step towards building a successful marketing campaign. One of the best ways to select your keywords is to follow the funnel approach.
Step 1: The Funnel approach
The funnel is a guide to help you sort out the keywords for your company and product. To start with your Quora marketing campaign, always start with the funnel approach.
Jot down your keywords from top of the funnel (TOTF) i.e. generic, middle of the funnel (MOTF) that define keywords around your product and lastly the bottom of the funnel (BOTF) i.e. specific keywords that define your product.
In the above sheet, each keyword shows the search volume and its stages in the funnel. Where:
- Keywords — Words specific to your industry that are used to search for your product/service
- Search volume — The number of searches that occurs for a particular keyword during a certain period of time.
- Stages of the Funnel — Arranging your keywords according to their relevancy
These volumes can be found through Google or various other keyword research tools. This approach helps you to select the most relevant keywords and replicate them to your Quora answers.
Step 2: Choosing the questions
After you have identified the keywords and arranged them in the funnel, the next step is to identify the questions related to your field.
It is recommended to use Google to determine which questions rank the highest.
To choose the most relevant questions to answer, type the “keyword” + “Quora” in the search bar, the questions showing on the first and second page are ranked the highest and you should be focusing on them in the beginning.
Another way to find the highly ranked questions is to use Quora Ads. This doesn’t have to be paid.
The feature in organic Quora helps to list the top questions and their weekly views. Not all the questions on the list will be relevant. You will have to analyse the list manually and edit the ones that are not in line with your product or company. Copying these questions to an excel sheet (aka master sheet) along with the weekly views will help you to prioritise your questions.
- Questions — The questions being asked by people (customers/ potential customers)
- Weekly views on Quora — The number of times one question is being searched during a week.
- Author — The person who has answered the question
- Relevant? — Are certain questions related to the product/industry?
To be up-to-date with the questions, review this ‘master sheet’ weekly and update the questions accordingly.
Step 3: Answering questions
For a startup, it is important to assign the questions to the most experienced person. Starting with the founders as they are the ones who have the full context of the product, market and the types of customers they are attracting.
They will set the benchmark of the quality of answers expected from others in the organisation.
When it is clear as to how the answers are supposed to be formed, marketing leads, content writers and interns can come in the picture.
The approach to answering a question should not be to market the company or the product nor it should seem like spam. Here, spam means, promoting your product without any content. You should aim at helping people as much as possible by answering their queries about your product or around your product.
Your answer should be highly contextual, interactive and rich in content. Use GIFs, images, videos to make the answer stand out.
To come up with a high ranking answer, consider your answer as a draft for a blog post.
- Being an early mover when it comes to answering questions can have its advantages but even if your competitors have answered first it’s always good to analyse their answers.
- See where they lack and construct your answer keeping in mind the points the competitors missed out.
- Always keep a positive and objective approach while answering.
Tips
- Never defame your competitors in your answers.
- Never use objectionable material (spams, unrelated links, pictures only, being rude etc)
Quora has human moderators that check each answer that has been reported. If your competitor or anyone else reports your answer, it will be deleted. Quora can give you a warning or ban you completely from their platform.
A way in which you can be ahead of the competition:
If they are image, be a video. If they are text, be an image. If they are salesy, be genuine. And if they are genuine, be more genuine.
To show credibility in your answers, edit your Contextual Bio according to the question being answered.
For example, a question is on the topic of SEO strategy. If you are a digital marketer with relevant experience in working on SEOs then you can highlight it in your description for a specific answer. Doing this will show your expertise in the field and make your answer look more legit.
Step 4: Track your work
UTM links are a good way to track performance from any digital campaign on all online platforms. They can be attached to a URL to generate Google Analytics data that can be tracked through the source (Quora, Twitter, Facebook), medium (banner, email, social) and campaign name (name of the campaign, product, year).
UTM links are the key to track your inbound traffic. They help you see which answer is generating the most traffic.
Always add UTM link to your answers. Campaign URL Builder is a great way to create UTM links. They help in tracking down years of work.
List all the questions you answer in an excel sheet along with their links and other information to make tracking easy. The ‘master tracker’ gives all the information related to the answers in one sheet as shown below.
- Question — The questions asked by people
- Question Link — Link to those questions
- Link — Link that was attached in the answer
- Short Link — Bitly link for the previous link
- Source — The platform used (Quora, Twitter, LinkedIn)
- Medium — Marketing medium used (social, ads, emails)
- Campaign — Name of the marketing campaign
- Campaign Content — The answer
You would want to visit your previous answers and update them. Updating your answers for the current scenario makes it more relevant and has a greater chance to be ranked higher.
Conclusion
To summarise our learning:
- Always start your marketing strategy with a funnel
- Identify the level of keywords in the funnel
- Build a Master Sheet that has a list of all the relevant questions along with the weekly views
- Construct your answers as detailed, interactive and informative as possible
- Use UTM links to track traffic
- Build a Master Tracker with links to UTMs, questions, full URL, short URL, source and campaign content
- Always keep an eye on your competitors
Hope this article has helped you to understand the process of building a marketing campaign on Quora.
In the times when most companies are trying to push their product to consumers, following an approach of helping and being honest in what you do will build a better brand name and reputation of you and your company.
You might like to read our other blog on 'How to get the maximum out of your leads through Data Enrichment'
