Content marketing is a long game, but well worth the effort because it's by far one of the most effective ways to:
This is why 80% of businesses are now investing in building content marketing programs that add value to their customers and clients.
Let's take a look at exactly what makes consistent, high-quality content marketing so powerful and how to measure the success of your program.
Content marketing is the conscious building of content that answers your ideal customer’s questions instead of promoting your brand.
Its intention, though, is to brew up interest in what you do in your business.
Think about it: when you Google something, you’re looking for answers, not an ad.
Content marketing generates leads by solving problems for people who are on the buyer’s journey toward your business.
When you help people with what you know—offer a give without a get with your content—you establish credibility, build trust, and develop loyal customer/client relationships that last over time and support your business.
People look forward to high-quality, consistent content from their favorite brands, and engaging content like this impacts decision-making more than any other technique.
To build that kind of loyalty, your content needs to carry a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across all channels.
A few methods that allow you to do that are:
Sharing content assets like these consistently online—on your social media channels and website—creates value for your customers which grows your business.
Great content creates positive experiences for your potential customers and persuades them to return to you for what they need again and again.
It can make the difference between customers and evangelists for your business.
Increasing your followers is easy, but creating content that builds a followING is an entirely different thing.
That takes creating quality content that aligns with what your prospects and customers really need from you.
If your business already has a lot of followers on social media, using content marketing to engage those who need what you have to offer can get things moving so that they begin to like and (here’s the key) share your content.
That’s the difference quality content can make.
You can track the success of your social media content by using HubSpot's Social CRM.
Creating quality content establishes your business as a credible place to get information that people need. Plus, it helps you rank higher in search engines.
Being viewed as an industry expert or thought leader can only grow your business.
Making a commitment to demonstrate your expertise in your field and provide answers to your audience's real questions is what content marketing is all about.
Creating value without taking anything in return builds trust.
It just does.
Your business becomes a go-to space for people who are seeking advice or recommendations about your industry.
When customers trust you, a strong business relationship is built that can support your business through thick and thin.
When your content shows up at the right place at the right time for the right audience, it improves the reputation of your brand, too.
Positive associations for your company are generated by consistent, quality content, and those associations are boosted if you continue to provide that kind of value over time.
Your content should provide visitors with useful, free information.
Avoid pointing directly to your company except in this very strategic space: the CTA.
Calls-to-action placed inside your content that link to a landing page on your website can generate new leads for your sales team.
Place them anywhere you like, but just make sure that delighted visitors have a place to click to speak to your sales team for more information about what you do.
Delighted visitors = excited leads = happy customers.
Google has shown consistently over time that they know valuable content when they see it.
Present your website visitors with high-quality, relevant content that aligns with the keywords your customers use when searching for what you offer.
This builds SEO for your entire website—which increases its visibility online and builds trust, authority, and relationships with your ideal customers.
We’re all more likely to click on an article that’s on the first page of a Google search, so help Google put you there. Build a content marketing strategy!
Original content helps your audience find you and gifts them with the information they need to make an educated buy.
Using blog content with interesting, branded images, memes, and infographics brings in traffic and creates two assets in one that visitors can screenshot, share, and use.
Add a CTA to create value. A CTA shows visitors who are ready to connect with you what to do next in order to do so.
HubSpot first assessed the cost of content marketing ten years ago, and it has remained the most cost-effective marketing strategy there is.
Upfront, it can be pricey.
A freelance writer gets paid anywhere from $150 a post to $3,000 for blog content, but hiring a full-time copywriter to create content for you is still the most cost-effective way to market a business or organization.
Compared to paid advertisements, video marketing, and traditional marketing, content marketing wins the battle over the best use of the marketing dime, every time.
Whether you create ebooks, memes, or long-form blogs, it’s important to understand that your content should be created in the spirit of “give without a get."
Remember: It should be free information about what you know and not a long, direct ad for your business.
Unless you’re using an example from what you do, you should avoid talking about your business in your content.
People are delighted when you share without expectation.
At the end of what you’ve shared, give them a clear path to you with a CTA, just like we’re about to do here. That’s valuable information, too, if you use it sparingly.
Here’s a valuable CTA example (and a CTA): We recently passed a big milestone at Growth: we published our 100th blog post. We’ve been dedicated to our content marketing strategy for over a year, and we couldn’t be happier about it.
Want to know how it’s going? Ask us. That’s what we’re here for.