When you think about online marketing, the real meat comes in the form of content.
The word content is thrown around today to mean numerous things. When you hear “content” just think “information”.
It could be videos, live streaming, blogs, infographics, and more. Without information, how would customers get to know about your product? Without information, how could you get your point across to reach those same customers?
You’ve heard content is king, but it may not be clear how creating and sharing helpful content helps with the journey to buy your products/services, business and revenue growth. Here are a few ways it impacts the bottom line.
Content is an Efficient Way to Help Your Customers
Today’s world revolves around truth in advertising. People don’t want to shop from a faceless business. They look to their preferred brands as an authority on specific topics. Good content marketing leads customers into a trusting relationship with the brand. This leads to more brand credibility, increased business, and improved reputation. Developing a strong relationship with your customers as they are in the research or information gathering stage is one of the best ways to establish trust, and be on the road to winning their business.
Over Time…Better Google Rankings and Domain Authority
A website with rich, helpful content, published regularly will appeal to Google’s algorithm. As the robots index sites, (over time) you earn a higher domain authority as a website that is regularly updated with quality content. This means your website will rank higher in search engines and appear more trustworthy over other sites. Ranking higher can result in more traffic to your website and more revenue in your pocket.
Improve Your Conversion Rate with Quality Content
Conversion refers to visitors to your website becoming active clients, making purchases, signing up for newsletters, or achieving any of the goals you have for your site. First, you need to capture a reader’s attention with helpful information, then show how your product/service is the best choice to solve their problem.
Expand Your Information to New Worlds
As an expert in your field, it is beneficial to contribute to other websites or news publications. Whether it’s providing a quote for a story that relates to your industry or writing a post for a relevant website or blog, contributing to other publications gives you the chance to link back to your own website. These referral links (backlinks) greatly improve your exposure and give you access to a new audience that you otherwise may not have access to.
Compared to the Returns, the Investment is Low
Think of content marketing as an investment. When compared to an AdWords campaign – as soon as the campaign is finished, the content stops being shown. Conversely, with content that is on your site, it keeps working for you long after the initial investment of writing it. Whether you are producing content in-house or outsourcing it, the only thing that content costs is time. We often plan an annual content calendar so that seasonal sales, business news (like expansions or new products) and industry events are part of a planned strategy.
Build the Audience, Build Your Credibility
Creating quality and helpful content will widen your audience and entice more people to turn to your content for help and guidance. They may feel comfortable signing up for your newsletter or following you on social media. Just because they do one and not the other is OK.
If your information is always fresh and exciting, people will want to consume it. Writing relevant content that is helpful and interesting also may result in your readers sharing it, another way to gain exposure and reach new individuals. As you grow your followers and more people share your content within their own social media circles, you will gain even more credibility and create more brand awareness and trust. Think of it as word of mouth in the digital age.
You’ll want to incorporate a planned content strategy for our as part of a larger marketing game plan. That allows you to incorporate it seamlessly into social media, in-store promotions, and industry events – based on what makes sense for your company and industry.
Your content marketing should be easy to understand, friendly, engaging, on brand, in your voice and appropriate for your market. By taking the time to produce quality content that answers your customer’s questions and entices them to trust your business, you will be on your way to having your content help with your business growth.
Jen Kelly is a marketing consultant in Toronto and CEO of New Initiatives Marketing Inc. (NIM) serving growing businesses in Canada and the USA. NIM is the team to call for marketing execution excellence. Contact us today for a no-obligation conversation about your company’s content marketing.
