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The 1-2-3 Guide to Creating Video Content Marketing

marketing insider group shares the complete guide to creating video content

Now is the time to become an expert on creating video content. Not only are 91% of businesses already using video as a marketing tool in 2023, but 96% of marketers are placing ad spend on video.

That’s because nowadays, consumers are spending an increasing amount of time on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc. With all of the benefits that come along with creating video content, like building your brand identity and increasing your SEO, there’s no reason why your company should miss out.

If you haven’t already, this is your sign to hop on the video content bandwagon. And lucky for you, we’re giving our readers the scoop on creating video content that generates conversions. In this post, we’re taking a look at how to create video content that will benefit both you and your audience.

Quick Takeaways

  • 94% of marketers say that creating video content has increased their audience’s understanding of products and services 
  • 83% of professional marketers believe that creating video content is more important now than ever
  • Creating video content will maximize your ROI, educate your audience, and increase your SEO
  • Sharing explainer videos, product demonstrations, company culture videos, and customer testimonials are some of the most effective forms of video content
  • A video content marketing strategy will help maximize your ROI and scale your marketing efforts

In a world so heavily saturated with video consumption, creating video content is one of the most effective ways to reach and convert your audience.

What Exactly Does “Creating Video Content” Mean?

According to a recent report, 83% of professional marketers believe that creating video content is more important now than ever. But what exactly qualifies as video content?

Video content marketing is exactly what it sounds like – companies creating and sharing videos to promote their products and services, educate their audiences, and encourage engagement, with an ultimate goal to increase conversions.

But why such a rise in popularity? For starters, social media consumption in the US was boosted by 215% during the 2020 pandemic. By 2022, audiences were spending an average of 19 hours per week consuming video content. To put it into perspective, that’s just a few hours short of an entire day spent watching videos online.

bar graph shows increase in consumption of video content from 2018 to 2022

Image Source: Wyzowl

If you haven’t started creating video content yet, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to connect with your audience. But reaching potential customers isn’t the only reason why you should start creating video content.

4 Reasons To Start Creating Video Content

In 2023, there’s no question that sharing video content is the most powerful way for brands to engage their audiences. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a B2C or B2B company, or even if you have decent video editing skills. There’s 4 main reasons why you should start creating video content ASAP.

1. Video Content Is A Great Way To Educate Your Audience

Want to help potential customers learn about why your product is the best? Create an explainer video that clearly explains how your products and services work.

According to Wyzowl, 94% of marketers say that creating video content has increased their audience’s understanding of products and services. As a professional marketer, you already know that customers will only buy your product if they know how it works and what benefits it offers.

2. Videos Have Great ROI

In 2023, industry professionals have reported that creating video content has significantly increased:

  • Brand awareness
  • Traffic
  • Leads
  • Sales
  • Dwell time

bar graph shows increase in sales from creating video content between 2016 and 2023

And the real beauty of creating video content: it doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Nowadays, you can record a great video in a matter of seconds on your handy-dandy smartphone. Spending less on production means maximizing your ROI.

3. When It Comes To Creating Video Content, You Have Options

If you’ve been in the business for some time, you might think of YouTube as soon as you hear the word “video”. But in today’s industry, you have a number of video sharing options:

  • Social Media. Post stories that will eventually disappear on channels like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Not only is it quick and easy, but it’s a great way to speak directly to your audience.
  • Live Videos. According to Facebook, live streams get 6x as many interactions as regular video posts.
  • Webinars. Share webinar content to establish authority by answering your audience’s questions and teaching them about trending topics in your industry.

The list goes on and on. Figure out which channels make the most sense for your business, and keep posting video content consistently to maximize your ROI.

4. You Can Amp Up Your SEO By Creating Video Content

Have you ever noticed that Google often features YouTube videos at the top of Page 1? By using keywords and consistently creating content that targets commonly searched topics, the chances of your content landing in Google’s top results are high.

screenshot of YouTube video content featured on Google SERPs

Image Source: Google

Add in the exposure you’ll get on YouTube when people search for your topics, and you can expect a pretty significant increase in traffic.

6 Types of Video Content You Should Create

Now that you’re convinced of the power of creating video content, you’re probably wondering what kind of videos successful companies are creating. We’ve got you covered.

1. Explainer Videos

Remember, explainer videos are a great way to educate your audience. When customers understand the magic behind your products and services, they’re much more likely to make a purchase.

Video Source: Consumer Reports

Explainer videos can be animated, time lapses of illustrations, live recordings, or really any method you find appropriate for your brand, as long as you effectively get the message across.

2. Product Demonstrations

Show off your products and services with product demonstrations. These are different from explainer videos because you’ll be flaunting your product’s special features and benefits.

Video Source: The Gorilla Glue Company

Find yourself a charismatic host to speak passionately about your product, and brainstorm creative ways to engage your audience during the demonstration.

3. Company Culture Videos

Brand storytelling can be one of the most effective ways to make an emotional connection with your audience. Create video content that highlights your company values to draw attention from both potential customers and employees.

Video Source: PSIA-AASI

You’d be surprised at how many new customers and employees you can attract by sharing the “why” behind your brand’s offerings.

4. Behind-The-Scenes

Who doesn’t want an inside look at the process behind delivering your products and services? Don’t be afraid to show off the craftsmanship that goes into creating your company’s goods.

Video Source: Evening Standard

You’ll really want to capitalize on this type of video content if your brand specializes in personalized products or specialized sourcing of materials. The more involved your viewers feel in the process, the more interested they’ll be in making a purchase.

5. Customer Testimonials

Word-of-mouth marketing is the oldest trick in the book. By posting customer testimonials, you won’t have to rely on customers sharing your success stories.

Video Source: The Gorilla Glue Company

Ask an existing customer to share on video why they love your company’s products and services. When prospects see how passionate customers are about your product, they’ll likely want to try it out for themselves.

6. Employee Portraits

Give customers an inside look at the heart and soul of your company by sharing employee portrait videos. A short video showing the day-to-day actions of a passionate employee can help your audience better understand your business and the community it serves.

Video Source: Life And Thyme

If you’re a small business wanting to engage with or expand your community, this is a great way to show new audience members what you’re made of.

6 Steps To Creating A Video Content Marketing Strategy

You’re just a few steps away from reaping the benefits of creating video content – but every great marketer knows that your content is nothing without a solid content marketing strategy. Here’s 6 easy steps to maximizing your video content’s ROI and scaling your marketing efforts.

1. Why

Before you start churning out video content, you need to clarify the purpose behind it.

Are you a small business that wants to show off the face behind your brand? Do you want to demonstrate how your business helps create positive change? Are you offering an innovative product that needs an educational “how-to” video?

Regardless of your reasoning, determining the “why” behind your video content will help make sure you can effectively get your point across to viewers.

2. Who

There’s no question that your target audience lives at the center of your success. Make sure your video content’s purpose aligns with your buyer personas to guarantee a positive reaction.

Video content is a great way to create an emotional connection with your customers, so creating the right emotions and telling the right story is key.

3. What

You may already have an idea of what kinds of video content you’ll create after reading about some of your options above. But before nailing down your video style, make sure it’s relevant to the needs and wants of your audience. Remember, answering your audience’s questions via video content is one of the best ways to establish credibility in your industry.

4. Where

It’s important to decide what your final product will look like before figuring out where you’ll share your company’s videos. Short videos for entertainment are ideal for platforms like TikTok, but longer, educational videos should be shared on a channel like YouTube.

Here’s some options to help you decide which channels are optimal for your videos’ length:

  • YouTube: up to 15 minutes for unverified accounts, up to 12 hours for verified accounts
  • Facebook: up to 15 minutes long
  • Instagram: IGTV can be up to 1 hour long, Reels can only be 15 seconds long
  • LinkedIn: anywhere between 3 seconds and 30 minutes
  • TikTok: up to 10 minutes long
  • Twitter: anywhere between 20 seconds and 2 minutes
  • Websites: it’s your call, but keep in mind that shorter videos are better received

Most importantly, don’t forget your audience when making a decision. Where do they spend most of their time consuming video content? Choosing the right channel will optimize your chances of reaching new potential customers.

5. When

The key to success is consistency. When customers see that your brand is consistent, they know you can be trusted.

Create a content calendar that outlines what, when and where you’ll post your video content to stay organized and consistent. This way, you won’t have to think too hard about what content you’re going to post.

6. Measure Your Success

There’s no way to know if your hard work was worth it without measuring your success. Taking a look at key performance indicators, or KPIs, will help you assess how effective your strategy is:

  • Views: the total number of people who watched your video
  • Impressions: the total number of times your video was displayed on a user’s screen
  • View-through rate: the total number of times your video was watched in its entirety over the number of initial impressions (completed views / impressions = view-through rate)
  • Watch time: the total amount of time viewers spent watching your video
  • Clicks: The total number of times viewers clicked on your video
  • Brand lift: the impact your video made on viewers’ perceptions and behaviors (calculated via survey)

Taking a close look at the metrics above will help you figure out what types of content worked best. After measuring your strategy’s success, you can start making changes to your content calendar to maximize your ROI.

Start Creating Your Video Content Marketing Strategy Today

In the world of content marketing, creating video content is one of the most effective ways to engage, reach, and convert your audience. Not only that, but it can also be one of the least expensive, time-consuming methods to maximizing your ROI.

Ready to start reaping the benefits of quality video content marketing? Marketing Insider Group can help. Get started today by checking out our weekly blog content service, or schedule a free consultation now to learn more!

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9 New and Awesome Content Marketing Tools to Try in 2023

9 New and Awesome Content Marketing Tools to Try in 2023

Content marketing is changing, but, luckily, there are smart tools that support the innovation and allow content marketers to stay up-to-date with new technology.

In this roundup, I am going to stay off the beaten path and suggest some tools that are not being featured in every other article for you to try something new and discover new ways to look at your data.

The following content marketing tools deserve all the spotlight they can get as they are new, fresh and bring innovation into our marketing:

Keyword Research & Content Ideation Tools

1. WebCEO

WebCEO is a comprehensive all-in-one SEO platform that deserves a lot more attention than it is currently getting. It has quite a few unique features one of which is its keyword research tool allowing you to pull keyword suggestions from multiple sources. It shows search trends for each keyword it suggests and allows you to easily estimate how competitive it is in organic search.

WebCEO has quite a unique approach to identifying keywords with high demand (i.e. search volume) and “doable” competition (i.e. those search queries that are easier to generate traffic from). The metric is referred to as The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI). It is calculated based on the search volume and the number of search results returned by Google search.

A keyword with a relatively higher KEI is supposed to have a higher demand and lower supply, so it should be easier to compete for.

WebCEO for content marketing

You can also easily group those keywords by using tags and filter your keyword suggestions to target a specific location (e.g. a state or a city your business is focused on)

WebCEO has many more features your whole team may find useful which include competitor tracking, website speed optimization and more.

2. Also Asked

A new tool by @thetafferboy, Also Asked, allows you to analyze Google’s “People Also Ask” results and how they relate to one another.

Also Asked for content marketing

You may know that Google will generate more answers based on which question you chose to click. Also Asked will explore this connection by showing you visually how each level of questions is topically grouped with the next.

The tool offers a nice insight into intent-based search journeys your target audience is likely to take when researching any topic.

3. Glimpse

Glimpse is a freemium Google Chrome extension that makes Google Trends reports much more useful by adding lots of useful SEO insights to it. As you are checking Google Trends for your target term, Glimpse will add more data which includes:

  • Search volume for that search query 
  • “People Also Search for” (these keywords are extracted from Google) that is related to that query
  • Popularity of that term on social media channels (Channels that score high indicate that your keyword’s usage on that channel is higher than average)
  • Related trending queries
  • Topic map showing related topics for you to keep researching the topic

Glimpse for content marketing

Content Collaboration and Creation

4. Narrato

Content creation is no longer a straightforward process as it was traditionally perceived. Content writers should incorporate a lot of data into the copy for it to be in-depth, search-intent driven and properly optimized.

Narrato is the AI-driven tool that can put many of those pieces together by allowing you to put together detailed content briefs and content workflows and even find content writers with the right expertise.

For every piece you are working on, create a new project inside Narrato and start by generating a content brief using AI-driven tools it offers. The tool helps you by generating relevant keywords and questions, assists in structuring your future article subheadings and allows you to create a style guide for your writers to follow. You can also use the AI-powered image generator to locate related images to use in your content (with attribution).

narrato for content marketing

You can write the article right inside the editor and publish it directly to your WordPress site right away. Or you can assign your writers to complete it based on your brief using the workflow feature. The platform also gives you access to AI content marketplace in case you need to find expert articles to write for you.

The platform can enhance your content creation productivity by connecting different teams, giving you access to templates and letting you use AI tools to manage all steps in the content production process:

Narrato AI tools for content marketing

Semantic Research Tools

5. Text Optimizer

Text Optimizer is not a new tool (I’ve mentioned it a few times already), but there is still no alternative to it as I know of.

One of its features, called “sentence builder”, allows you to explore connections between your chosen concepts and build sentences that would use your important terms in close proximity. It is a great way to understand your topic better and create better optimized content.

Text Optimizer for content marketing

6. Inlinks

Inlinks is the new semantic analysis tool that uses Google’s API to help you optimize your content for “things, not strings”. It helps in the following three key areas:

  • Optimize your content around semantic search
  • Auto-generate content briefs based on your target topic using semantic analysis
  • Semantic keyword research that is based on meaningful clustering and an innovative approach to satisfying user intent. This is their newer feature that will make your content and intent optimization process much more effective.

The tool generates not only keyword suggestions that relate to your target audience’s search intent, it also finds related questions that add context to your seed keyword and let you structure your future content more effectively.

Make sure to use “Intent” tab to let the tool suggest actionable insight into how to make your content align with what people need when using your core search term:

Inlinks

All those insights from these three tools can be added to the content brief inside Narrato for your writing team or collaborators to include in the copy.

Content Structuring Tools

8. ChatGPT

ChatGPT was launched at the end of 2022 and took the whole world by storm. It is a conversational smart chatbot that can perform just about any basic marketing task out there. Honestly, it can fall into many categories in this list as it can help you with your content strategy on many levels, including keyword classification and ideation.

I wouldn’t recommend using it for writing content though because the produced content lacks style and real expertise/experience with the discussed topic. It is also easily detectable as AI-generated content, so you can easily get penalized by Google if you use it for content creation.

Using the tool to structure your content is a better idea though. You can ask it to structure your existing content, for example, and the tool will break your article into logical sections and even provide an HTML code the newly generated subheadings:

chatgpt example for content marketing

There are many more AI-powered tools, including Jasper, and conversational marketing solutions (like customer support chatbots and IVR) to check to find ways how they can improve your marketing strategy.

Content Outreach Tools

8. Link Hunter

These days, it is hard to imagine a content marketing campaign that wouldn’t include email outreach. The truth is, just a few short years ago, we didn’t have to do that much to get our content seen by key industry media outlets and bloggers.

Now, with content consumption exceeding content demand in many niches, getting your content in front of industry influencers for them to give it wings is the only way to see it spread.

Link Hunter is a valid alternative to a multitude of outreach tools as it is very easy to set up and offers all the outreach features you may need at a very affordable price (for about 500 hundred emails per month, you’ll only need to pay $50).

Link Hunter

From prospect discovery to email status tracking, Link Hunter is a solid outreach solution that is suitable for smaller businesses that want to handle outreach in-house at a reasonable price.

There are also quite a few smart email marketing platforms that can be used for outreach and content outreach purposes.

Competitive Intelligence Tools

9. Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool

On-page content is not the only ranking factor, of course, but it is always useful to look at your successful competitors’ content and compare it to yours. More often than not, that uncovers some new tactics to experiment with and integrate into your content SEO workflow.

This Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool is the only 100% free tool on this list and it allows you to easily compare your page to your competitors. As the name suggests, the tool creates the side-by-side comparison of key content elements that may have some impact on organic search visibility, including:

  • Titles and meta descriptions
  • HTML headings
  • Keyword usage
  • Internal and external links
  • Content length, etc.

Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool

Conclusion

To remain competitive, every brand needs to stay on top of key technologies and innovations that are driving change in the content marketing industry.

The good news is content marketing technology is advancing at a fast speed, meeting the demand for smarter, more integrated and cross-platform marketing software.

These days, content marketers have a wide variety of advanced applications from which to choose, including advanced content ideation and development tools, smart analytics and conversion optimization suites, enhanced outreach and relationship building platforms, and more.

The post 9 New and Awesome Content Marketing Tools to Try in 2023 appeared first on Convince & Convert.

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The Top B2B Content Marketing Strategy Ideas to Consider Using Today

people at a desk looking at b2b content marketing strategy

Do you feel like your B2B content marketing strategy has become stale and your methods don’t seem to be getting the results they used to?

In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, it’s vital to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and tactics if you want to stay relevant to your audience and avoid falling behind your competitors. If you haven’t changed up your content strategy in the last 12 months, it’s time to take stock, figure out what’s working, and consider what new tactics you can employ to make the most out of your content.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Brands can leverage AI to produce and promote content at optimal levels.
  • Personalized content improves your conversion rates and builds one-to-one brand-customer relationships.
  • Your employees can tell your brand story more convincingly than anyone else.
  • Live video demonstrates your authenticity and transparency to customers.
  • Data enables companies to continually improve and refine their strategies based on real insights.
  • Content marketing agencies help save costs and execute more scalable strategies.

AI-Powered Content Production and Distribution

The amount of data that websites, apps, and businesses are collecting about online behavior and customers is growing at an exponential rate. In fact, worldwide data consumption is expected to reach 174 zettabytes (that’s 21 zeros!) by 2024 — nearly double it’s 2021 rate.

Worldwide data consumption is expected to reach 174 zettabytes by 2024, nearly double its 2021 rate.

Image Source: Finances Online

While the sheer volume of this data means that it can be difficult for humans to process effectively and gain insights from, spotting patterns and trends in data is something that machines are very good at.

Artificial intelligence software can now assist in all stages of content marketing — from spotting upcoming topic trends in the research phase and optimizing headlines for maximum impact and click-through rate, to automatically determining the best social networks and best times to promote content.

Intelligent software can not only speed up the content production process and make it more efficient, but it can help you to make content that better serves the needs of your audience too.

Personalized Experiences

AI and increased data collection have also made it possible to deliver a highly personalized experience to each individual member of your audience.

When you have data about demographics, browsing behavior, and previous engagement with your brand, you can use this information to deliver “hyper personalized” content experiences to each user, custom-designed to be as useful and engaging as possible.

Salesforce reports that 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number (AKA receiving personalized attention) is very important to winning their business. This applies as much for B2C content marketing as it does in the B2B context.

Further, customers expect personalized conveniences like connected processes (think omnichannel communication), sellers who understand how they want/need to use products and services, and instant, on-demand engagement).

Salesforce research shows 84% of buyers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business.

Image Source: Salesforce UK

As anyone on the sales team knows, it’s making this human connection with someone that can make a sale. The same is true in content marketing. When your content is targeted in its delivery, prioritizes topics that your customers care about, and has responsive design for seamless consumption, you can expect your leads to stick around.

By personalizing your B2B content marketing strategy ,you not only streamline your sales funnel and improve your conversion rate, but also helps build relationships with the individuals making purchase decisions for their companies.

Employee Generated Content

Influencer marketing can certainly be effective, but it can also be challenging to carry out in a B2B setting.

The answer is to use your own employees as influencers — the people who work for you are the best advocates for your business. It’s for this reason that over 70% of marketers use their employees as influencers.

Employees who advocate for their companies (such as by sharing brand content!) also help drive significant growth — employee-shared posts reach a staggering 571% wider audiences, and the leads they generate are 7X more likely to convert to sales.

Statistics showing that employee advocacy drives company growth, including by reaching a 571% larger audience with shared posts, and generating leads that are 7X more likely to convert.

Image Source: Peer to Peer Marketing

Of course, for employee influencers to be engaging, genuine, and persuasive, it’s vital that they really believe in your brand and are passionate about the business succeeding.

Your internal influencers can tell the story of your brand in a way that nobody else can. But it’s essential that you nurture a positive culture of growth and support at work, and do whatever you can to make every individual employee feel as if they are an integral part of the company and the brand.

Each individual can give a unique viewpoint, and consumers tend to trust content with a human face more than generic bra. Each employee can also bring his or her unique ideas to your content plan to keep things fresh and ensure you’re never stuck for content ideas.

Your employees can be your most effective salespeople so make sure you invest in employee engagement as much as you do in your content marketing strategy.

Live Video

HubSpot’s most recent State of Video report highlights exactly why it’s more important than ever to make video part of your digital content strategy. Their survey found that 90% of marketers say video has increased leads for their company — up from 86% in 2022 and the highest rate ever reported since the survey has been conducted.

Graph showing finding from HubSpot's State of Video Report that 90% of marketers say video has increased leads for their business.

Image Source: HubSpot

Other must-know stats from the survey drive this point home even further:

  • 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and 96% see it as a critical part of their strategy
  • 92% of marketers say video gives them a positive ROI (another all-time high)
  • 87% of marketers say video has a direct positive impact on sales
  • 96%  say it helps increase user understanding of their products and services
  • 96% of consumers say they watch videos to learn about products and services
  • 79% say video has directly convinced them to make a purchase

The takeaway — if you aren’t already using marketing in your content marketing strategy, the time to start is right now.

And while all types of video will continue to grow in popularity in 2023, live video, in particular, is one strategy that is certainly worth considering integrating into your content strategy.

Live video is becoming an increasingly important part of several social networks. 80% of consumers would rather watch a live video than read a blog post. And Facebook has said that users spend 3 times longer watching live videos than standard videos.

As live video is unedited, it’s a great way to demonstrate authenticity and transparency, and build trust in your brand. Live video can also be interactive and is effective at engaging your audience.

As well as being a popular content format, live content converts extremely well. One survey found that 67% of people watching a livestream would go on to make a purchase.

67% of livestream viewers purchase a ticket to a similar event.

Image Source: Livestream

Data-Driven Content Strategy

Content marketing is no longer an optional part of your marketing strategy, but a must-have in today’s digital age. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a business or brand that didn’t engage in some form of content marketing.

Today, successful B2B content marketers have increasingly sophisticated, data-driven content strategies with measurable goals and insights-based optimization that delivers higher ROI.

Consider this — while 94% of businesses use content marketing in some capacity, only 9% say their strategy is very successful. Many don’t even know if their strategy is successful or not. For those companies, I’d strongly venture to guess a missing piece to their puzzle is lack of data insights. Further, an overwhelming majority of marketers — 87% — say data is their most underutilized asset.

Those businesses that are serious about content marketing will use insights from available data to construct their B2B content marketing strategy and plan, then analyze the results to ensure success. They’ll look for ways to refine and continually improve their strategy to find, engage, and convert the right audiences.

Along with this increasing sophistication in content marketing will come more reliance on tools and technology to deal with the data and manage strategy. The number of martech solutions is continuing to grow rapidly year on year, and there are definitely some exciting developments to watch out for in the future.

Hiring an Agency

You may not think of hiring a content strategy agency as a way to improve your own B2B content marketing strategy, but it’s  fast becoming one of the top ways companies level up their execution. Here’s why — content marketing requires many moving parts and frequent, high-quality, high-volume content publishing. When you are running a business and focusing on serving your customers, content inevitably takes a back seat sometimes.

The problem is that your strategy then loses momentum, and you then lose potential customers to your competitors.

When you hire an agency, you have a dedicated, full-time team focused on your content. You can count on optimized content, reliable delivery, frequent publishing, and a data-driven approach. While it may mean a financial investment up front to hire your new agency, outsourcing content marketing ultimately saves companies up to 90% compared to what they’d pay to hire, equip, and manage an internal content team.

Boost Results from Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy Today

Content marketing offers too many benefits to ignore, but not everyone has the time or resources to be able to write and produce their own content in-house. Hiring a writer or the services of a content marketing agency like ours help you to produce higher quality content, save you time and money, and put you in a better position to achieve your business goals.

If you’re interested in getting more traffic and leads for your website, or documenting your content marketing strategy, check out our Blog Writing Service. Setup a brief consultation and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books!

The post The Top B2B Content Marketing Strategy Ideas to Consider Using Today appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How to Create and Align Your Content with the Buyer Journey

VW van in arches national park showing buyer journey mapping

Understanding the needs of your customers is a vital element in the definition of content marketing. Those insights lead to one of the biggest trends in Content Marketing: we need to develop content for the every stage of the buyer journey.

And often that means filling significant gaps in the early and middle stages. Few companies have too much product content. But almost every company shows gaps in the earlier stages.

Not every piece of content can be solely for lead generation. Content that hits across the customer life cycle creates more influence over buyer decisions. And influencing buyer decisions is what marketing is all about!

In this article, we look at some B2B content marketing data to point to the biggest trends. And yep, it all comes back to the customer. Companies that provide customer value through content mapped to each stage, are able to show better business outcomes.

Quick Takeaways:

  • The biggest content marketing trend is moving a buyer-centric content marketing strategy.
  • In order to do that, we must place customer insights ahead of internal demands.
  • Then brands need to map content to each stage of buyer journey and fill the gaps.
  • The final step requires aligning those journeys with content strategy decisions and ROI measurement.

The State of B2B Content Marketing

Let’s look at why most B2B companies are using content marketing. You may assume B2B companies are all in with content marketing. It is a top tactic. And, adoption rates of digital content marketing are high. Almost 88% of B2B Companies use content marketing.

But the main reason why most companies use content marketing is because it works.

In a recent survey of buyers my MarketingCharts:

  • 68% reported choosing a vendor because they understand their needs
  • 62% because they produce higher-quality content
  • And 59% because they demonstrate knowledge of the industry

These are all either directly about content marketing or an impact of content marketing.

Vast Majority of B2B Buyers Say Vendor Content Impacts Purchase Decision - Marketing Charts

But, most companies aren’t at a mature level of content marketing. Consider:

  • Only 26% of B2B firms feel they are successful in their efforts.
  • A full 58% report being only moderately successful
  • 16% say the are moderately or not at all successful with their B2B content marketing programs.

These data points prove high adoption and effectiveness aren’t always relative. Use doesn’t equal success. We all know it’s much more complex than that. But how can you get to that point? And what does it mean for the customer journey?

The answer: Successful content marketers map content to the buyer journey!

That’s why we need to start by reframing B2B content marketing strategy to be buyer-centric.

Becoming Buyer-Centric and Why It Matters

It’s easy to get distracted in the details of your content marketing strategy. Many companies make that mistake. The biggest lesson of all? The star of your content strategy shouldn’t be you. It should be your buyers.

I can’t emphasize this point enough. Content has more legs than engaging buyers before they purchase. It also supports loyalty, retention, and adoption. There’s even more value to communicate after they buy.

If you look at why B2B marketers use content, you’ll find it does cover the full customer life cycle. It must be relevant to where a customer is on her journey. If it’s not, it has little value. It doesn’t mean the content is bad. It’s just not relevant.

In a survey of decision-makers about the content they receive, there were complaints about relevance. Almost 35% of respondents said it lacks personalization to their stage. Another 41% said it isn’t relevant to their companies.

It’s not that you don’t get relevance. It may be a disconnect between your content marketing strategy and audience needs. The good news is that this is fixable!

Mapping More Content To All Buyer Journeys

We have been advocating for years that B2B brands need to reject the choice between quality and quantity in content. Your audience is searching more and consuming more content. And they need help. The buying committee is getting larger. The new entrants are not experts. Basic, foundational, and educational content is the biggest gap.

It is critical in B2B Content Marketing to keep the publishing engine going. It needs to be compelling to your audience. You achieve this by knowing them. Their needs, motives, and demands must influence what you write.

Having this thought process lets you transform. Your strategy becomes audience-centric.

Key Steps to Making Your Strategy Audience-Centric

Factors that impact your content strategy are wide-ranging. But the customer should always be the priority. These steps can help you improve your strategy.

1. Understand user intent in search

Define the buyer stage and “intent” of a customer when searching. Search intent means understanding why someone searched. It’s the question behind the question.

It could be informational, transactional, commercial, and task-oriented. Informational searches seek answers. Transactional describes typing in a brand. Commercial consists of buying language. Task-oriented is specific to an action.

2. Analyze audience behavior

Data matters! To personalize content, analyze how customers interact with it. Take those insights to find the best topics. It also tells you about formats they like.

3. Develop focused buyer personas

I have long believed that personas are great except when they suck. They suck when they don’t inform your content strategy. What questions do your buyers ask. Then map your content to the stages of their purchase journey.

Go in-depth with your personas. Know their world and what matters to them. Narrow it as much as possible. It’s okay to be niche. For example, look at FreshBooks. They provide small business accounting software. When a buyer arrives at their site, they can see it’s a product for them.

Image: FreshBooks

4. Listen for buyer signals

Be aware of your customer’s current pain points. To do this, try using marketing tools. Social listening is one option. Creating Google alerts for keywords is another. Finally, pay attention to industry happenings. Do this by subscribing to Reddit threads, or trade and industry group blogs.

5. Keep up with the competition

Competitor analysis tells you a lot. A real lot. Look at the content that’s performing well for them. Find opportunities to use those same topics (and do it better)!

What to Consider Before You Start Mapping Buyer Journeys

You’ll need to do some prep work before mapping. Do this together with your audience-centric strategy. Those exercises you did above inform the next steps.

  • Collaborate across the company: All customer-facing roles should be in the conversation. They are a source of valuable information. Listen and learn.
  • Define segmenting: There are many ways to define buyer journeys. There is no “right” way. It depends on your content marketing goals. For example, being role-specific might be helpful. Maybe your audience is healthcare. That’s broad. There are lots of segments here. Being more specific gives you a stronger voice.
  • Conduct your research: Bring together all your research. Take it further by interviewing buyers and customers. This data allows you to have a 360-degree view of decision-makers.
  • Assess touch points: Bring your team together to brainstorm about audience engagement. This process includes marketing and non-marketing touchpoints. Peel back the layers to understand interactions. When you do, you can be more strategic.
  • Set goals: Customer journey mapping is fruitless without objectives. Outline the actions you’d like buyers to take as they move through the life cycle.

Building Your Buyer Journey

Customer journeys are unique. It should be specific to your brand and customers. It’s not a cookie-cutter exercise. In today’s digital world, you may also have multiple buyer journeys. That’s normal. Don’t think you can only have one.

We’ll start with a framework.

The B2B Buyer Journey Map Framework

The customer journey should reflect the buyer’s perspective. Major point to keep in mind! This framework guides you to create content for customer journeys. We’ll use the four stages of the conversion funnel. Then also look at the post-conversion journey.

Awareness

  • Buyer recognizes a need.
  • This is the broadest stage with most content.
  • Introduce solutions and concepts.
  • Buyers search heavily, so SEO matters.

Consideration

  • Funnel is narrowing because you’re losing potential buyers.
  • Focus on solving your buyers’ problems.
  • Buyers become more aware of your offerings.

Intention

  • Buyers are deciding which product to buy and comparing possibilities.
  • Content in this bucket should be persuasive.
  • Brands must overcome objections.
  • Peer recommendations are important here.

Conversion

  • Buyers realize the value of the solution and weight any risks.
  • Comfort is a driver of the purchase decision.
  • Support the conversion by removing any friction or barriers (i.e., making checkout easier).

Retention and Advocacy

After conversion, your content efforts don’t stop. One sale does not make a buyer loyal. You also want them to continue to learn. Learning isn’t only about training. Continue to build their knowledge. Use thought leadership content to do this.

Onboarding is a huge step in the post-conversion journey. Streamline the process and over-communicate. If onboarding goes south, all your hard work will be for naught. Work with onboarding teams to get this right.

Continue supporting their journey to maintain retention, upsell, and engage. Never forget about your current customers. It’s much more expensive to replace an existing customer than attract a new one. Don’t abandon them. Keep building a connection.

Marketing Analytics Support Customer Journey Tracking

Do you know where your audience is within the life cycle? It’s no easy feat. Marketing analytics can help. You know more about each buyer after they become a customer. You can track all their interactions and usage. But what about before they convert? How do you monitor this?

Things to consider in monitoring:

What is the source?

How did the inbound lead come to you? Different sources mean different things. If a buyer completes a form for an awareness level ebook, they are information-gathering. A buyer that completes a demo form is farther down the funnel.

What content did they consume?

Through cookies and scoring, you can understand their path. These insights are valuable. Use them in producing content for customer journeys. You’ll learn what content makes them act. You’ll also know formats they like.

How often is engagement?

Buyers that visit often could be warmer. They may be sales-ready. Track engagement across channels. This helps with understanding key touch points.

What are the most important signals?

Look for signals in your marketing analytics. A signal is an action that leads to funnel movement. For example, new content with high traffic tells you it’s popular. Popular means relevant. Look at what happens after they read it. Do they ask for pricing? Or request a demo? Those are funnel movers.

How are your scoring leads?

Marketing platforms allow you to score visitors. In scoring, you’ll define a marketing inquiry vs. a marketing lead. Assign points to actions. At a certain score, the buyer moves from inquiry to lead. It’s then time for sales to take over.

Content Strategy and Customer Journey Alignment

Your content strategy is your marketing bible. Its purpose is to ensure you share content across the journey. You’re building content from its goals and guidance. Thus, there must be alignment between a content strategy and customer journey.

Awareness typically has the most content. According to CMI, nearly half of efforts go toward early-stage content. This makes sense. It’s content that has to do a lot of work to gain attention.

Source: Content Marketing Institute

Early-stage content (awareness)

Early-stage content plays many roles. It establishes credibility. This stage is where you state your case. It’s not blow your own horn. Instead, you’re creating connections. Your content speaks to their challenges.

It also must spur action. This content should generate leads. So, it must have value. If it does, buyers will share their information. Once you have their email, you have a channel for communication you own.

SEO also matters in early-stage content. You have buyers searching for answers. Optimize your content to be the answer to these. High organic rankings bring visibility.

Middle-stage content (consideration and intention)

Middle-stage content keeps the party moving. Buyers are aware. They are aware of you and your competitors. This content needs to be more personal. It needs to express uniqueness.

You’ve made the shortlist. Now it’s time to drive a deeper connection. Focus on how a buyer’s life will change with your product. Let them know what success looks like.

Think case studies and explainer videos. You should address specific decision-makers here. This can change over time. It’s time to nurture. Do so with great content.

Late-stage content (conversion)

Late-stage content pushes buyers to buy. Show the buyer the results of making the purchase. An ROI (return on investment) calculator is an example. Also, empower your internal champion. This person is saying yes. Give them custom content to inform others.

Post-conversion stage content

This content focuses on onboarding and adoption. These topics are first. Content should focus on getting started. It can include guides of the process, training materials, how-to guides, and demo videos.

After this, keep the relationship healthy with useful content. You want to drive loyalty, advocacy, and retention. Use topics like new features, new challenges, and up-selling. Further, this is a chance for your customer to be part of your content. Interview them. Give them praise for what they are doing. Let them tell their story. Advocacy comes from making your customers part of the conversation.

Content for the Customer Journey: Leverage It with Content Experts

Ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently? Check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation now and I’ll throw in a free PDF version of one of my books!

The post How to Create and Align Your Content with the Buyer Journey appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Content Marketing For Sales Enablement

marketing insider group shares how content marketing for sales enablement maximizes revenue

If your sales aren’t where you want them to be, you probably haven’t perfected content marketing for sales enablement yet.

I don’t doubt that you have an amazing marketing department that’s constantly creating interesting, value-packed content that moves leads down the sales funnel. But it’s possible that you’re underestimating the impact your content can have when it’s closely integrated with your sales team’s actions – and that has to change.

Why? Because when you create content that aligns with your buyer personas, you can reach prospects with high-potential, increase conversions, and secure high-value deals. Not only that, but the key insights you’ll learn from engagement data will turn your content into an even more powerful sales tool.

Despite the importance of optimized content marketing for sales enablement, 78% of buyers believe that sales teams do not share relevant content. That’s why we’re taking a close look at what content for sales enablement really is, and examples that show how both marketing and sales teams can use it to more effectively drive sales.

Quick Takeaways

  • 75% of marketers said sales enablement content makes a moderate to significant contribution to the sales process 
  • Specific types of interactive content like assessments, ROI calculators, and product pickers captures critical information needed for sales enablement
  • Nowadays, 71% of customers expect personalized content, and 76% of customers are frustrated when their content isn’t personalized
  • You can build a strong content marketing strategy for sales enablement and maximize your sales in 6 easy steps

The general consensus is that content marketing for sales enablement is the key to success. Taking a strategic approach to your company’s content creation will align sales, marketing and operations teams to maximize revenue.

What Is Content Marketing for Sales Enablement?

First things first: Let’s get on the same page about content marketing for sales enablement. Different companies define it in different ways, but for the most part, it’s just what it sounds like – a content marketing strategy that enables sales.

Expert marketers define the most effective types of sales enablement content as:

  • High quality blog posts. Let your audience know how your products and services stand out from the competition by consistently sharing valuable information via blog posts. They’re also easy for your sales team to share and a great buying decision support tool.
  • Case studies and customer testimonials. Share success stories about customers who have used your products and services. By doing so, you’ll build trust with your high-potential prospects and clients, proving to them that you’re committed to delivering great results.
  • Video demos. Video is today’s most engaging form of content, and can give new life to content you’ve already shared in case studies and blog posts. It also supports each step of the buyer’s journey, anywhere from explainer videos to product tutorials.
  • Interactive content. When you share interactive content, you create a personalized experience for users. Nowadays, as much as 76% of customers are frustrated when their content isn’t personalized.
  • Ebooks and Whitepapers. Today’s customer does extensive research before making a purchase. Make it easy on your high-potential prospects by sharing content that offers a clear understanding of your company’s value, like Ebooks and Whitepapers.

And what’s more: three-fourths see it as valuable, essential material. 75% of marketers said sales enablement content makes a moderate to significant contribution to the sales process.

That’s because you address your customers’ needs through sales enablement, your content has a much higher impact. So it makes sense that both the marketing and sales team should have an open dialogue around this content.

bar graph shows that sales enablement content that addresses customer needs has a high impact on customers

Image Source: Integrity Solutions

To maximize content marketing for sales enablement, your content needs to be doing the work for you. While case studies and testimonials are helpful for bottom-of-the-funnel leads, interactive content asks questions and receives opinions that really take your MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to the next level, and drastically scale your sales efforts in the process.

Let’s explore what this type of sales enablement content looks like in action.

Interactive Sales Enablement Content

Maybe you’re wondering, “How does a simple customer assessment enable sales?”

First of all, an assessment is a piece of content that feels individualized to a specific issue for the user – it helps tease out a pain point that preps them for a simple, easy solution. It’s also a great tool for the sales department because it moves buyers a little bit further down the funnel as they work through the assessment.

The more the leads think about the specific obstacles they are facing, the more they become aware of how much they need something to address it.

But wait, it gets better: Often, sales has a series of questions they ask every prospect to grade how good the prospect is. Having specific content like assessments, ROI calculators, and product pickers captures critical information as part of your content-enabled campaigns, pre-sales.

screenshot shows example of interactive sales enablement assessment

Image Source: Marketing Charts

With this data, that initial effort from sales is minimized or skipped completely, allowing the team to focus their effort on “super MQLS,” spending more time closing deals, and less sorting through unqualified leads.

Sales works with higher qualified leads, and marketing improves its scoring efforts and creates customized nurture streams to further leads through the funnel – all leading to greater efficiency, and increased revenue.

Lastly, well designed sales-enablement content provides a richer experience for prospects. Positioning assessments, polls, or quizzes that allow leads to learn something about themselves or their organization is a much less “salesy” experience. Without someone making a clear pitch, customers can work through the discovery process in a low-intensity, low-commitment context.

Now that we understand how interactive sales enablement content works, let’s look at some examples and learn why it’s so effective.

Pentaho Product Picker

Pentaho, a big data integration and analytics solution, uses a product picker assessment that asks lower-funnel prospects specific questions about their current data process and problem points.

This assessment bucketed users into four product groups/sales-use cases. The lead data went directly to their Marketo and Salesforce databases that allowed sales to follow up with powerful insights to the organization’s needs.

325 of the leads created through the content were qualified to Sales Accepted Leads with the data received. Over $200k in pipeline was directly attributed to the interactive assessment.

Blackbaud’s Realize Real Results

Blackbaud, a marketing platform for nonprofits, has also seen content marketing for sales enablement produce amazing results.

They launched a microsite called Realize Real Results, which included different types of content (including interactive calculators and assessments.) The microsite was promoted across various marketing channels over the course of one month.

screenshot shows Blackbaud’s landing page for Realize Real Results content marketing for sales enablement page

Image Source: Blackbaud

Sales reps were able to use the data from the calculators as talking points during discovery calls, creating a more informed conversation. For leads that have not used the calculator, they were invited to put in their own metrics right on the call and see the results in real-time.

Content marketing for sales enablement results:

  • 52% click rate on landing page
  • 56% lead conversion
  • 500 qualified leads
  • 133% Q1 quota attainment
  • $600k add’l Q1 sales

Pretty impressive, right? The content for sales enablement deployed here produced real, tangible ROI – and allowed both the marketing and sales teams to work together to outpace their goals.

Develop a Content Marketing for Sales Enablement Strategy

With a strong content marketing strategy for sales enablement, your marketing and sales teams can work together to effectively maximize sales. Here’s how you can make it happen in just 6 easy steps.

1. Give Existing Content A Refresh

Start by taking a look at the content your sales team is currenting using. Figure out which content is working for them and how it fits into the buyer journey. You’ll also need to weed out any content that isn’t working and understand why. This way, you can start creating new content and updating old content that fills the gaps.

2. Make The Most of Internal Documentation and Knowledge

Now that you know what’s working and what’s not, it’s time to start cranking out new content. Fill the gaps with information from your internal knowledge base and team of product experts. Any internal documentation and knowledge can make a huge difference in getting your team sales enablement content that generates conversions.

3. Consider Your Marketers and Sales Reps

Your marketing and sales teams are both going to need sales enablement content to help seal the deal – but they’re going to use it in different ways.

illustration shows marketing content vs. sales content

Image Source: Content Camel

Marketing wants to get the attention of prospects, whereas sales teams are going to convert them. Keep this in mind as you update and create your content arsenal.

4. Consider the Customer Journey

Remember the greater purpose of content marketing for sales enablement: to convert high-potential prospects. That means your content should help your sales team build meaningful relationships with potential clients, ultimately raising their chances of closing a deal.

5. Assign Content to Your Sales Funnel

Your salespeople are your best resource when it comes to understanding what high-potential prospects need throughout their buying journey. Talk to your sales team to understand what types of content your audience likes best. Then, package that content in creative ways so it guides prospects through your sales funnel and appeals to a wide audience.

A business’s sales funnel is the bread and butter of generating revenue. If you need a refresher, the video below does a great job of explaining the basics of the sales funnel.

Video Source: Keap

6. Measure Your Success

The most important step in any strategy is measuring success. How effective were your efforts? What worked well? What didn’t? Understanding the ins and outs of your results will provide you with valuable insight about specific pieces of content. Then, you can really hone in on perfecting your sales enablement content.

Optimize Your Content Marketing For Sales Enablement Today

As you can see, content marketing for sales enablement requires that the marketing and sales teams overlap and work together. It’s no longer enough to just create great content and put it out in the world – it needs to relate back to a larger sales strategy and produce valuable customer data that both teams can put to good use.

Ask yourself: Are your marketing and sales team effectively collaborating in the content department? If not, it may be time to re-evaluate your approach.

At Marketing Insider Group, we have the tools and expertise to help you optimize your content marketing for sales enablement. Maximize your ROI today by checking out our weekly blog content service, or schedule a free consultation now!

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How To Improve Your Content Conversion Rate

marketing insider group shares how to increase your content conversion rate

You probably know that improving your content conversion rate is one of the best ways to grow your business with digital marketing. Now you just need to figure out how you can increase your content conversion rate.

Luckily, our experts know a lot about high-quality content and are sure the right content marketing strategy is the key to success. An effective strategy optimized for conversion is guaranteed to not only increase your business’s content conversion rate, but also gain more traffic, prospects, loyal customers and sales revenue.

Quick Takeaways

  • 81% of marketing experts view content as a core business strategy 
  • There are several types of conversion, such as traffic, prospects, leads, registration and purchases
  • Average conversion rates for B2B companies typically fall between 0.5-1% 
  • 51% of businesses that invest in content marketing post content everyday
  • Demonstrating your company’s expertise via content creation is key to increasing your content conversion rate

Establishing an effective content marketing strategy and optimizing your content for conversions is the best way to increase your content conversion rate.

What Is A Content Conversion Rate?

Did you know that 81% of marketing experts view content as a core business strategy? This makes content creation one of the most common techniques for increasing a company’s revenue.

To measure the effectiveness of a company’s content, marketers use content conversion rates. These rates represent the percentage of converted users among the total number of visitors to your content page.

Businesses with high content conversion rates are likely to have an effective content marketing strategy, whereas low rates indicate room for improvement. Average conversion rates for B2B companies typically fall between 0.5-1%.

bar graph shows average content conversion rates for B2B companies

Image Source: Oberlo

Wondering what your business’s content conversion rate is? Find it by using the formula below.

image of content conversion rate formula

Image Source: TextBroker

If your content conversion rate is lower than you’d hoped, there’s no need to panic. Raising your conversion rate is simple – but first, it’s important to understand the different types of customer actions that are considered conversions.

Types of Conversion

Contrary to popular belief, conversions are more than sales revenue. Conversions happen when site visitors complete one of many desired goals that lead to becoming a paying customer. Some of the most common types of conversions include:

  • Traffic. Increasing the quality of your site traffic through advertising, SEO and high-quality content is likely to raise your conversion rate.
  • Prospects. Site visitors interested in your company’s products and services are likely to turn into prospective customers.
  • Leads. When prospects share their contact information, they become leads. Whether they want a free download or register for your newsletter, leads are more likely to become customers.
  • Registration. Good site structure and clearly defined content encourage prospects to sign up for a personal account with your company.
  • Purchase. Once a purchase is made, prospects and leads become paying customers. This both increases your sales revenue and conversion rate.

When your content successfully leads to one of the aspects above, it has effectively increased your business’s content conversion rate.

Why Is Your Content Conversion Rate Important?

Optimizing your content conversion rate is important because it allows you to gain more value from visitors and users already interested in your business.

A healthy content conversion rate is so important that 51% of businesses investing in content marketing post content everyday. Not only will consistent content increase revenue per site visitor, but also gain more customers and enhance the overall growth of your business.

When it comes to conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. Even the most successful companies are always trying to improve their sites to grow their business. Luckily, there are several simple ways to optimize your content that will help improve your content conversion rate, too.

How To Improve Your Content Conversion Rate

With original, engaging content, you can inspire your audience to take action towards making a purchase, ultimately improving your content conversion rate. Here are the most effective ways to enhance your content and encourage conversions.

Use Attention-Grabbing Headlines

Having an immediate impact on readers is critical to grabbing their attention. According to the graph below, using numbers, addressing the reader directly and including “how to” in headlines are the three most effective ways to intrigue your readers.

bar graph shows content headline preferences

Image Source: Moz

Keep in mind that your headline represents the main point of your content. That means it needs to be clear and straightforward in order to let the reader know what they’re going to learn about. By using numbers and “how to” terminology, you can grab your reader’s attention, add value and encourage conversions.

To learn more about the importance of attention-grabbing headlines, enjoy the short video below.

Video Source: Khattak

Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience is key to creating content that converts. The purpose of content is to engage and motivate readers, and doing so is much easier when you know which problems your audience needs to solve.

To improve your content conversion rate, create and share content that addresses your audience’s:

  • Needs
  • Wants and desires
  • Knowledge of your products and services

Instead of focusing on selling your product, prioritize providing a solution. By educating your audience and offering a practical solution to their problems, you’re likely to increase your company’s content conversion rate.

Optimize High-Performing Blog Posts

Blogging is so valuable that 53% of marketers prioritize posting consistently. Optimizing your blog page can strengthen your company by increasing site traffic, building customer relationships and encouraging engagement.

To optimize your blog content, start by identifying which of your posts have seen the highest levels of web traffic. Then, drive more traffic to these posts by sharing on social media, sending in email newsletters, or updating as needed. By driving more quality traffic to posts that have performed well, you can ensure that new visitors will be likely to convert.

Write Strong Calls To Action

Increasing your conversion rate means writing powerful and compelling CTAs, or calls to action. Whether you’re asking your audience to complete a survey or make a purchase, being clear, concise and intentional in inspiring readers to take action is key. You should also:

  • Be direct and straightforward
  • Use action verbs
  • Motivate your audience
  • Prioritize persuasive, powerful messaging

example of marketing insider group’s call to action

Lastly, consider the placement of your CTAs. They should appear above page-folds, along the side of your landing pages or at the bottom of blog posts.

Demonstrate Expertise

Demonstrate your business’s value and expertise to build confidence in your readers and encourage them to convert. By completing the actions below, you can establish your company’s credibility and build confidence in your audience.

  • Share original research. Sharing facts and figures related to your industry will educate your audience and strengthen your reader’s understanding of your company.
  • Include how to use products and services. Sharing how-to information related to your products and services positions your company as an expert and builds trust.
  • Show trends in your offering. Including trends related to your company will build confidence among your audience and show them how your product will enable them to participate.
  • Cite other authorities. Including statistics, data and citations from well-known industry players positions your company as an expert and encourages readers to trust your content.

When you integrate these aspects into your content creation consistently, both the value of your content and content conversion rate will increase.

Raise Your Content Conversion Rate Today

Raising your content conversion rate is one of the best ways to start gaining loyal customers and generating more sales revenue. There are many different ways to optimize your content to support your marketing efforts.

No time to create more content? No problem. Content marketing experts can help you create content optimized to increase your conversion rate. Start building your optimized content portfolio by checking out our weekly blog content service today, or schedule a free consultation now!

The post How To Improve Your Content Conversion Rate appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How to Create Great White Papers

graphics from white paper

White papers sometimes get a bad rap in the content marketing world as being super-technical documents best suited for equally technical companies and industries. But this perception is outdated. Today, all kinds of companies are producing white papers that help customers solve problems, drive leads and conversions, and demonstrate expertise.

Demand Gen’s most recent Content Preferences Study found that white papers rank in the top two (behind only video — the new king of content) for the most valuable type of content for researching B2B purchases. It’s also one of the most-shared types of content among colleagues in B2B industries.

White papers, when done effectively, can help your customers accomplish important goals while driving your lead generation and conversion efforts at the same time.

Here’s how to create white papers that deliver the most customer value and drive results for your band.

Quick Takeaways

  • Whitepaper topics should always be centered around helping customers solve a problem or accomplish a goal.
  • Professionalism is key for white papers: a business writing style, thorough fact-checking, and quality proofreading are essential.
  • White papers should always include high-impact, engaging visuals and design.
  • Brands should always gate white paper content to capture customer information and generate leads.

How to Create a Great White paper: 8 Best Practices

Build Your Topic Around Customer Needs

So you’re ready to develop a white paper to support your overall content marketing strategy. What should you write about?

Don’t just pull a topic out of the air or choose one randomly because it’s familiar. The best white papers pick topics based on customer challenges.

Great white papers help customers solve a real problem or accomplish an actual goal. This means that when you’re choosing a white paper topic, you should always do it from your customer’s perspective.

Let’s take a minute here to talk about what white papers are not. They aren’t brochures or promotional documents. They aren’t product overviews or company reports. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes companies make when they create white papers is they make it about them.

This is usually done with good intention, but it doesn’t make it any less off the mark.

Your potential customer will typically encounter your white paper while in the process  of searching for a brand who can provide a solution. What better way to convince them that your brand is the best choice than by providing a solution right away with your content?

This doesn’t mean you’ll solve all of their larger problems or eliminate their need for your services. It means that you’ll demonstrate the value you can provide and entice them to want more from your brand.

To think like your customer, you’ll need to use empathy based marketing.

As marketers, we spend so much time immersed in our products and services that we can lose sight of why they exist in the first place. By using empathy to think from the perspective of our customers, we get back to the core purpose of our brand.

One helpful tool you can use to practice using empathy is the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) methodology, which works by focusing not on your products or even who your customer is. Rather, it looks to uncover what your customer is trying to accomplish.

Here’s more on JTBD theory:

Once you’ve explored your customer needs, you can confidently explore topics that will deliver valuable solutions.

Use a Professional Tone

White papers should never be dry and boring, but they also aren’t the place to use informal language. The tone of a white paper should always be professional.

Use a business writing style, remain fact-based, and include clear descriptive language. Your white paper is a guide for customers to help them accomplish something real that will make an impact on their job and organization. It’s definitely not the place for opinions.

Backup your content with research and statistics. Whenever possible, conduct and leverage your own firsthand research to support important points. Remain objective and use language that does the same.

Pack it with High-Value Content

White papers are created to add additional value not already offered on your blog or in your other free content. As you choose your topic and begin to develop your white paper, you should continually ask yourself: how is this content providing unique value to my customers?

Here are some ways you can pack your white paper with value your customers will appreciate:

  • Provide clear action steps customers can take to implement solutions
  • Include research and statistics that help customers make informed decisions
  • Use real-world examples to demonstrate your important points
  • Keep it interesting using graphics, stories, and quotes to break up your content

Use Engaging Visuals to Support Your Text

A common misconception is that white papers are text-only, academic type documents that don’t or shouldn’t contain images or design. We’ll touch more on design later, but we’ll start here by saying your white paper absolutely should include visual images to support your text content.

In general, people only read about 20% of what they see on any given page. They notice and retain visual information at a much higher rate. You should emphasize your most important points using compelling images and graphics that catch your reader’s attention as they read.

That said, images in white papers should fit in with its overall professional tone and purpose. While blog images can vary and be more casual, white paper images should remain formal. Good ideas for white paper images include graphs, charts, tables, and highlighted statistics that create visual representations of the information you’ve included in your text.

Here are some good examples:

The 13 Biggest Content Marketing Challenges Ever

It’s simple and uncomplicated, but it visually demonstrates the top challenges marketers are facing in 2023.

This one shows the one of the top challenges marketers face overall in 2023: the use of AI.

bar graph shows how artificial intelligence market will grow until 2030

And here’s one we used from our popular stats on the future of marketing post on podcasts:

A graphic with purple people illustrating percent of podcast listeners in the United Stats.

High-quality stock photography is another great way to incorporate imagery into your white paper. It may not be reporting on actual content, but it can help paint a picture of the topics you’re covering and make your white paper more engaging.

For example, if you were writing a white paper on creative marketing strategies, you could include stock photos showing creative teams working together.

Free Woman Sharing Her Presentation with her Colleagues Stock Photo

Source: Pexels

This image may not actually communicate information, but it sets the tone you intend for the content and evokes emotion (all images do), an important component of getting customers to take action.

Fact Check Everything

We’ll keep this one short and sweet: fact check every single thing you include in your white paper. Be sure your statistics are all reliably sourced, and always include your sources in the actual white paper.

White papers are intended to position your brand as an expert. Nothing could undermine that more than inaccurate or poorly sourced information. Take the extra time to find information from sources you can trust and be sure your own research is accurate before you include it.

Proofread (More than Once)

Like fact-checking, proofreading your content is essential. Even the smallest mistakes such as misspelled words or incorrect grammar can paint a poor image of your company.

Attention to detail is key here. Find someone on your team who has the experience and capability to confidently proofread and copy edit your content. Ideally, more than one person should proofread to ensure you don’t miss even a single error!

Don’t Forget Design

A sleek, professional design can go a long way. Not only does great design make your white paper appear more professional, it also makes it more approachable and engaging. Don’t be fooled by that outdated perception of white papers being technical documents. You’re creating it to engage your audience and just like any other marketing collateral, it needs design to help accomplish that goal.

Design is an area that’s best to outsource when you don’t have the in-house team to do it well. Poor design can sometimes be worse than no design at all (and no design is pretty bad).

If you’ve taken the time to develop high-value white paper content, go the extra step and invest in a great design that brings it to life.

Gate Your White paper to Drive Conversions

Last but certainly not least: be sure you leverage your white paper to produce results! You’ve spent a lot of time creating a white paper that offers exceptional value, is well-researched and well-designed, and helps your audience solve a real business problem.

It’s perfectly reasonable, then, to ask for your potential customer’s email address in return for the white paper download. In fact, it’s a total miss if you don’t.

White papers are one of the most effective types of lead magnets for capturing leads. Be sure that you put an effective strategy in place to help it perform.

Create a Compelling White paper without the Stress

Content agencies have the experience and resources to craft content that drives results. If you’re ready to create a compelling white paper and deliver other exceptional content to your audience, Marketing Insider Group has solutions that can help.

Check out our Content Builder Services or schedule a free consultation to learn more!

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11 Reasons We Love Content Marketing

marketing insider group shares 11 reasons why we love content marketing

At Marketing Insider Group, we love content marketing. Are we biased? Maybe. But we also have a good reason for it.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your audience, encourage engagement and build your brand’s image. Every business needs a content marketing strategy to reach their target market and establish a presence in their industry. After all, 73% of B2B professionals use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy.

As content marketing experts, we spend every day building strategies and creating high quality content for our clients, and not a single day feels like work. Because when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life!

It’s impossible to list every reason why content marketing lives near and dear to our hearts, so we’ve done our best to narrow down the list.

Quick Takeaways

  • 79% of content marketers specifically use content marketing to generate quality leads
  • Content marketing increase leads, establishes credibility, demonstrates value, boosts social media, and more
  • Google shows that more than 8.5 billion searches are made per day, giving you the opportunity to boost brand awareness with content 
  • Content marketers dedicate their work to sharing high quality content, instead of filler content that’s written to perform well on SERPs

After learning about all the ways content can give your business a boost, you’ll love content marketing too.

11 Reasons Why We Love Content Marketing

Without further ado, here’s our top 11 reasons why we love content marketing (and why you should too).

1. Content marketing delivers quality leads.

We love content marketing because it guarantees high-potential prospects. In fact, 79% of content marketers specifically use content marketing to generate quality leads.

spongebob squarepants with heart eyes

Image Source: Meme Arsenal

Today’s customers want their questions answered quickly. With a little bit of research, you can make their dreams come true by looking into your audience’s:

  • Demographics
  • Geo-data
  • Interests

Once you start sharing content created specifically for your audience, you’ll also successfully target their interests and satisfy their needs – ultimately generating quality leads.

In fact, content marketing is responsible for the 1 million annual visitors and hundreds of leads we get each year!

2. It positions you as a thought leader in your industry.

You’ve heard the term “thought leader”, but do you know how to become one? The answer is simple – some really great content marketing.

With content marketing, you can promote your brand through an arsenal of useful, authentic content. Although it takes time and effort to build, it’ll prove that you’re dedicated to serving your audience and sharing your expertise, positioning you as a leader in your industry.

philadelphia eagles home GIF by NFL

3. Content marketing is creative.

We love content marketing because it forces us to think outside the box. Whether we’re creating content calendars or writing blog posts, content marketing lets our imaginations do most of the heavy lifting.

The best pieces of content are unique, engaging and educational. By creating great content, we have the pleasure of helping our clients stand out from the competition. Not only is it exciting for them, but we love being a part of the process.

Workshop Post It GIF by weSpark

4. Marketers are dedicated to quality.

Writing may be easy, but writing well takes a bit of expertise – not to mention incorporating the art of SEO. Luckily, Google’s algorithm rewards content that’s both well-articulated and valuable for readers. This means that content marketers dedicate their work to sharing high quality content, instead of filler content that’s written to perform well on SERPs.

image shows Mr. Bean Google meme

Image Source: Imgflip

5. It answers the questions of your audience.

Today’s advancements in technology give customers a lot to work with when it comes to research. Before making a purchase decision, consumers look for answers that will confirm whether or not a product or service is right for them.

This gives marketers a lot of opportunity to educate their audience via content marketing. Giving them the information they’re looking for through content gets you one step closer to securing a conversion.

Feelings Thoughts GIF by chuber channel

6. Content marketing improves SEO and traffic.

Every great SEO strategy features content marketing, and for a good reason: content marketing is directly related to ranking well on SERPs. And when you rank well on SERPs, organic traffic is sure to follow.

When your content is shared on social media or through other links, Google pays attention. This demonstrates value in your content and results in a higher ranking on Google. Doing SEO research and using keywords where you can is an easy way to see a boost in both traffic and rankings. That’s what we like to call love at first search.

Stalking Ryan Reynolds GIF by NBC

7. It builds trust and credibility between you and your readers.

Trust is the foundation of every great relationship, including that with your readers. Content marketing creates an open line of communication between you and your audience, helping to build trust and credibility within your industry.

Enhancing your customer relationships is as easy as sharing valuable content wherever they look for information. Doing so will let your readers know you’re dedicated to solving their problems and let them know you can be trusted.

fall fail GIF

8. It grows your social media presence.

When readers love your content, they’re going to share it on social media. This means that when customers find value in your brand, they also become your advocates. With a little bit of patience, your content is likely to grow your social media presence, allowing you to reach more and more of your audience members.

The Bachelor Snl GIF by Saturday Night Live

9. Content marketing delivers ROI.

The ROI of traditional advertising is limited – billboards and TV commercials don’t last forever. With content marketing, your content library lives forever (with a few updates) and continues to deliver ROI over time.

In Love Hearts GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Image source: Giphy

Not only can you share content across several channels, but you can also do it over and over again. Sure, content needs to be updated every now and then, but recycling content is also one of the best ways to ensure ROI.

10. It supports all types of digital media.

We love content marketing because the reach of quality content is limitless. From live video content and blog posts to images and infographics, your content will be shared if you get it in front of the right audience.

These days, successful marketing demands clever content. As long as your content is interesting and unique, it doesn’t matter which type of digital media you create.

Cat Typing GIF

11. Content marketing increases brand awareness.

Want to get the word out about your brand? Content marketing is to the rescue. The latest data from Google shows that more than 8.5 billion searches are made per day. With so many searches, chances are that a good chunk of them are related to your company’s offerings.

Using content to answer your audience’s questions makes it all the more likely that you’ll pop up in a few (or a lot) of those searches, ultimately increasing your brand awareness.

Know Big Sky GIF by ABC Network

You Should Love Content Marketing, Too

There’s so many reasons to love content marketing. From generating quality leads to putting a creative spin on content, content marketing is one of the best ways to not only boost sales, but also show some love to your target audience.

At Marketing Insider Group, we’re passionate about creating content that satisfies both your readers and conversion rate. Start spreadin’ some love today by checking out our weekly blog content service today, or schedule a free consultation now!

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How Much Budget Do You Need for Content Marketing?

woman pulling money from jeans to show content marketing budget

By now, you know that a great content marketing strategy makes a positive impact on business results. If you’re a larger business, you need to show the world that you are a leader in your industry. As a startup, you need to get attention, generate leads, and drive growth.

So the real question is how much do we need to spend on content marketing to drive growth in those areas?

Our own clients have proven that on average, content marketing delivers a 7x conversion rate. That’s $7 for every dollar spent. But where should you start?

Let’s explore 3 things you need to consider when setting the right budget amount for content marketing.

Quick Takeaways

  • Because of the higher ROI, companies are allocating more budget to Content Marketing this year.
  • On average, companies are allocating 25% of their marketing budget to content.
  • Successful content marketers don’t just create content. They implement a strategy, identify goals, and measure results.

Content Marketing Becoming More Important

In uncertain economic times, short-sighted companies cut marketing costs, especially for tactics that show little ROI or are difficult to measure.

And while spending on advertising is down over the last year, content marketing appears to becoming more important to most companies.

The Content Marketing Institute reported late last year that 71% of B2B companies are putting more weight behind their content marketing efforts due to the overall measurability, value and ROI it can achieve.

Importance of B2B content marketing in the past year pie chart

A recent study by Neil Patel also shows that 83% of companies are increasing their content marketing budgets in 2023.

Semrush has also just released their latest study showing that nearly 70% of marketers plan to increase their budget in 2023.

Content marketing is becoming more important in 2023. It’s getting more budget. It is surviving the fear of an economic downturn because companies large and small need to grow in 2023 no matter what the economy is doing.

And content marketing delivers on that growth!

Ok so we know we need content marketing. And we know we need more content. Content marketing is more important. How do we go about setting a content marketing budget?

How Much Budget Do I Need For Content Marketing

Obviously every company has different needs and budget scenarios. So we can’t prescribe the precise content marketing budget number for every company. But we can look at some industry trends to better understand how companies are investing in content marketing.

Research shows that companies spend an average of 26% of their total marketing budget on content marketing. The most successful spend closer to 40%, and the least successful down to 14%.

Semrush’s recent report says that most 73% of companies spend more than $1,000 per month on content marketing, and the most successful spend as much as $10,000.

So let’s say the average content marketing budget is $5000 per month.

Our own content marketing services include strategy, content, and measurement start at $2500 / month for 1 article / week. We also offer $4500 / month for 2 articles per week. So I think your content marketing budget for us would fall in line for most companies budgets.

Again, none of this is one-size-fits-all, but the takeaway here is that while content marketing is extremely cost-effective, it also requires a substantial financial commitment — especially in the beginning stages, when you’re doing a lot of set up like content auditing, website optimization, and building your blog.

Must-Haves For Your Content Marketing Budget

The right strategy

Many of our clients come to us after having been frustrated after hiring a freelancer from Fiverr or Upwork. There are many great writers on those platforms. You can also find amazing full-time copywriters for around $70,000 per year in salary. But you still have to tell them what to right about!

An effective content marketing strategy defines the keywords your audience uses, the content they consumer, the channels where they consume it. So that you can identify the right kind of content to create in the first place.

This is where services like ours can be so valuable. We identify the pillars of content you need, the keywords your audience is using by looking at competitive gaps, long tail phrases, and purchase intent. We then brainstorm creative headlines for our writers to write for our clients.

And we measure results. We help our clients generate amazing stories of success such as 2-3x more leads, 300% traffic gains, 60% higher conversion rates and bottom line growth in revenue and new customers that translated into massive content marketing ROI.

So strategy is important. But you also need the right team.

The right team

Great content requires great creators. One place you should never skimp on your content marketing spend is the right people to create your content. Haphazardly adding content creation to an existing role within your team without thinking about the time and expertise it requires is a dangerous strategy.

Content creators have specialized skills that optimize your content to get results. Here are some roles you might need to invest in as part of your content marketing budget:

  • SEO writers can use keywords and other SEO best practices to optimize your written content to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
  • SEO specialists optimize the technical aspects of your website to rank on SERPs.
  • Copywriters are trained to write high-quality, high-performing written advertising and marketing content.
  • Editors who make sure the content meets your brand guidelines
  • Support staff who can upload, publish and share your content
  • Demand generation specialists who know how to help drive conversions
  • Paid media specialists who maximize the efficiency of your spend

(Or you can just hire us because we have all these folks already.) 😜

The list isn’t limited to these roles but does include the most commonly needed skills in a content marketing team. Again, assigning these responsibilities to a team member without the appropriate skills and training will likely result in underperforming content.

You can also invest in a content marketing agency to handle your strategy for you. Good agencies have the expertise and resources to deliver consistent content, proven strategies, and frequent performance reporting. This frees you up to focus on other strategic priorities.

While outsourcing your content creation is an investment, it’s often more affordable than hiring full-time staff and it allows you to be confident in your content strategy without being bogged down by the work it requires.

Technology tools

Automation, data analytics, social media — all of these are important components of a good content marketing strategy. You can optimize your capabilities in each of these areas with technology tools to support them.

These tools give you important data insights and allow you to scale your strategy to reach larger audiences. Some examples include:

  • Email marketing software enables you to store, email and track content subscriber lists and provides templates for creating well-designed emails.
  • Social media software gives you the ability to digitally house your content calendar, automate posting, post simultaneously across platforms, and access performance reports.
  • Google analytics gives detailed reports on web traffic.
  • Website CMS platforms have analytics capabilities that every company should be taking advantage of as part of their website management.
  • CRM platforms are more comprehensive and allow companies to automate sales, marketing, and reporting processes.

Your content

Depending on how your team is built, your content may or may not come with its own separate price. Often, though, specific projects that fall outside of the scope of a contract with an agency may require additional costs.

These can include anything from professional produced videos to white papers to print brochures and more.

We charge anywhere from $3500 to $5000 for e-books

Think about what types of print and digital content you’ll be creating and incorporate those potential costs into your budget.

How To Think About Your Content Marketing Budget

The mistake companies often make when it comes to setting up a content marketing budget is thinking strictly in financial terms. Like: here’s what we can afford, so here’s our budget. Now let’s spend it.

But your content marketing spend is way more than just a number. Thinking only in terms of what you can spend without thinking seriously about how you can execute will lead to a lot of wasted money and unneeded frustration.

In short: don’t budget for money you won’t have the time or resources to spend, and don’t spend money on things you can’t execute effectively.

There’s no magic formula every company can use to determine their perfect content marketing spend, and the truth is that no budget will ever get it exactly right. But by thinking intentionally about creating a smart budget that capitalizes on every dollar spent, you can set yourself up for success.

We recommend looking at your content marketing budget from a prioritization standpoint: what are the most important items in your budget? Think about how you’ll execute each of these items. What will your timeline for execution look like? Which people or teams will be responsible? What other resources will this require?

Clearly outlining all of this during the budgeting process can help you identify what you can realistically execute well. Once you get to a point where you think you’re spreading resources too thin, it’s time to think about cutting lower-priority items out.

Our recommendation: definitely do set stretch goals, but prioritize setting your teams and your company up for success. Use your best judgement to set a budget that contains the right balance.

Check out our recent guide on budgeting for content to get a deeper dive on best practices to support this process.

Content Marketing Budget Examples For Every Size Business

$1000 / month: You really can’t go much lower than this. $1000 per month should get you around 2 articles for the month. Again, you could go on a freelancer platform for less but then you need to make sure you are creating content that aligns with your target audience and provides measurable value. Also keep in mind, that our own content marketing frequency research shows that you need to blog weekly to start showing real growth in traffic and leads.

$2500 / month: This will get you 1 article per week from us plus the annual content marketing plan, and monthly reports. Most of clients on this plan start to see growth in SEO and search rankings after about 3-4 months. The average growth rate is just under 100% for the year, so almost double your traffic and leads.

$5000 / month: this will get you 2 articles per week, the annual content plan, monthly reporting, and 2 demand generation e-books. Our clients at this spend level are seeing results a little but quicker: around 2-3 months. And they average 138% year–over-year growth in leads and traffic.

$10,000 / month: this gets you the supersized plan of strategy, content and paid promotion. You can expect to see growth like we explained above plus is happens immediately! At this level of spend, we see clients experience around 10,ooo new visitors per month in website traffic from month 1 and it just goes up from there as the organic traffic gains start to materialize. Over time, we also start to re-target those visitors with demand gen offers that translate to predictable leads and new customers.

Get ROI From Your Content Marketing Budget

Are you ranking high and driving traffic? Are your conversions on the rise with the power of content? If not, then your budget may not be in alignment with your goals. Let’s get them on the same page.

If you’re ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service and schedule a quick consultation today!

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Optimizing Content Promotion Channels To Increase Conversion Rates

venice waterway to show content promotion channel

Content marketing is a powerful tool for driving brand awareness, leads, and sales.

However, creating high quality content is only half the battle. In order to see real results, you need to effectively promote that content to your target audience.

There are countless channels available for promoting your content, from social media and email marketing to paid advertising and influencer partnerships. But with so many options, it can be difficult to know where to focus your efforts.

In this post, we’ll explore some of the most effective ways to promote your content and provide actionable tips for optimizing each channel.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Integrating your efforts across paid, owned and earned channels is the most effective approach to optimizing content promotion
  • Testing and picking the best content to promote is significantly more effective than pushing content manually chosen
  • Search and email provide the best reach and conversion for most brands
  • But testing what works for you is the most important takeaway from our research

Integrated (or Converged) Marketing Channels

We’ve been talking about the term integrated marketing for a very long time. But what dies it really mean?

For many brands integrated marketing has meant making someone or some team responsible for the distribution of content vs creation. In some organizations, this included campaign content. In others, it really just refers to paid media.

So the execution and promise of the promise of integrated marketing often falls short because of this lack of clarity. So let’s set the record straight:

Integrated marketing means looking across the various elements of paid, owned and earned media, to ensure the most efficient and effective creation and distribution of content to achieve reach, engagement and conversion of new customers.

In more simple terms, I have said that integrated marketing should allow you to:

  • Get found
  • Get shared
  • Get leads

Converged media, then is really just another name for an effective content marketing strategy that leverages all paid, earned and owned media to achieve the best results across the buyer journey or marketing funnel.

What is Content Marketing? - Instapage Marketing Guide

Methods For Optimizing Content for Promotion

Before we look at the best channels for content promotion, we need to consider the best practices in content promotion:

1. Identify your best performing content: Before you begin promoting your content, take some time to analyze which pieces are already performing well. Look at metrics such as website traffic, engagement, and conversions to determine which content is resonating with your audience. Once you have a sense of what is working, you can focus your promotion efforts on those pieces.

2. Pick the right time to promote: Timing is everything when it comes to content promotion. Consider the best time to post on social media, send out emails, or run paid advertising campaigns based on when your audience is most active and engaged. Use tools such as Google Analytics to understand your audience’s behavior, and schedule your promotion accordingly.

The Best Times to Post on <a href=Social Media in 2022 | Sprout Social” width=”600″ height=”420″ />

3. Repurpose and republish content: Don’t let your older content go to waste. Repurpose and republish your best-performing content on different platforms to reach new audiences. You can also update old content with new information, images, or videos to give it a fresh look and make it relevant again.

4. Use visuals: Visuals can help your content stand out on social media and other platforms. Use images, GIFs, and videos to make your content more engaging and shareable.

5. Create a content calendar: To ensure that your content promotion efforts are consistent and effective, create a content promotion calendar. This will help you plan and schedule your content promotion in advance, so you can stay organized and on track.

6. Use paid promotion selectively: While paid promotion can be a great way to boost visibility, it’s important to use it selectively. Not all content will perform well with paid promotion, so be sure to test different pieces to see which ones are most effective.

7. Track and measure your results: Finally, it’s important to track and measure your results to understand what is working and what isn’t. Use tools such as Google Analytics, social media analytics, and email marketing software to measure the success of your content promotion efforts.

By following these tips, you can effectively promote your content and reach your target audience. Remember to be consistent, test and measure your results, and optimize your content over time for maximum reach and engagement.

Which Content Promotion Channels Are Most Effective?

So which channels are most effective at promoting your content. Well of course the answer is “it depends” on many factors. For the majority of companies, focusing on your own website seems to be a good first place to start, followed by email.

Survey: 46% Of Marketers Have Content Marketing Strategy, Only 25% Track Social Media Results
Source: MarketingCharts

Let’s take a look at some of these channels in a bit more depth:

1. Your Website: In my definition of content marketing, it doesn’t count if you don’t publish it on your website. The main reason is because this is where you want to attract new prospects through organic search and SEO. It is also more measurable than most channels. (It’s also why we exist!) So don’t forget to optimize your content for search engines. Use keywords in your content, meta tags and descriptions, and internal and external links to boost your content’s visibility on search engine results pages.

2. Email Marketing: Email marketing is a highly effective way to reach your existing audience and promote your content. Personalize your subject lines to increase open rates and segment your email list to ensure that your content is reaching the right people. Use A/B testing to determine the most effective subject lines, calls to action and sending time for your audience.

3. Social Media: Social media is a great way to reach a large, engaged audience. However, it’s important to choose the right platforms for your brand and target audience. For example, if your target audience is primarily B2B, LinkedIn may be a better choice than Instagram. Once you’ve identified the right platforms, make sure to optimize your content for each channel by using the appropriate format and hashtags.

4. Paid Advertising: Paid advertising can be a great way to quickly boost visibility for your content. Consider using platforms like Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and LinkedIn Ads to reach your target audience. Be sure to set clear goals and track your results to optimize your campaigns over time.

5. Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing can be a great way to reach a new audience and boost credibility for your brand by tapping into the influence of others. Identify influencers in your industry who have a following that aligns with your target audience (we use Buzzsumo), and work with them to create sponsored content that features your brand and products.

6. Employee Advocacy: Ok so this is my secret weapon tip and it’s the main reason why we were so successful at building success at SAP. We built an army of writers and employees willing to promote our content on their own social platforms. Our first 100 or so email subscribers were sales people who used our content to sell on LinkedIn.

Which Sources Actually Deliver The Most Impact?

I have looked for this data for hours! Turns out no matter which source you find (Hubspot, Alexa, etc) the answer is pretty clear:

80-90% of website traffic comes from organic search and people finding their way to your website directly.

Social only accounts for 4-6% on average and less than 5% in most B2B Companies. And paid traffic accounts for less than 0.5% of traffic!

All the more reason to focus on content marketing to generate the most traffic and leads!

Chart comparing traffic sources by niche

Some Other Promotion Channels

While the aforementioned channels are the main staples of your promotion strategy, there are some different, more niche places for you to post your content. Try them out and note which ones work and which don’t:

  • Post a thread on www.inbound.org
  • Find a relevant Reddit thread
  • Look for a Slack community about your topic or industry
  • Post your product/tool on Product Hunt
  • Create a Snapchat story with tips about your content, then include a link for viewers to screenshot (we recommend a bit.ly!)
  • Post on Instagram with a link to your content in your bio

Once you get your engine up and running, you can optimize for conversion and increase leads without creating any new content!

In conclusion, promoting your content is just as important as creating it. By using a variety of channels, you can reach your target audience and drive engagement. Remember to track your results and optimize your campaigns over time for maximum reach and engagement.

Need Engaging Content To Promote on Your Channels?

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content that’s consistently published, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

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