Build Content for SEO, Lead Generation and Thought Leadership

Content marketing is vital for your company’s efforts in several areas:

Brand awareness: Content marketing enables search engine users to discover your brand, attracting targeted and quality traffic to your website, and potentially converting these visitors into profitable customers.

Thought leadership: Thanks to the content you create and distribute online, you can establish your business as a go-to source for industry information and expert analysis. Address your audience’s need for information and answer their most pressing questions to show your expertise.

Lead generation: Because people find a great deal of value in your blogs, social media posts, or video content, they are more likely to consider your product or service.

It’s a long list that covers almost everything from website traffic to branding and relationship building. But here’s the bottom line: Although content marketing is a helpful strategy in promoting your business, its user-centric focus makes it a powerful tool for influencing positive customer behavior toward your company.

In content marketing, you do not need face-to-face interaction to encourage and facilitate an online purchase. You don’t even need a sales agent to pitch the benefits of your product or service. Your content will do the work for you and liaise with customers on your company’s behalf.

Credible, truthful, relevant, and engaging content could turn what would otherwise be a disadvantage into a very efficient and speedy “sales call.”

1. Begin with the end in mind. What are your goals? Do you want to generate leads or launch an information drive about your company? Specific goals require tailored techniques in content creation and distribution.
2. Identify which needs your company will fill. What solutions are you able to provide? This information will determine your niche. Once you’ve identified the needs for your product, you can start your topic generation and keyword research. The goal is to produce content that will interest your audience.
3. Use market research to determine what your competition is up to. Competitor analysis will help you respond to market trends too.
4. Consolidate your data and insights to help you decide on crucial content marketing details. These decisions may include factors like what content types and distribution channels are suitable for your campaigns or the frequency of content creation, among others.
5. Credible, truthful, relevant, and engaging content could turn what would otherwise be a disadvantage into a very efficient and speedy “sales call.”

Metrics have a direct relation to your goals. Suppose you want to know how well you’re using content marketing to establish your brand’s online presence. In that case, you’ll be tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with this goal, namely website traffic, page views, and referral links.

Accurate metrics analysis involves pulling data from every marketing channel and understanding how your content in each platform influences customers toward your desired action.

Customer feedback is another yardstick of your content marketing success. There is nothing more valuable than a customer telling you how to improve your service or product, as it is the best way of knowing if you are truly filling a need of your chosen market.

The figures will vary depending on how much content you’re producing in a week, month, or quarter. As a general rule, content marketing requires a budget that takes into account the time, tools, and human resources you have to put together to develop and implement a strategy where you have the right type of content delivered to the right kind of audience.

What makes content marketing cost-effective is that the cost you spend per lead keeps dropping as time passes. The amount you spend to convert a prospect into a lead could be virtually nil in years. This long-term value in content marketing makes it something worth leveraging.

Accurate metrics analysis involves pulling data from every marketing channel and understanding how your content in each platform influences customers toward your desired action.

Customer feedback is another yardstick of your content marketing success. There is nothing more valuable than a customer telling you how to improve your service or product, as it is the best way of knowing if you are truly filling a need of your chosen market.

Content marketing is a discipline that falls under inbound marketing. The principle behind both inbound marketing and content marketing is to provide your target audience with informative content in a non-obtrusive way.

The technique in content and inbound marketing is straightforward. You put out content related to your brand, product, or service online and the benefits users can gain from it. You incorporate search words in your content, so people using Google and other search engines can find your content pages.

As your marketing channels propose solutions for everyday problems, customers will seek you and support your company of their own accord. This show of support for your brand also translates to consent to receive marketing messages, allowing you to serve your audience with content pieces throughout their customer journey.

What makes content marketing cost-effective is that the cost you spend per lead keeps dropping as time passes. The amount you spend to convert a prospect into a lead could be virtually nil in years. This long-term value in content marketing makes it something worth leveraging.

Accurate metrics analysis involves pulling data from every marketing channel and understanding how your content in each platform influences customers toward your desired action.

Customer feedback is another yardstick of your content marketing success. There is nothing more valuable than a customer telling you how to improve your service or product, as it is the best way of knowing if you are truly filling a need of your chosen market.

• Use premium content like ebooks and whitepapers as lead magnets, but avoid having to ask for more contact information than you should from website visitors.
• Keep your audience engaged by educating and entertaining them at the same time with your content.
• Work with the experts—they have vast knowledge and experience communicating with different types of customers across business industries.