Content, content, content …. Unless you have been asleep for the past few years every time you have spoken to someone about generating more sales leads they will have said content is one of the most important things you should consider.
Over 60% of buyer journeys, both B2B and B2C, now start online and finding high quality sales leads is becoming a real challenge. The content you provide on your website and through other digital communication channels is a key part of converting prospects into high value customers. So what is content marketing and why does it matter to your business?
Make it valuable
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing and sharing content that reaches your target audience. Getting your strategy right will help increase brand, product and service awareness, generate sales leads, convert prospects into customers and create up-sell and cross sell opportunities.
Creating a content strategy is all about the “give and get”. Your business needs to “give” high value, well thought out, informative content and in return you will “get” some information from the prospect such as their contact details which you can use in the future.
To engage your prospects content will need to be:
Relevant to the audience
Provide value / insight or information
Be easy to consume
Not too “salesy”
It’s not just about writing a blog
For some companies their content strategy consists of writing a blog a week that encompasses a keyword or two, mentions a service and, occasionally, gets added to an e-newsletter.
If your business is considering developing a content marketing strategy there are a number of other forms of content outreach that should be considered including:
E books and whitepapers – These can take time to create but can deliver a significant return in the future. Make sure you create something that your prospects want to read and delivers some real value, don’t just rebrand something from your suppliers such as Microsoft.
Webinars – By adding a webinar series into your content strategy not only are you creating material that can be used for an event but it allows you to directly engage with prospects and gather feedback which can be used to develop more focused and relevant content in the future.
Social media posts and comments – Social media can be a powerful weapon in your content strategy but it has to be done right. Posting irrelevant content with loads of hashtags will not bring prospects to your door and turn them into customers.
Videos and animations – If you have the budget or the in-house skills then videos and animations can add real value to your business and help convert prospects onto customers.
Infographics and checklists – We all like things in bite sized chunks and your business could provide useful content with checklists and infographics which can be used to highlight knowledge and expertise for prospects.
Getting the most from your content
So you’ve developed a content marketing strategy and started to develop engaging resources so how do you achieve the maximum value from it. Here are just a few ideas you may want to consider
Build content into your user journeys – By adding insightful content at the start of a user journey prospects will see you as the expert and want to come back for more.
Improve your SEO – We all know that Google likes new, fresh content so by adding resources regularly search engines will rank your website higher than competitors because it is relevant to the searcher.
Create inbound campaigns – inbound marketing will help drive customers to your website but they need to want to stay – content is an important factor in moving a prospect along the sales funnel.
Enhance your Social Media – use and promote your content across social media.
If you are looking at ways of building your content marketing strategy, using it to generate high quality sales leads and support your sales team call Volpes Marketing on 01625 403911 or complete the form and we will get back to you.
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