I know you’ve probably heard that having a content marketing strategy is a quick way to bring in traffic.
And it’s true, in the realm of business promoti0n, content marketing kicks ass on a bunch of different levels.
However, once you start working on your campaign, you’ll find that reality is a different story. There’s a whole list of things you’ll have to do if you’re going to kick ass with this type of marketing.
In this post, we’re going to look at how other companies are using content marketing so we can separate the fantasy from the reality in content marketing.
And guess what?
By the time you’re finished reading this post, you’ll be well on your way to creating content that you can use to promote your business online.
Is a Content Marketing Strategy Really Worth It?
Let’s talk about how you can immediately save money with content marketing. First of all, you won’t need to spend loads of money on digital advertising.
According to Wordstream, the average small business that’s using Google ads spends between $9,000 and $10,000 per month on their advertising campaigns. That’s $100,000 to $120,000 per year!
(Not only that, but you’ll have to hire a copywriter to write your ads so they convert; so that’s another expense. You’ll also have to keep track of your ad campaigns and analyze the results.)
Another sad part about that method is once the ads are offline, they are finished until you start up another campaign.
Compare that to having a content marketing strategy.
Once you hit the publish button on a post or article, it will stay there until its removed. That means you can have content online for years generating revenue for your business.
And guess what?
You don’t have to pay for it every day. If the content is good and you’re promoting it regularly, that piece of content can bring more business in continuously.
More Reasons Why Online Ads Suck
There are a variety of reasons why a content marketing strategy can beat the crap out of using online ads.
First of all, online ads have a few problems:
- Ads interrupt customers to get noticed
- Advertisements don’t provide any reason for the customer to read them
- As we’ve already seen, ads are expensive
- Ads only capture people’s attention for brief periods of time
- You still need a copywriter to write your ads
So a clear alternative to running ads or some other interruptive message is t0 use content marketing.
But why is content marketing a better way to do advance your business?
Why Content Marketing Rules Over Ads
To me, the main reason why content marketing rules, is the money to relationship value. What do I mean by “money to relationship”?
What I mean by that is you actually get more value from building a relationship with your audience rather than just interrupting them. The more of a relationship you build, the more business you’ll bring in thus increasing your revenue.
Not only that, but you’ll save quite a load of money by not running ads. (Remember, on average, small businesses are spending between 100,000 to 120,000 per year on ads.)
Here are a few more reasons why I love content marketing:
- You can repurpose the content in a variety of different ways
- You can become an online authority in your niche
- It provides value to your audience thus establishing trust in your business
- It will educate your customers about your products or services
- If your content is good enough it will get shared for free
- It will help your sites SEO
- It’s specific to your business
- You can test content marketing online for free before committing to a strategy that might not work
- Creating apps, websites, and other online tools is another way to use content
For someone starting on a shoestring, content marketing is an excellent alternative to spending all kinds of money on online advertising. If you don’t have a good enough budget for regular advertising you can start with nothing.
Here’s a video on what content marketing will look like in 2019:
Content Marketers Who Are Killing It
Hubspot
Hubspot is a good example of how to use content marketing effectively. Not only do they provide excellent content on their site, but they repurpose that content into downloadable reports for you to keep on your hard drive.
They also have sites where you can take courses online for free. Some of the courses will actually certify you in a particular area of expertise. (Like SEO or content marketing.)
Hubspot’s Content Marketing Success:
- Over 450,000 monthly organic traffic
- They’re using 165,000 keywords targeting their niche
- Almost 17,000 backlinks
IBM
Here’s an old-timer company that’s been around forever yet grasped new methods of marketing. (I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.)
Not only is IBM using content marketing in its blogs, but it has been using video content to stay in the public eye while being innovative. To give you a good example of what I mean, here’s a video created by the computer giant that got a lot of success.
They created a video story out of nothing but atoms. As a matter of fact, it’s called, “A Boy and His Atom”.
Rip Curl
Rip Curl touts itself as “The Ultimate Surfing Company” and it’s basically it’s a company that sells clothing and sportswear to surfers.
The company has cleverly used an effective way of producing content which combines stunning video and interviews by big-time surfers.
So the content draws in the surfing crowd with great interviews by the rockstars of the surfing world, while selling their clothing line to them. I’m thinking they probably had a lot of other companies to take this model from because they are also creating a lot of content for social media as well.
A Quick Start Guide to Content Marketing
OK, I know how blasted impatient you can be, so I’ll give you a quick start guide to content marketing.
I’ll also give you a list of resources you can use to find out more about how you can make a serious wave with it.
Step 1: First you’ll need to figure out what your business’s goals are. You’ll need to write out a content marketing plan which will be your guide to exactly what your content’s centralized theme will be. Resource: Hubspot’s Guide to a Content Strategy
Step 2: Determine what type of formats you want to use for creating your content. In other words, are you going to write blog posts, create videos, podcasts, or downloadable reports? There is a wide array of formats for you to use. Resource: 105 Different Types of Content by Convince andConvert
Step 3: Get good at creating the type of content you’re going to use. If you’re going to use video, learn how to create good videos. If you’re going to learn how to write engaging blog posts, learn how to write them.
Resources:
- Writing blog posts: SmartBlogger, Neil Patel Video, Copyblogger
- Creating videos: Video Brewery, Mention
Step 5: Promote your content. For every hour you put into writing your content, you should spend 2 hours promoting it. Resource: Neil Patel on How to Promote Content
Step 4: Track your success. Just like any other type of marketing, you must keep track of how your efforts are doing. If something isn’t working, either rework it, retest it or ditch it. Resouce: Single Grain’s Guide to Tracking Your Content Marketing
Conclusion
Content marketing is big right now. Almost every business on the planet could use this valuable strategy.
As a matter of fact, once you get good at promoting your business, you can easily get a side hustle going by helping other businesses with their content marketing. I mean, heck, if it worked for your business, it can work for other people’s businesses.
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