Content marketing is a vital factor in the success of any business website. If you’re not thinking about it, the chances are you’re well behind where you could be. You might think of blogging when we mention content marketing, but it’s much more than that!
Content marketing basically means communicating valuable information to your audience that isn’t really focused on selling your product or service, but empowers users and gives them something they value. It can be thought of as indirect marketing, since the idea is that once your readers start to see you as a valuable source of information, they’ll be more likely to remain loyal and buy from you later.
With all aspects of your online presence, content marketing is integral. As we say all the time to our clients, having great content is of course one of the best things you can do for SEO purposes. To help your website rank higher on search engines organically, you really want users to find engaging content that makes them stay on your site for longer and feel like they found what they were looking for, and search engines notice this behaviour. If you think about it, the strategy you follow with the written content you use to promote your website should be consistent across social media, pay-per-click campaigns, emails, blogs, videos, PR and more… so content marketing really is key.
Your objective with content marketing is essentially to build a high quality relationship with your potential customers over time, so you can guide people towards those eventual purchase decisions without the need for hard selling techniques. Be careful though, as it’s not all about manipulating your readers! Considering the wealth of information available online, you need to stand out as a voice of authority in your industry and deliver high quality resources to help empower your customers and bring them back to you next time they need an expert.
Ultimately when planning our content, we need to find a balance between two main factors: what do we need, and what does our audience need?
Starting with our audience, we need to make sure we know exactly who they are. If we have a target market for our business (which we probably should have established by now!), what do they want to find when they visit our website? Do you know what they already think of your brand or your products? Does the size of your potential market warrant spending money on paid advertising, or getting professional help with SEO, social media and more? If you can answer these questions, you have a good starting point.
We also need to balance this with what we want to eventually get back from our audience. What’s the main objective of your content marketing strategy? Are you building awareness of your brand, promoting a new service, converting leads from a campaign, or something else? Thinking about how your business model works, how can you make sure the information you offer people encourages them to convert?
Once you’ve worked on formulating an initial strategy, getting some quality content written should be straightforward, especially when you’re writing as an expert in your own field. Next it’s vital to think about how you’re going to share and promote your content to reach its intended audience. Beyond SEO and paid advertising, harnessing the power of social media is important as it’s perfectly suited to sharing content and increasing your reach naturally. If you can offer your followers (and the rest of the online community) something of value, pushing it on the right channels combined with real social engagement should be enough to start growing your audience.
For more help with content marketing, from your initial strategy to maximising your potential reach, we recommend you simply get in touch with our team at 123 Ranking. As experienced SEO experts we’ve learned to focus on the bigger picture, helping our clients perfect every aspect of their online presence and put themselves in the best possible position to grow their businesses. If you want to be in that same position, simply ask us here about how we can help you get there.
