The Case for Content Marketing
While there is no “golden ticket” when it comes to marketing, good content marketing may be as close as it comes to it. The customer experience should be at the forefront of all of your marketing activities and in the digital marketing world, that starts with good content.
With that in mind, in this article we will cover what you and your clients need to understand about content marketing and how to shape it to deliver a “wow experience” for your audience. If you have ever done digital marketing for a client with limited or poor content, you know how frustrating that can be. Today, we’ll discuss the basics of what it is, its efficacy, why it’s important, and how you can sell it to your clients.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the process of producing and distributing valuable and informative content that is targeted to address the needs of your target audience. The goal of content marketing is to drive sales by positioning yourself as an industry thought leader and expert in your field.
The key part of this definition is “valuable and informative content”. Your content marketing strategy must be designed to create content that is useful to your target buyer. All of the most effective SEO and digital marketing strategies are customer-centric. The ones that aren’t, well they could be the best strategies ever, and they still won’t work.
Content that is well written and created for specific audiences and buyer personas is the foundation of all great digital marketing work.
With this established, let’s turn our attention to the efficacy of content marketing.
Is Content Marketing Effective?
Yes – content marketing is effective. High quality content targeted at the right audience that meets their needs and matches the search intent of their queries will inevitably see results. The question is if your content marketing will be effective and whether you are able to create good content.
The methodology behind good content sounds simple and logical. Create well thought out pieces for your audience, give them value, and in return, your business and your client’s businesses will grow. But what if you spend a good amount of time and resources on developing this and it doesn’t work?
In years of working with clients, this has always been the biggest concern that we have heard voiced. What if it doesn’t work? You’d be hard-pressed to find a digital marketing help article that doesn’t advocate for investing in content creation in some way shape or form. Let’s just understand that the expert consensus is that you should be doing this and let’s set that aside for now.
What type of results can your clients expect from an effective content marketing campaign? On that front, here is a stat from Aberdeen: “Annual growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%)”. The distinction here is that leaders adopt and use best practices while continuing to test new types of content, audiences, and channels. In other words, you don’t just start writing blogs, and boom, sales go up. You have to have a strategy, you have to test out new ideas, and you have to continue to work at it. Like anything, you get out what you put into it.
This may be where the hesitation about investing in content comes from in the first place. Somewhere along the way, you or your clients heard something like, “Just create a blog”. But it isn’t that simple, it has to be done right.
To illustrate how rampant that disconnect between being a content leader that is customer-focused and just creating content is, here is another data point from Content Marketing Institute: “Only 66% of B2B marketers frequently prioritize their audience’s needs over their sales message when creating content. Of the most successful content marketers, 88% do”.
The point here is simple, content marketing done right is effective. Most marketers know the importance of a well-planned content strategy but many are coming up short on the execution.
Why Is Content Marketing So Important?
Content marketing is important because it is by far the best way of attracting potential customers and convincing them to buy your product. No other means of promotion comes close.
No matter what digital marketing channel you are looking at, content is the foundation. Your clients websites are full of content from the blog to their product or services pages. Their social posts are all content. Any ads you run should be centered around a strong content offer that delivers value. Even if your clients are selling products through a paid ad campaign, you still need a well-crafted landing page. It all revolves around content creation.
Now, if we look through the lens of a sales funnel, content drives action in all three stages. Here’s a list of some examples of types of content by stage.
Content For The Awareness Stage
Blogs
Pillar Posts
Interactive Tools
Webinars
Explainer Videos
Tip Sheet
FAQ
Podcast
Content For The Consideration Stage
Product/Service Comparison Guides
Quizzes
Case Studies
Infographics
Free Sample
Trials
Content For The Decision Stage
Demos
Testimonials
Sales Enablement Documents
You see, content is truly at the heart of it all. Your clients need quality content to draw in their targeted audience, then use it to be considered in their prospects buying process, and finally, use it to help them make a decision. Ultimately, you are showing prospects why your clients product or service is the one that can solve the problem that they have.
How Do You Sell Content Marketing?
Content marketing sells itself! If only it were that easy. In reality, we all know it isn’t.
In our experience, the best way to sell content marketing is to identify the most successful competitors in your clients niche and show how they are able to use content marketing to drive website traffic and sales. Compare your clients website with their top competitors, point out all of the great content their competitor has and the relative lack of content on their own site.
Another great way to help sell your content marketing services is by presenting a solid, comprehensive content plan during your pitch. Your content plan should include a breakdown for each of your buyer personas (audience), by channel, at each stage of your funnel. It should also identify which KPIs you are going to track and how you believe they will be impacted by your content strategy.
Successful digital marketing requires constant testing, learning, and changes. Real content marketing is not just passing off an assignment of writing blogs here and there to someone on your marketing team. It is built on a thoughtful strategy, analyzing data, and learning how to get better. When you can demonstrate your ability to craft such a strategy, your job of selling content marketing becomes way easier.
So in short, how do you sell content marketing? You sell content marketing by demonstrating that you can create content that performs and meets the needs of your target audience. You sell it by doing it so well that there is no question you are up to the challenge, and that your client will get results.
You need the expertise and knowledge required to do this. That’s how you sell it to clients. It works, they need it, it has to be done right, and you are the person that can do it. When you have the skills, experience and past results to prove you can execute on a content marketing strategy and give your client what they are looking for, then your chances of landing the sale increase exponentially.
If you’ve been successful in the past, and were able to drive results for your clients, then show off those results! By far the most compelling argument is one that is backed by data that shows you know how to be successful.
Digital marketing is an ever-changing space and that extends to the world of content. The way content is created will change, the way we consume it will change, and the type of content we want will change. But, the need for it won’t. The goal remains to generate content that creates value for your clients and helps them gain interest from their prospects’ lives. Then, you use content to move those prospects through the sales funnel. In the end, you and your clients close more deals and make more profit. It’s a true win-win.
Are you looking to add content marketing to your service offering, or improve the quality of the content you already provide to your clients? Willman Web Services can help. Our team of digital marketing strategists have the skills your agency needs to succeed and provide outstanding results for your clients. Contact us today to discuss white label content marketing and SEO services.