How to Properly Use Quora for B2B Lead Generation

On Jun 16, 2020

Quora can help you generate quality leads for your business while keeping your marketing costs low. Here’s how to make full use of the platform.

Quora can generate tons of B2B leads

According to SimilarWeb, Quora is the second most popular source of information after Wikipedia. It has more than 300 million users around the world and twice as many monthly visits.

Unlike Wikipedia, the authorship of the content you post on Quora is visible to everyone. Usually, it looks something like: “John Doe, CEO at Company X.”

This means that if you provide helpful, engaging content, your name and brand will become visible to a wide audience. Showing the ways you and your business can be helpful by educating Quora users in your areas of expertise can help you attract new leads.

But it’s essential that you create content for Quora properly.

Your profile info actually matters

Your profile is your face online. It’s crucial that you set it up the right way.

Personal information is the first thing Quora users will see when looking at your profile. Be fun and creative, or formal and solid, it’s up to you.

But it’s usually best to match your tone of voice to your industry; the style appropriate for a casual fashion or fast food chain is much different than that for law firms or medical device companies.

You will need to cover the following points:

Topics you are expert at
Who you are (name, real photo, position in a company)
What your company does
Your credentials
How you and your company can be helpful
Your contacts
Call-to-action (it works better if you have a landing page to link the CTA to)

If you mark certain topics as favorite from the start, you will see them in the “Knows About” section when your profile is complete.

When you answer a question matching a category from your “Knows About” section, Quora’s algorithms will give it a higher rank. Higher rank means that your answer will be displayed on top of other answers to the same question. For you, this means more upvotes, profile views, and potential leads.

For additional exposure, you can pin the answer that got the most upvotes and views. Ideally, this answer should resonate with your target audience and its needs.

For example, if you work for a web design agency, you might want to pin your most popular answer to questions like, “How do I hire a web designer,” or “Freelance web designers vs. web design agencies.”

Choose the right questions to gain leads

It’s not enough to simply search for questions that match your favorite topics and answer them. First, you must know whom you are going to write for.

Customer journey

Options like “Our target audience” or “My potential customers” are too vague. You want your answers to hit specific pain points of your target audience. The best way to do it is to consider customer journey stages of your future clients.

Ignorance. They have no problem they could solve with the help of your products.
Problem-awareness. They suspect they have a problem but have no idea how to approach it.
Solution-awareness. They know what they must do to eliminate the problem but haven’t found the means for it yet.
Product-awareness. They know what specific product or service can solve their problem.

Expand your scope

Typically, you want to start with product-aware customers. Usually, they ask very specific questions. E.g., “Should I hire freelance web developers on X or Y platform?”

Product-aware customers are a limited group, so you’ll need to broaden your scope eventually. Address the pains of solution-aware customers. They will be looking for something like, “How do I build a website?” or “How do I hire web developers?” They know their business needs a website (for whatever reason), but they’re not sure of the best approach to take.

Finally, reach out to problem-aware customers. You will need to educate them about possible solutions to their problem. Then they may start viewing your product or service as a part of the solution.

Get help from Google

Search some of your favorite topics in Google, and prioritize answering those Quora questions that appear on the first page of search results.

What your answers should look like

Avoid direct promotion

Quora’s policies and regulations are regularly updated – check to make sure your answers will not be banned for overt advertising and self-promotion.

Mind the word count

The length of your answers will depend on the subject, but generally you’ll want to keep them within the range of 500-750 words.

Use images

Use only images that you own or that are licensed for free use.
Avoid using company logos: Quora’s algorithms may see them as promotional images.
You can use services such as Photopea to create and edit images yourself.
Also, Quora supports embedded GIFs and videos.

Make lists

Use Quora’s auto-formatting to organize the information you provide into lists. Quora algorithms rank answers with lists higher, so using those is a nice way to get more exposure and upvotes.

Format your answers

Plain text is boring to read. Use bold, cursive, and underlined text to highlight important thoughts and add structure to your answer.

Use links to credible external resources

Once again, check with Quora’s policies on the links. It’s always best to use links leading to credible websites with high domain rank.

Nuances to keep in mind

Don’t cheat

Quora easily spots cheaters who try to gain more exposure using unscrupulous, manipulative tactis. If you create multiple accounts to boost your profile or upvote your answers, you will get banned.

Other scams will be quickly spotted as well. Account bans on Quora last forever, so if you put effort into building your profile and then think about cutting some corners…don’t do it. Getting banned means you will need to start all over again.

When your answer is banned

If your answer violates Quora’s policies, it will most likely be banned by Quora’s algorithms. Your profile will remain operational, but you will receive a notification with the links to the banned answer.

The good news is that you can appeal to Quora. To do so, press the “Appeal” button that appears in the ban notification. Usually, it is enough to double-check Quora’s policies and edit your answer accordingly.

In a nutshell

Quora can be a great tool for B2B lead generation. Keep Quora policies in mind, learn how its algorithms work, and choose questions wisely.

If you do everything right, Quora can become a reliable and free source of high-quality leads.