Content marketing is important for every business.  It’s not overly time consuming (your business is already creating content) and it builds trust in the marketplace.  More to the point, it’s a highly effective, scalable method of increasing sales through the online marketing channel.

Here’s how to make content marketing work for your business…

Keep visitors coming back to visit your website

What good is website traffic if those visitors don’t eventually convert to customer status?  Depending on the sales cycle, your customers may take hours or months to make an online purchase.  Either way, you can be sure they will visit several competing websites during pre-purchase information gathering.  They will return to the website that’s helping them (just as a good salesperson helps) make a decision.  The more they visit your website and become comfortable with your brand, the more likely they will purchase from your company.

Create content your target audience will consume

Not every content piece needs to be a precise description of your product/service.  In fact, that sounds pretty boring.  Create content that is of interest to your target audience. Here’s an example:  Nate Kariniemi writes a blog on business strategy.  One of his most successful posts, which receives over a thousand hits on some days, is about a proposed colony on Mars. Apparently, strategic business thinkers are interested in mind-blowing technological possibilities!  Put your best foot forward by providing content your audience wants, then deliver the sales pitch.

Allow your published content to generate sales for years

Unlike old-school methods of advertising, your first few wins through content marketing are only the beginning.  A great piece of content has the opportunity to produce years of ongoing lead generation.  Here are the ways new prospects will find your content:

• Organic search results (your content will be found by searchers)
• Social media sharing (Tip for B2B sales: Answer questions on LinkedIn and leave behind links to your content)
• Links from other websites (webmasters will link to your informative content)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Although, people generally understand the value of SEO, there’s more confusion than ever about how to get results.  Getting people to find your content online, through organic search, should always start with creating good content. Here at Benet, we enjoy getting our clients great results through SEO, but rather than use “shortcut methods” to produce SEO results, we align our client’s content strategy with Google’s interests, by creating relevant, optimized content that Google wants to promote to the top of the search engine ranking placement.

Here’s an example of an ecommerce company that ranks for many highly coveted search terms in their industry – despite having done virtually NO search engine optimization.  What’s their secret to success?  It’s simple.  Google knows that when a person searches “bargain used clothes” – that person is looking for mylittleclothesline.com.  So, their website is ranked #1 on Google, without spending a dime on SEO.

There are people in your company who can help create great content

Once your content marketing platform is in place, utilize the knowledge of various subject matter experts in your company to drive content marketing results.

• Customer Service Reps know the problems that customers experience.  Don’t just solve problems, put the info online so the whole universe can benefit.
• Sales people know what sells.  Highlight the benefits of various services and products.
• Technical staff possess knowledge that isn’t attainable anywhere else online.  Without actually giving away your 100 year old secret recipe (if you are Coca-Cola), try to give away as much good info as possible.

Start Content Marketing

The first step to content marketing success is setting up a blog with built-in capabilities that allow your content marketing to achieve success:

• Quick loading to avoid that dreaded “loading” experience
• An “SEO package” that makes it a snap to optimize your content
• A mobile version (everybody wants to easily read your content on their smartphone)

We are WordPress gurus – let us whip up an awesome blogging platform for your biz.  Already have a great blog and need expertise to bring your content marketing to the level? Let us do the heavy lifting for you.