Quora Marketing: Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide

In this post, I’m going to show you how to generate leads and revenue quickly from Quora.

I have used these exact techniques to generate several thousand users to a fintech platform, Capshare, from a single Quora answer.

When I was a consultant I also used this technique to generate over 1,000 leads for my conversion rate optimization services. All from a single answer.

I don’t like spray and pray. When I spend the time to write a Quora answer, I want to do everything I can to make sure it’s a success. I’ve even had my answers featured in the Quora Digest email newsletter.

Now it’s time to show you how you can do the same for your business.

What is Quora?

Quora is a question-and-answer platform where users ask questions and authors share insightful answers. Quora is also quite massive. There are over 400,000 topics where millions of questions are asked and answered.

Perhaps you’ve seen Yahoo answers before. This is not that. If Yahoo answers is a condemned building with a family of semi-feral cats living inside, Quora is the Google campus.

Many questions on Quora have high buying intent and are being conducted during the consideration phase of the purchase process.

While an individual may initially write the question, many questions have very large followings of other users who are also interested in answers.

So you can publish a single answer to hundreds, if not thousands of people researching the question.

Quora also allows you to publish standalone content just like you can on Medium or LinkedIn’s publishing platforms.

Why You Should Use Quora for Marketing

1 Instant Access to Your Audience

The biggest reason why you should use Quora is that your audience is already there.

And by that, I mean educated people who buy stuff. They are researching questions and you have an opportunity to provide the answer.

This can be especially valuable if you don’t already have a lot of organic traffic to your own website and content. But either way, the Quora audience is extremely valuable.

2 Quora's Audience are Ballers

Here are some stats about Quora’s audience:

  • 47% of users report a household income of over $100k.
  • 63% of users conduct research before major online purchases.
  • Quora has a greater concentration of adult users with over $100k in household income than LinkedIn, WSJ, HuffPost, and Reddit.
  • Quora gets more than 300 million unique monthly visitors.

3 Thought Leadership

You can establish yourself as a thought leader among a very educated audience.

Jason Lemkin created an entire brand for himself and what is now SaaStr off of Quora.

4 Evergreen Content Compounds

I believe in doing work that compounds. Quora is one of those marketing channels that feels almost like cheating. It gives you immediate visibility in front of an audience that has already congregated somewhere but it is also evergreen.

Answers that you publish on Quora will continue to get views and generate leads for months if not years to come.

As you create more and more content, the effects compound on each other day in and day out.

You can also find questions that customers or potential customers are asking about your product. These can be useful insights into what you can publish not only on Quora but on your own blog and elsewhere.

Ready to get started? Let’s go.

Step 1: Set Up Your Profile

It’s really important to make sure your bio is set up well. Quora puts a huge emphasis on quality and it’s important to look the part.

So you’ll want to fill out your bio and give yourself a good tagline. The tagline is called a credential on Quora.

My public Quora profile

Quora shows your “credential” next to every single answer. This is a huge opportunity to create authority but you need to make sure it’s good.

How a credential appears next to an answer

An excellent credential should demonstrate authority in your space and give exposure to your company. Keep in mind that only the first 50 characters of your credential show up next to your name on the answers you publish.

So keep your credentials:

  • Concise.
  • Professional.
  • Catchy.

A very useful feature is that Quora allows you to choose a different credential depending on the question. Take full advantage of this positioning. You can craft the perfect credential for any question you answer.

You can choose the perfect credential for each answer you write

Of course, you’ll also need to upload a good profile picture of yourself.

If you’re new to Quora, take some time to browse topics that are of interest to you and relate to your business. Go ahead and follow the topics that you like and follow some of the users who give questions you like.

Your recent activity (or lack of it) appears on your profile so you’ll want to make sure it doesn’t look like a ghost town. Go and upvote some answers that you like.

My public Quora profile

Now that you've got a spiffy-looking profile page let's find some money-making opportunities...

Step 2: Identify Amazing Question Opportunities

There are a lot of people who have succeeded with Quora by just grinding out a huge volume of good answers.

This is not my strategy. I like to get amazing results from just a few answers. Now if you are feeling ambitious you can definitely apply my strategy to writing lots of answers and you’ll probably be way more successful than me.

The key here is to find questions with:

  • High buying intent.
  • Lots of views.
  • Low competition (not necessary but nice to have.)

High buying intent means that the question is related to purchasing a product like yours. We’ll go into detail in the “keyword research” section below.

A lot of views means that the question gets a lot of views either from Quora or from Google. This distinction is important. Sometimes a question will get most of its views because it ranks well on Google for a related search term. These are golden opportunities.

I’ll show you how to use Quora’s ad platform to tell you how many views any question gets in a minute. But let’s assume that you find a question that has a lot of views.

You can tell that a question gets a lot of its views from Quora because it will tend to have a high number of followers.

On the other hand, if the number of followers is low and yet it has a lot of views, you can safely assume that most of the traffic comes from Google. These can be really golden opportunities.

The more followers a Quora question has, the more likely it is to have a lot of answers, which means it will be harder to compete. This is not always the case though. Sometimes a question with a high number of followers will have lots of crappy answers and you will be able to beat them all and rank at the top with a great answer.

Keyword Research

Think of some of the questions that your customers might have. Start first with questions customers might ask when they are ready to buy. Writing content for customers who are at the buying stage will create the quickest results.

Buying stages of the customer journey.

Some of the types of questions customers will ask when they are ready to buy might include:

  • Product comparisons (e.g. How does Salesforce compare to Hubspot?)
  • Implementation questions (e.g. How long does it take to implement Hubspot?)
  • Cost questions (e.g. How much does Salesforce cost?)

Search for questions like these on Quora. If you sell a CRM, you might search for “CRM” or the names of your competitors.

You can get more ideas by searching for the keywords related to your product on Google and looking at the suggested search queries at the bottom of the page. Then try searching for similar queries on Quora.

Suggested search queries that appear when searching for "how does Salesforce compare to HubSpot" on Google

Find Question Opportunities with Quora Ads Platform

Quora provides a wealth of information about the popularity of specific questions on its ads platform.

Of course, we won’t be using it to run an ad in this guide, but we can mine for great question-and-answer opportunities here.

First, go sign up for Quora ads. It’s free and only takes a minute.

Once you’re in click on “New campaign” in the upper-right corner.

Give your campaign a name. It doesn’t matter what you choose for “Objective.”

Choose whatever you want for "Select conversion event."

Then put a number for your "Daily maximum budget." Again, it doesn't matter what you put since we won't actually be running this campaign.

Hit “Continue” to go to the “Create an ad set” page.

Jump straight down to the “Choose primary targeting” section and choose “Contextual targeting” and “Questions.” Then click the “Bulk add” link.

Ok, this is the moment you've been waiting for ladies and gentlemen. The moment where Quora will divulge all its dark secrets to us.

Type in one of your keywords (e.g. "CRM" or "Salesforce") and click continue.

Quora will now give you a list of the top 20 questions ranked by weekly views. Each of those links is clickable too so you can open each question in a new tab to save for later.

So much gold...

I like to save each one to a Google spreadsheet with 4 columns (Question, URL, Followers, and Weekly Views.)

Keep searching for various keyword terms until you’ve saved all the good ones.

Ok, hold on. Do you need to pinch yourself? Quora is literally giving you a map of the best questions to answer. It amazes me how many articles there are on Quora marketing and yet none of them show you this technique (or at least none that I’ve seen.)

Find Question Opportunities Throught Google SERPs

I love finding questions that already are ranking well and getting traffic from Google. These tend to be diamonds in the rough.

They tend to get a lot of views and yet not have very many followers. This is because a lot of the traffic comes from Google so most visitors are not Quora users. Because of this, there tends to not be very many answers and if you write a baller answer you will probably rank #1.

The cool thing about writing a great answer on a question that is already ranking well on Google is that you can actually help it to rank better with a good answer that has headlines, images and of course great written content.

1. High View to Follower Ratio

The first way to do this is to take note of any questions that you find using Quora’s ad platform that have high views and relatively low followers. These most likely get their views from Google.

2. Keywords Idea Research

The second way to find questions that get a lot of Google love is to do some keyword research as outlined in the “keyword research” section above. You can use Google’s suggestions like we mentioned earlier.

You can also use tools like SEM Rush or Ubersuggest (free) to come up with keyword ideas.

Save all the good keywords to a spreadsheet and then check each one to see if any Quora pages come up on the first page results (preferably in the top 5.

3. Ahrefs Top Pages Report

The third option is to use a paid tool called Ahrefs. This is probably the best SEO tool on the market. They have a really large database that can help you find pages that are ranking for various keywords or topics.

Just use their “Site Explorer” tool and put quora.com in and look at the “Top pages” report. This will show you the pages that get the most organic traffic.

Then narrow the results down using a filter that includes a specific keyword. You can cycle through various keywords that make sense. Take note of any questions that are relevant to your business and write answers for those questions first.

Step 3: Write a Baller Answer

Now that you have a list of amazing question opportunities, you need to write something worthy of the eyeballs you’re going to get. We need to drop some value. Give ’em the old razzle-dazzle.

1 Focus on Value and Education

The best answers are more like posts. They are in-depth, valuable and educational. If you resort to a lot of pitching you will not get many sales.

On the other hand, if you focus on delivering value, people will feel reciprocity toward you and see you as an authority who they trust. This is what you want.

It’s ok to include a brief offer when it makes sense but don’t go posting links everywhere. One will do.

Remember to think like Quora’s algorithm. What does Quora want? It wants to attract an exceptionally high-value audience, bring a lot of value to people with questions, and keep those people coming back and on their site as long as possible.

If your questions have calls to action and links everywhere, not only will it come across as spammy but it pushes people away aggressively to another site. Quora makes its money from ads. They’re tolerant of great posts with a link because it adds more value than it takes away but don’t overdo it.

2 Write a Great Intro

One of the best formulas is the Preview, Proof, Bridge formula.

Brian Dean uses this frequently in his posts.

An example of the Preview, Proof, Bridge formula being used by Brian Dean

Brian has tested dozens of intros and this is the one that works best for him. I like it a lot as well but I have found that stories and interest-catching facts can be really effective on Quora as well.

Preview

This is super simple. Just tell them exactly how you’re answering their question.

For example, the following is an answer I wrote for the question “What is the best way to increase conversion rate?” This answer generated over 1,000 leads and was featured in the Quora Digest email:

When it comes to conversion rate optimization, there is no shortage of articles offering tips and tricks like bigger buttons, good calls to action, conveying benefits over features, using testimonials, etc. These are all important but they ignore the underlying framework that must be considered first.

I am going to show you how to increase your conversion and traffic on a large scale by showing you how to map your website to the buyer’s cycle.

The second paragraph is the preview. Given the question and terrible advice often given around conversion rate optimization, it made sense to mention the problems in the first paragraph.

Proof

Here you want to give a simple bit of proof that what you are about to write is worth listening to.

My proof statement for the question about improving conversion rate was:

I’ve used this exact technique to drive millions of dollars in revenue from very few pages and pieces of content.

Bridge

This is also super simple. You just need a simple paragraph to jump into the good stuff.

My bridge in this article you’re reading right now is:

Now it’s time to show you how you can do the same for your business.

Whether you use The Preview/Proof/Bridge formula or something else, the most important thing you must do is draw the reader in.

Don’t just give a simple answer. Make them curious. Get them wanting more.

In school, you were taught to answer the question first and then elaborate and summarize. Don’t do that.

Here are some hooks you can use:

  • Raise questions without giving the full answer.
  • Share the stakes of the story without giving away the conclusion.
  • Shatter people’s expectations with an interest fact without explaining how its possible.
  • You must explain the hook by the end or it’ll piss people off.

Ultimately, good writing and good storytelling is about strategically withholding details.

Storytellers know something non-storytellers don’t: storytelling is the art of strategically withholding details.

– Julian Shapiro

If this is all too much don’t worry. Just stick with the Preview/Proof/Bridge formula and you’ll do well 🙂

3 Use Data When Possible

Using data to back up your claims makes your post unique and extremely authoritative. The perceived value of a post with data is extremely high.

The best data to use is:

  • Primary research (you created the data.)
  • Original combination of secondary research (you combine secondary research to create unique insights.)
  • Secondary research (you use someone else’s data to draw preferably original insights.)

Primary Research

An example of primary research could be a survey or anonymized data from your customers.

The perceived value of original data is wildly high. People love to upvote it and share it.

An example of primary research I helped to create at a previous startup.

Secondary Research

You often don’t have primary research and so secondary research works great in these cases. Here’s an example of using secondary research in a previous post.

Secondary research that I used in my post about VC funding.

4 Use Custom Images

I know, I know you are not a designer. But you don’t have to be. I’ll show you how to make stellar images in a second but first…

Images are important. Using images that have a consistent look makes your answers or posts really shine. Kind of like how mowing the overgrown weeds and slapping a fresh coat of paint can really transform the curb appeal of a house.

Using beautiful images that pop will give you a lot of perceived authority, increase the perceived value of your post, and will ultimately help you stand out.

This can help you in competitive situations where there are a lot of good answers to a particularly tantalizing Quora question that has lots of views.

You really need the people who first see your post to go, wow, this is nice, and get that upvote from them. This can create a fly-wheel effect where Quora notices your post gets a lot of upvotes for every person they show it to. So they show it to more people and you get more upvotes, etc..

It’s also worth mentioning that images will appear next to your answers in the feeds of your followers:

Posts with images make people want to click on your answers.

How to Create Custom Images

There are plenty of platforms out there that make this easy. Some of them include:

  • Marq
  • Canva
  • Crello

Some recent examples of posts I’ve made with custom images are How to Use Voice of Customer Research to Scale Growth and Why Blockchain is Important.

Don’t Get Collapsed or Banned!

Quora has some strict policies around writing content on its platform. I recommend that you go read up for yourself but I’ll do my best to cover some of the most common “gotchas” that you may run into.

  • Don’t use affiliate links ever.
  • Disclose your affiliation with your company if you talk about your products or services.
  • The answer should be understood without having to leave Quora (or it’s spam.)
  • Answers with a link or embedded video should provide a summary and explanation of its relevance to the question.
  • Give attribution to sources.

I have also had answers collapsed for not including image attribution, even when I made the image myself, haha. So I always include a little source under the image in italics that indicates the source (e.g. “Image from mike.ps”) and I don’t make that a clickable link.

Summary

Well, that’s it. I hope you’re excited about the opportunity that Quora presents. I’ve singlehandedly gotten enough revenue to launch startups from just a few strategic, well-written Quora posts.

I’ve thought about making a Quora Marketing course with a relatively small group where we work together through this process and end with the goal of you having 5 to 10 answers that are generating a steady stream of leads and sales.

If you’re interested, I’ll probably let the first group have it for something super cheap like $50 just to validate the demand and help shape the course.

Message me if that sounds interesting to you and I’ll launch it if enough people raise their hands for it.

Either way, go contribute some amazing answers to the world and get rewarded with thousands of leads and sales 🚀🤘.

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