There’s no longer any disputing the importance of content when it comes to your marketing strategy. Again and again, content has proven to be the most effective means of building your business in a variety of ways and with a variety of benefits. Not only can it drive traffic and improve your SEO, but the right content can also help establish your branding and establish you as a market leader, no matter the size of your business or the sector you trade in. Your content marketing can even go further than that, and is a proven way to encourage sales and boost your conversion rates when it comes to pushing for those sales, and that’s why you should be focusing on effective content marketing in 2018.
The content marketing basics
Content marketing is driven by the quality of the content that you produce on your website, selling platforms, and social media. It needs to be relevant to your business, entertaining and informative, and above all, engaging. Without those key factors, your content becomes pointless. The most important factor to consider is that your content is not about selling your product. It’s instead more about ensuring that customers stay on your site for as long as possible, with calls-to-action interspersed that encourage a sale.
The main goals of content marketing
There are a number of targets that content marketing can help you to achieve, but here are the three most common:
- Lead generation: Having informative and entertaining content can lead to an improved lead generation of up to 59%, and can double your current lead generation.
- Establishing credentials: One of the most important factors when it comes to buying online is trusting the business. With inspiring content that proves your knowledge of the product, you can more easily inspire trust and make a sale.
- Improving brand awareness: The longer a visitor spends on your website, the more likely they are to remember your branding. That’s why your content itself needs to be reflective of your established branding strategy and remains consistent across platforms.
Choosing the right content
When it comes to content, you want to use a variety. A lot of that variety will depend on your target audience, with older generations more likely to read lengthy content pieces, and younger generations more keen on video and images. It’s always wise to use a variety when you begin, and assess each piece of content in terms of its impact. If you struggle with creating quality content, then it’s worth investing in businesses such as Blackbelt Commerce, who can create your content across a variety of formats and ensure that you are offering the consumer a number of pathways to that all-important shopping cart.
There’s a reason why even the largest companies in the world are making the transition to content marketing, and that’s because it’s been proven to work consistently. Those leading the way have shown that not only does good content generate up to eight times more site traffic, it can also attract up to six times higher conversion rates. If you want the edge when it comes to your marketing strategy in 2018, then content marketing is simply the best option.
