Content marketing is the way to cut through and be more relevant to your customers compared with your competition. The key to igniting sales is to be visible, to have optimized content in search results and everywhere your consumers and audience are researching and discussing their problems and interests.
We also think that Joe Pulizzi’s definition of content marketing is very true:
‘How a brand creates, delivers and governs original or curated content to attract and retain customers, positioning the brand as a credible expert and, ultimately, motivating a change in behavior.’
Content marketing strategy is a way of unifying all digital marketing communications to support customer acquisition, retention and growth goals. Increasingly, it’s content that’s the currency to give you visibility. Here are the reasons why content marketing is central to success online:
Share-worthy content creates awareness for your brand. If your content engages readers, they will share it via their social accounts, email or word-of-mouth as a recommendation.
Content drives results from search engine optimization (SEO). Google had made this important since 1998 when it launched. Content became, and still is, king since websites are content and being found relies on content.
Content drives purchases. We base our decisions on online content when shopping online or researching for offline purchases.
Syndicated content drives purchases. Content marketing strategy is much broader than your site though and includes content on social networks, online publishers, comparison sites, blogs and many other types of site which help engagement and influence sales.
User generated content drives purchases. Buyer behavior has changed. We now want to reference wider opinion from others like us about products and services, whether rating sites, blogs or social networks – buyers dig out content to help their decision making.
Content on a range of platforms drives purchases. The importance of the internet continues to increase as technology (especially smartphones and tablets) evolve, and we evolve with them.
How to support customer management with content marketing:
Content marketing can help support marketing objectives across all the stages of the customer life-cycle as defined by the framework which we have developed to help create integrated digital plans.
Promote: involves building awareness of a brand, its products, and services on other sites and in offline media, and building traffic by driving visits to web presences.
Interact: your aim is to achieve the initial engagement of your visitors when they enter your site. Key performance indicators (KPIs) include bounce rates, time spent on site and page views. High page views, long dwell times and low bounce rates are all signs that your audience is engaged.
Convert: achieve conversion to marketing goals such as new fans, leads or sales on web presences and offline.
Engage: build customer relationships through time to achieve retention goals. Google is less satisfactory in this area since it doesn’t have suitable metrics and you may have to drive these through your sales systems.
Of course, the quality of your content is also essential to drive conversion to lead and sale on your website and social presences.
