2020 has brought a unique set of challenges for business owners both on and offline. Find out how a Digital Content Marketing strategy can help you weather the COVID-19 storm, build your brand, increase consumer engagement, and drive more conversions.
If there’s one thing businesses have learned in 2020, it’s that digital transformation is a must. While an online presence was once a nice thing to have, it’s now become a critical component for reaching your customers and growing your business.
But online marketing can be hard. Where before we were only competing with the fellow next door, once you go online, you find a whole new world (literally) of competition. This realization can be daunting, and for many businesses, it may feel like they are already too far behind their competitors to make any traction. It is in this space that a targeted, Content Marketing Strategy shines.
What is Content Marketing?
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” ~ Content Marketing Institute
As marketers, content is the core of what we do. While content can take a variety of forms from YouTube Videos and blog posts to podcasts or product listings, at its core level it’s about communicating a message to the consumer. If done correctly, that message will also convey something of value about your business and its services.
Have an amazing product or service but struggling to gain visibility both on and offline? A digital content strategy can play a key role in transforming your business and increasing your bottom line. With an on-going and consistent content marketing strategy you’ll reach more customers, gain more leads, and strengthen your brand – all in one fell swoop.
Why Content Marketing Works
It Builds Awareness – It’s hard to attract new customers if they don’t know you exist. Even harder still, attracting the right customer. Content marketing is an excellent way to catch new prospects at the very start of the conversion cycle. By providing clear and detailed content that introduces your products and services and how they relate to your ideal customer’s needs, you begin to build a concept of what your brand does and what customers can expect when they do business with you.
It Solves a Problem – when people choose to make an investment in something — either monetarily or attention-wise — it because it solves specific problems. If you have a product that targets a specific need, content marketing is a great way to show the value of what you’re offering. And that value can be conveyed in a number of ways, from tutorials on how to use the product to case studies that show it’s effectiveness to comparative articles that show how it stacks up against the competition. If you can educate your audience on how your product meets their specific needs, it won’t be long before the leads start flowing in.
It Increases Your Authority – content marketing should always be seen as a long-term strategy, not a short term campaign. The more content you create around your product, the more people it reaches. The more ways you show the many facets of your product offerings the more consumers (and Google) begin to consider you as an authority in your field. Building authority goes hand in hand with building consumer trust. The more consumers trust you, the more likely they are to buy from and be loyal to your brand.
It Boosts Your Search Visibility – When building an online presence, showing up on page one of Google, or any search engine for that matter, makes a difference. By investing in a consistent and targeted content marketing strategy, you’re building awareness and visibility not only with consumers but also with search engines. According to Google, the goal of its search engine is to “deliver relevant information on virtually any topic.” If you’re providing better, more consistent, and more useful content than your competitors, it won’t be long before you’re outranking them in search placement and conversions.
It Has Multiple Uses – the beauty of a content marketing strategy is that once you have a plan in place, it empowers your entire marketing team to reach a unified goal. By creating one targeted, quality piece of content, you’ve just opened the door to 10 other pieces as well. Say, for example, you conduct a webinar to educate users on a specific function of your product or service. You take that webinar and post the registration details on your website. You share the date in an email campaign. You post it on social media. The webinar date comes and goes but is the content dead? No way! Now you take the webinar recording and post it on YouTube. You transcribe it into a blog post. You compile it with other related items into an e-book or users manual. You link to it on your site glossary and then you share those repurposed items on various social media channels or email campaigns. Not only are you providing tons of value, but you’re also saving your sales and marketing team a ton of effort in terms of answering customer questions or cooking up new ideas.
It Provides Compounding ROI – the best thing about a focused content marketing strategy is that it creates this incredible digital flywheel effect. It requires concentrated effort in the beginning but with consistency and focus, over time, it becomes a powerful self-reinforcing loop that provides long-term and compounding ROI in the form of search visibility, website traffic, qualified leads, customer loyalty, and much much more.
Ready to increase traffic, get more qualified leads, and improve customer loyalty? Contact us today to book a SEO & Content Marketing Consultation!
