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Marketing Insider Group Shares 9 E-Commerce Growth Tips for 2023

As a business owner, now is the perfect time to refresh your marketing strategy and figure out how you can get a jumpstart on e-commerce growth tips for 2023.

You finally made it through the holiday season and you’re just a few days away from ringing in the new year. If you’re still working through your strategy or looking for new marketing tactics, these 9 growth tips for e-commerce businesses in 2023 are the perfect place to start.

Key Takeaways

  • 80% of business owners reported that hiring influencers is an effective marketing tool 
  • Implementing an effective content marketing strategy increases brand awareness, educates audiences, builds credibility and enhances customer loyalty
  • 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a positive experience 
  • Prioritizing the happiness of your employees will strengthen your team, increase customer delight and scale your business

Reaching your audience, building a loyal customer base and increasing your conversion rate in 2023 is simple with these 9 e-commerce growth tips.

E-Commerce Growth Tips For 2023

Ready to tackle the new year? Implement these e-commerce growth tips into your content marketing strategy and finally achieve the results you want to see in 2023.

Hire an Influencer

One way that e-commerce business owners are reaching their target audience faster is by hiring and working with influencers on social sites like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. In fact, 80% of businesses find hiring influencers to be an effective marketing tool.

bar graph shows that 80% of marketers find influencer marketing to be effective

Image Source: Smart Insights

Reaching people through organic posting and social advertising is becoming increasingly saturated and expensive. As a result, more brands are choosing to invest their advertising dollars in other ways.

Consumers put a lot of trust in other people when it comes to making purchasing decisions. When deciding whether or not to buy a product, they turn to their friends, family members or even strangers who have already purchased the products before them.

Hiring a well-known influencer to provide you with direct access to your target audience will help boost sales and grow your loyal following.

Build a Video Marketing Strategy

Video has become an increasingly popular marketing tactic to invest in and it’s predicted to be even more valuable in the year ahead. Consider the following facts about the popularity and business case of video from Buffer:

  • Over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every day
  • 10 billion videos are watched on Snapchat every day
  • 55% of people consume videos thoroughly — the highest amount all types of content
  • 4 in 5 millennials consider video content when researching a purchase decision
  • 4X as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it

The right video can do wonders in helping you differentiate from competitors, boost brand awareness, connect with target customers, and sell more products—it’s all about having the right idea and the right strategy in place.

Learn how other e-commerce brands are using video to grow their businesses and start creating content for your business today by reading more about growing your audience with video content and video marketing best practices.

Optimize Sales & Customer Support with a Messenger Bot

As e-commerce experts look for new ways to communicate directly with customers, many have already implemented 24/7 access to customer support via messenger bots. Among 24/7 availability, there’s several other benefits as well.

photo shows several benefits of chatbots for businesses and their customers

Image Source: Reve Chat

As more people adopt chatbots as a marketing tool, new software is being introduced that can help brands reach and communicate with their audience at scale. Messenger bots make it easy for businesses to initiate conversion-based sales, marketing strategies and customer support.

Collaborate with a Dream Partner

Another one of the best e-commerce growth tips for 2023 is to collaborate on a product with a like-minded partner that shares your values, mission, and focus.

You might be thinking to yourself: a product collaboration will take A LOT of time– and you’re right. That’s why it’s important to get started as soon as possible!

To find the right partner to collaborate with, follow these steps:

  • Step 1: Make a list of the business owners you know personally or through a connection, and the dream partners you’d love to collaborate with. Compile contact information in a Google spreadsheet. Again, try to think of products that serve a similar audience as you, or sell products that would complement your own.
  • Step 2: Think about what kind of collaboration you’d like to propose. Have a few ideas in mind, but don’t worry about making anything too official. Having a few rough ideas can help get your foot through the door and the person you’re reaching out to is interested in talking more.
  • Step 3: Reach out to a few companies from your list, and work to finalize a collaboration partnership. Decide on an idea, set specific goals and budget, and build your timeline.
  • Step 4: Put a clear launch and marketing plan in place. Make sure that you and your partner are both doing the heavy lifting (and spending) when it comes to promoting the collaboration to your audiences.

After landing on a concrete plan, it’s finally time to launch. Working with a brand that aligns with your own values offers many learning opportunities and room to expand your audience.

Refresh Your Content Marketing Strategy

In 2023, content marketing and creation will continue to play an important role in every e-commerce business owner’s marketing strategy. If you didn’t have a clear strategy in place in 2022 or didn’t stick to it, consider spending some time reviewing and revising your strategy for the new year.

Implementing an effective content marketing strategy enhances brand awareness, educates audiences, builds credibility and increases customer loyalty.

bar graph shows how marketers are using content strategy to grow their businesses

Image Source: Visme

To get started, read through these two resources:

  • Content Marketing Strategy: A Definitive Guide
  • How To Develop A Content Marketing Strategy (With Examples) 

Start by creating a content marketing strategy for the first 90 days of 2023. Set clear, hard-to-reach goals, determine your budget, and determine your key players and stakeholders. Then, it’s time to manage and execute your plan.

Reward Your Best Customers

To kick sales and product awareness into gear right away in the new year, consider rewarding your customers with small gifts in the first few weeks of January. The purpose of the gift is to thank your customers for their support. The goal is to get them talking about you and buying from you again.

Types of gifts include:

  • A restock of their favorite product, or one that they order regularly
  • A free sample of a new product that you’re getting ready to release
  • A handwritten thank you letter with a gift card or promo code
  • A customized or small-batch VIP product that no one else will have the opportunity to purchase

Customer delight can be an incredibly powerful and effective way to grow your business. In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a positive experience.

image shows that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience

Image Source: Super Office

All you need to do is put a plan in place and execute it as early in the year as possible. Come up with a gift idea that you can send to a small group of your best customers. Package it and send it out before the end of the first week of January.

Validate A New Product Idea

If sales slumped over the last few months of the year, or if sales have never been better, it might be time to consider introducing a new product. Before you invest too much of your time and money, however, it’s important to try to validate your idea.

The easiest way to do this is by creating and launching a product page that allows people to pre-order your product. By launching a pre-order product page, you’ll not only find out how interested your audience is in your new product idea, you could also fund much of the production costs with the pre-order sales that come in.

Think about a new product that you could sell in your store. Create a landing page or pre-order product page to send people to. Send traffic to your page by creating new, high-quality content, launching social media ads, and sending personalized email campaigns to segments of your audience that you think would be most likely to purchase.

Value Your Employees

The 2020 pandemic caused a shift in work mentality and triggered the “Great Resignation”, driving many people to quit their day jobs. Companies across the country are struggling to satisfy their employees as many opt out of high-pressure positions.

In 2023, take time to rethink your employment model and brainstorm how you can show your employees that you value their time and effort. Rewarding your team, providing regular feedback and creating a positive work environment are great ways to show your employees you care.

Acting as a positive presence in the lives of your employees will help ensure you have a strong support system as you work towards growth in the new year. To learn more about how happy employees can help grow your business, enjoy the short video below.

Video Source: Business Insider

Adopt an Always-Testing Mentality

One of the biggest ways to boost sales and growth in 2023 is to simply adopt an always-testing mentality when it comes to your business and growth strategies. If you continue to execute the same strategy that you did in 2022, it’s not likely that you’ll see much more growth.

Instead, you need to be willing and able to test new ideas throughout the year. Don’t be afraid to spend money or fail in order to land on the right tactics, because eventually you’ll land on the ones that make you the most money.

Create a list of tests and tactics that you’d like to try in 2023. Prioritize them based on cost and impact. Figure out which tactics you’d like to try in Q1, then get to work!

Grow Your Business Today

With these e-commerce growth tips for 2023, you’re one step closer to reaching your target audience and building a loyal customer base. Perfecting your content strategy and connecting with consumers consistently is one of the best ways to grow your business.

Check out Marketing Insider Group’s SEO Blog Writing Service today or schedule a quick consultation now to learn more about driving traffic and conversions in 2023!

The post Conquer 2023 With These 9 Growth Tips for Your E-Commerce Business appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Every e-commerce business owner wants to see their business grow and profits increase, but no one likes experiencing the growing pains that so often go hand-in-hand with scaling operations. In e-commerce, investing in multi-channel marketing can help you quickly take your business to the next level, but it can also come with a number of challenges that you may or may not be aware of.

To overcome multi-channel marketing challenges, you have to know how you’re going to address these challenges when they appear in front of you. You have to put a clear strategy in place before you necessarily need it.

Quick takeaways:

  • Consistency across each marketing channel is critical for a successful multi-channel marketing strategy.
  • Multi-channel marketing challenges can be multi-faceted, and also contain multiple avenues of possible solutions.
  • A strong, supportive customer experience is arguably the most important element to consider when sorting through each multi-channel marketing challenge.

Here are 5 of the most common challenges you might face as you work to spin up or scale multi-channel for your e-commerce business, and tips for overcoming those challenges:

1. Messaging & Branding

One of the biggest marketing challenges most e-commerce business owners face when it comes to multi-channel is keeping branding and messaging consistent across different channels. When you’re only selling your products on one channel—usually your own website—it’s much easier to control and keep track of the messages and branding you’re using to compel people to buy.

But when you start investing in multi-channel, you’re forced to manage messaging and branding consistent across a number of channels (Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Jet, etc.) that all have different requirements, nuances, and best practices.

When you’re presenting your products to new audiences on new channels, you have to ensure that you’re creating the same first impression that people are getting when they visit your website and buy products through your own online store (or anywhere).

Multi-channel marketing challenges can arise if your branding and messaging is inconsistent across these channels.

If you decide to test new product photos, graphics, or new key messaging to promote products and drive more sales on your website AND you find out those photos and messaging are more effective in boosting conversions than what you’ve used in the past, you need to make sure you’re updating your other channels too. Otherwise you risk missing out on sales.

To ensure that you’re painting the right picture on all the channels you use to sell products, keep these 3 tips in mind:

Tip #1: Know the requirements of each channel and adjust accordingly

When you start selling on more channels and marketplaces, it’s important to have a firm understanding what requirements exist. Each channel will have different requirements when it comes to things like photo size, graphics best practices, word count and messaging.

For example, see this requirements and best practices document from Amazon. It helps sellers understand how to create product detail pages. Here’s another example from Etsy. In this document, Etsy helps you learn all the best practices and requirements for adding images to your product listing pages.

Make an effort to read through the guidelines for each of the channels you intend to use going forward. Work with your designers and copywriters to ensure that your graphics and messaging can meet those requirements while still painting the right picture and telling the right story.

Tip #2: Keep your assets organized

As you add more marketplaces and channels to your selling strategy, make an effort to keep all your messages, graphics, and photos stored in one convenient location.

You want to be able to review messaging across all channels without having to visit each of them individually. You can do this by compiling text and links in a Google sheet, or by adding documents and screenshots to a Dropbox folder. Alternatively, you could leverage multi-channel selling software to create one centralized product catalog that can be reviewed and managed in real-time for all channels at once.

Tip #3: Update messaging and branding together

To ensure that you’re not using any out-of-date messaging, branding, or product photography across your channels, make sure you have a clear strategy in place that you can implement whenever updates need to be made. Put someone from your team in charge of making and managing updates, make sure the process is clearly defined, and leverage multi-channel automation software to boost productivity.

The important thing to remember when it comes to adding more channels and marketplaces into your selling strategy is this: you only have one opportunity to make the right first impression. To be successful, keep messaging, branding, and consistency at the top of your mind when creating and updating product listing and brand pages for each channel.

2. Inventory Management

Another big topic that most e-commerce business owners must master when they start selling products on more channels is keeping up with inventory. When you’re suddenly managing inventory across multiple channels, new challenges arise.

Challenge #1: Overstocking & overselling

When you’re investing in multichannel, it can sometimes be difficult to manage supply demand, or estimate how much product you’ll actually need to have on hand in a given month. Keeping too much inventory on hand can be expensive, but not having enough can prevent you from growing and serving new customers.

Challenge #2: Manual management that doesn’t allow for scale

Manually managing and fulfilling inventory might have been easier when you were only selling from your own store and website, but it quickly becomes very ineffective once you start adding additional channels into the mix. To succeed and scale, you can no longer rely on offline spreadsheets and documents when tracking and managing inventory. You have to put tools in place that allow you to become more efficient.

Challenge #3: Lack of visibility across multiple channels & multiple warehouses

Without multi-channel software, it’s not always easy to keep track of the sales and orders that come in from each channel, and how those sale and orders are impacting the inventory you have on hand. In addition, it’s equally as challenging to try to keep track of orders, inventory, and relationships across all the warehouses, partners, and manufacturers you need to support all the channels you’re now selling products on.

Challenge #4: Lack of insights

To succeed with multi-channel, you need to be able to track, understand, and leverage data relating to your inventory and customers. You have to know how inventory is fluctuating over time, how demand is changing over time, what demand will look like in the future, when to reorder products, when to scale back on products, and where breakdowns in your processes are happening.

So how do you overcome the challenges that exist with managing inventory across multiple channels and marketplaces? Read through this blog post. In it, we share 6 actionable inventory management tips that you can start applying to your business today.

3. Customer Support & Experience

When you’re only selling products through your own website and store, creating the right experience for customers is fairly easy to manage. But supporting and nurturing relationships with customers can easily become a lot more challenging when you start selling on places like Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Facebook, Alibaba, and other online marketplaces.

To succeed in e-commerce, you have to serve your customers above all else. That means knowing what their pain points are, providing them with value, selling them high-quality products, offering world-class support, and creating delightful unmatched experiences for them.

If you think you’ve got most multi-channel marketing challenges at bay, but you’re neglecting customer experience, think again…

86% of customers say that they are likely to pay more money for a strong customer experience, which is one of the most important multi-channel marketing challenges

To ensure that your customers are getting the same level of attention no matter where they go to buy your products, keep the following 5 tips in mind:

Tip #1: Hire the right people

The best thing you can do to ensure that your customers are getting world-class support is to build a world-class team. To find out who exactly you should have on your team, read through this blog post on building a dedicated customer experience team for your e-commerce business.

Tip #2: Document guidelines

Know how you want and need to interact with customers on each of the channels and marketplaces you use. Take time to document guidelines that your team can leverage as they interact with customers. Include relevant examples, links, and stories to make your documentation more relevant and useful to your team.

Tip #3: Map out the customer journey

To provide an unforgettable experience for your customers, you have to know what their journey looks like. Take time to map out the journey that a typical customer takes with you—from discovery and purchase to delivery and re-ordering. Look for opportunities to delight and help you customer all along the way. To learn more about mapping the customer journey, read through this blog post from Shopify.

Tip #4: Use automation tools

There are a number of tools your support team can be using to ensure that every customer is getting the same level of interaction from your company when they reach out. If you’re looking to invest in a customer support tools, many companies use apps limke Zendesk, ChannelReply, or xsellco.

Tip #5: listen to your customers

Finally, take time to listen to your customers. If you find out that people aren’t having a good experience at any point along their journey, find out why, and do something to fix it. You can spend all day reading about how to optimize and improve customer experience, but if you’re not taking the time to listen to your customer, you’re missing out on the some of the biggest learnings you can capture for your business.

If your customers are happy, your business will grow. It’s as simple as that.

4. Shipping & Returns

Shipping is another area that e-commerce business owners struggle with when they start selling products on more channels and marketplaces. Again, the big problem lies in the fact that when you are small and you’re only taking and fulfilling orders through your own website and store, shopping is a lot easier to manage. When you start adding more channels into the mix, you have to be ready to scale, otherwise you risk damaging relationships with customers, ruining your brand reputation, and losing out on future sales.

Here are a handful of tips that you can use to overcome multi-channel shipping challenges:

Tip #1: Know your fulfillment options

When you’re working on scaling your e-commerce business, it’s important to know what your fulfillment options are. We recently published a helpful guide to product shipping that outlines 3 main options you can leverage as you dive deeper into multi-channel. Those options are: self-fulfillment, 3PL (third-party logistics), and drop-shipping. To learn more about each option and decide which one is right for you, read through the blog post here.

Tip #2: Find the best shipping partner for your needs

When it comes to shipping, it’s also important to know what your shipping options are. There are a number of partners you can leverage to ship products for you, and they all have tools that can make scaling easier for you and your team. To learn more about what your options are, read this post from Shopify.

Tip #3: Hone in on pricing

To ensure that your business can remain profitable even as it scales and shipping becomes more expensive, you need to understand how to effectively price your products. To develop the right pricing strategy for your e-commerce business, products, and customers, read through this helpful post from LemonStand.

Tip #4: Make your return policies clear

Finally, make sure your customers and prospects understand what your return policies are. Be clear about what your guidelines are and what they need to know before purchasing a product from you. Include return policy messaging or links to policy pages on each the channels you’re using. Doing so ahead of time will save you time and headaches as you work to scale your business and launch your products on new channels over time.

The takeaway here is don’t wait until you’re overwhelmed to figure out how to manage shipping for your business. Develop a strategy ahead of time, and start implementing it before you need it.

5. Growing Pains

As you scale your e-commerce business and introduce your products on new channels and marketplaces, you should expect to encounter a handful of other growing pains along the way.

To keep tabs on your growth as it relates to your goals, you could use a tool like a marketing wheel, structured by SOSTAC® to keep track of your strategies and KPIs.

To curb the growing pains while expanding to multi-channel marketing, you could use a tool like a marketing wheel, structured by SOSTAC® to keep track of your strategies and KPIs.

Here are some additional challenges you may encounter and tips on how to approach and overcome them:

Challenge #1: You’re swamped with tasks and can’t focus on bigger growth initiatives

The solution here is that you need to hire more people to help you, either temporarily or permanently. To find out who you need, make a list of all the tasks and responsibilities you’re currently managing, and which of those tasks could be outsourced to someone else if you had help. Then prioritize that list based on importance, impact, time spent on each task. It may also be helpful to make a list of all the things you wish you could do if you had more time. Seeing that list may help push you to make the investment in a new employee.

Challenge #2: You’re concerned about keeping product quality intact

As you scale, you may have to change the way your product is manufactured in order to keep up with demand. To ensure that you don’t lose out on product quality, be fiercely obsessed about it, and don’t allow your partners to cut any corners. Be clear about your expectations, and cut ties with anyone who can’t meet them.

Challenge #3: You’re getting more website traffic

The solution here is to make sure you have the bandwidth in place to allow for more traffic. Even a few seconds of slow page speed on your website can have a significant impact on sales. To ensure that your website can handle sudden increases in traffic and activity, work with your web developer, contact your hosting provider, and leverage tools like PageSpeed Insights from Google.

To be successful with multi-channel growth, the key is to try to think about and plan for all the challenges you might face as you scale your business and operations. If you can be proactive about putting strategies in place, you’re much more likely to build a sustainable, profitable business in the months and years ahead.

Conquer Your Multi-Channel Marketing Challenges

Although plentiful, multi-channel marketing challenges don’t have to be crippling to your business. Get focused with your team, assign project leads to each area of your multi-channel strategy and be adaptable.

Over to You

Make the most of your multi-channel marketing strategy by publishing consistent, high-quality content. Marketing Insider Group’s team of writers and SEO experts can help you deliver optimized, ready-to-publish content every week.

Check out our SEO Blog Writing Service today or schedule a quick consultation now to learn more! We’d love to hear about what other multi-channel marketing challenges you have experienced and how you’ve worked to overcome them.

The post 5 Common Multi-Channel Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

Marketing during a pandemic? You did it! Your reward? Record inflation and the challenge of marketing in a down economy that feels as uncertain as ever.

If you’re a frustrated marketer or business owner — you’re not alone.

We’ve all felt the squeeze of the past few years. Understandably, companies are looking for ways to be more financially conservative right now as we wait for the economy to get back on track. Marketing, in many cases, is one of the first things on the budgetary chopping block.

But I’m here to tell you that pausing your marketing efforts is not the way to get your business through this tough time.

I recently received an email newsletter from fellow marketer (and CEO of RevBoss — a B2B sales prospecting service provider) Eric Boggs that inspired me to expand on this topic.

Eric shared his thoughts on the Tweet pictured below:

Jason Lemkin tweet re: content marketing in a down economy.

Image Source: RevBoss

He outlined RevBoss’s plans to stay the course with their marketing efforts while taking smart steps in the meantime like cutting travel costs, creating more conservative forecasts, monitoring the pipeline for a slowdown, and expecting longer conversion times.

Why? Because the market won’t stay down forever. Consumers will start spending again. And when they do, you’ll see the ROI of your consistency.

Just like RevBoss has taken their own medicine and stayed the course on both outbound and inbound efforts, here at Marketing Insider Group we’ve kept our content strategy active and our lead generation efforts at the same level (or higher) than before.

In this article, I’ll cover why and how content marketing in a down economy can be your swiss army knife when other factors are out of your control. You can use it even in times of uncertainty to keep your pipeline flowing and earn a huge boost in ROI when markets go back on the upswing.

Quick Takeaways

  • Content marketing is 62% more cost affecting than traditional marketing methods.
  • The companies that bounce back strongest from economic downturns are those that don’t cut marketing costs.
  • Successful content marketing depends on momentum. Pausing your marketing efforts during a downturn leaves you playing catch up once it’s over.
  • Staying focused on your lead gen and nurturing positions you for success when markets go back on the upswing.

Content Marketing in a Down Economy: Why it Matters

Hitting the pause button on marketing looks totally different in 2022 than it did in the past. No marketing used to mean eliminating expensive tactics like billboards, TV and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine ads, and the like.

Today, you can execute an entire marketing strategy online.

If you’ve read our blog before, you probably already know that content marketing is 62% more cost effective (and generates 3X the leads) than traditional marketing methods.

Content marketing costs 62% less and generates 3X the leads of traditional marketing methods.

Image Source: Visme

This is critical in times when companies are trying to be as fiscally responsible as possible. It makes it possible to keep marketing on the books even when you’re trimming costs.

Equally importantly, content shows both current and potential customers that they can trust you to be consistent. It maintains your brand visibility while delivering value to your audience, even when they’re not ready to buy.

Then, when things improve and buyers are ready to spend again, you can be confident they’ll look to your brand as a top choice. Cutting out marketing, on the other hand, will likely result in an empty pipeline and losing customers to competitors once the economy improves.

The Momentum Factor

Content marketing doesn’t yield results overnight. It takes time, frequent publishing, and steady consistency before you start seeing results. It requires marketers to take a long view of success, being willing to put in the effort for a while before the ROI arrives.

This is even truer in a time of economic downturn.

Here’s the thing: consumers may not be buying, but they still have needs. That means they still research, try to learn, and look for potential solution providers to pursue later, when they can make a purchase.

If you stop marketing to save costs, your momentum suffers. You’re no longer earning new keyword rankings, generating new traffic, or creating content to be shared in other places.

As a result, your audience may not be able to find you, even if their needs align with what you can provide. When they do look to buy, you won’t be on their list. To boot, once you are ready to start marketing again, you’re looking at months of building new momentum before you see results again.

On the flip side, consistent content marketing in a down economy can actually shorten the time and depth of any downturn you experience in leads and conversions.

Content marketing in a down economy can shorten the length and depth of any downturn you experience.

Image Source

5 Things to Do Instead of Cutting Your Marketing Budget

Trim costs where you can

Just because you aren’t taking marketing off the budget list doesn’t mean you can’t trim costs elsewhere. Find non mission-critical budget items and reduce costs in those areas instead.

Eric mentioned that RevBoss cut their travel expenses — a smart move in a world where Zoom has become the norm. Reducing supplies or pausing new equipment purchases are other areas you might consider.

Keep an eye on your pipeline

Don’t jump the gun and cut costs before you see an actual dip in business activity. Consumer spending activity and demand varies greatly by industry and customer segment. It’s important not to make any sweeping changes without evidence of a real need to do so.

Monitor your pipeline closely for signs of changing trends. Use data-driven tools like your CRM, email marketing platform, SEO tool, and Google Analytics to track user, lead and customer behavior. Make your decisions objectively based on the data you analyze rather than what you hear in the news.

Adjust your forecasts

Reaching marketing and sales goals is important to keeping your teams feeling positive. Working to hit targets you know are unlikely, on the other hand, will only lead to frustration. Don’t set yourself — and your team — up for disappointment with unrealistic forecasts. If you (like many others) are seeing longer lead conversion times, adjust your forecasts accordingly so you know what to expect.

Focus on lead gen

To earn revenue, you need to convert paying customers. That’s why it’s tempting to double down on conversion efforts in an economic downswing. Paying attention to the leads already in your pipeline is of course important, but so is maintaining a strong lead generation strategy.

Leads you generate right now may not convert at the speed you usually expect, but they will in time. Don’t quit on your inbound or outbound lead gen efforts. Keep your pipeline full and be sure to implement a strong lead nurturing strategy to keep your leads engaged until they’re able to make a purchase.

Refresh and repurpose old content

If you do need to save on content creation costs, your existing content library is one place you can turn. In any economic climate, refreshing and repurposing old content can give your traffic a boost. Here’s what I recommend:

Use Google Analytics and other data tools to identify your best and worst performing content

Refresh your best performing content when needed by adding updated statistics, new visuals, or any new information relevant to the topic since its original publish date

Look through your worst performing content and delete irrelevant pieces. Make necessary changes (like better keyword usage, new visuals, etc.) to the rest so they perform better

Believe it or not, old content can be a huge source of new leads. HubSpot recently researched this very topic internally and found their old content accounts for 76% of their page views and 92% of their new leads.

Internal HubSpot research found that old content accounted for 76% of their page views and 92% of their leads.

Image Source: HubSpot

Playing the Long Game

Content marketing in a down economy really comes down to one critical commitment: taking a longer view when it comes to ROI. The research backs it up — Harvard Business Review reports that the companies that bounce back strongest after economic downturns are those that continue to prioritize marketing throughout.

You may not see results right away. Leads likely won’t convert at the rate you’re accustomed to. But if you’re confident in your brand (and we hope you are), you can trust that those leads will convert in time.

And even when buyers aren’t buying, they still need what your brand has to offer in the form of expertise, resources, and information about your products and services. Staying the course with your marketing strategy keeps your brand visible, present, and available so you can count on a big boost when the markets do go back on the upswing.

Need Help Weathering the Storm?

If you’re ready to earn more traffic to your site with content marketing, check out our SEO Blog Writing Service. Our team of writers and SEO experts can deliver you optimized, read-to-publish content every week for a year (or more).

Schedule a quick consultation with me to get started!

The post Market Got You Down? Why Content Marketing Is Even More Important Now appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.