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How to use Content Marketing to Attract Customers and Generate Sales
Marketing is about creating interest, a demand, from the consumer. But it’s not enough. Once there, you have to lead the customer along the buying process to get a deal. You can do this with the help of content marketing.
Cold leads
As a marketer, you are often measured by how many leads you generate, before the contact information is passed on to sales. The problem is that these leads are usually too cold, which leads to a waste of the seller’s time and makes it choose its own paths – without collaboration with the marketing department.
What is the solution then? This is very tough. There are two types of marketers. Those who make content with the goal of attracting contact information from the visitor as quickly as possible, and those who make content fort the sake of making it and not as part of a strategy.
In the first case, usually the method is inbound marketing, the tool marketing automation and the purpose lead generation. The problem with this approach is that you may feel overly intrusive.
In the second case, content marketing is often used as a method and the website is your tool with the purpose of building brand and awareness. The disadvantage here is that it is easy to forget the business benefits.
Is there then no “right way”, a middle way to go? Well, actually there is!
1. Analyze existing content (content audit)
Before you begin, be sure to keep track of your Personas and your Buyer journey / Customer journey as well as keyword analysis.
Without the person and understanding of the customer journey, it will be difficult to evaluate whether your existing content is good or bad and where there are shortcomings, etc.
Here’s how to do a content audit:
- Collect URL’s for all content/blog posts into a spreadsheet
- Collect info for each url
- number of visits
- Bounce rate
- What is the desired conversion (eg get visitor’s email)
- conversion rate
- Which keywords/search phrases do you want it to rank high for and what ranking your post actually has
- Which keywords it actually ranks highest for
- Number of links
- Reach in social media
- Analyze the respective content
- Search for desirable search phrases and note competing content that ranks better and why they might do it?
- Is something in need of updating?
- Are there any gaps that would make the content better?
- Does content need to rank higher in search results?
- Need content to convert better?
- SEO Failure?
- Is it possible to create new content from the same source, e.g. do an infographic, a movie clip, etc?
2. Evaluate what new content should be produced
For this step, in addition to Persona’s and Buyer’s journey/customer journey, you also need to have done a proper keyword analysis. In addition to finding out what visitors and customers want/need along the entire buyer journey/customer journey, it needs to be compared to what is most relevant to your company’s products/services as well as what expertise you actually have.
TOFU content
A keyword analysis is needed as input so you know which search phrases are worth creating content for the top of your funnel, so-called. TOFU content (Top Of FUnnel). Try to get content that is engaging and something that people want to share
TOFU content is content that should be used to attract strangers to your site and make them read / read through the first content. Thus content that aims to drive highly relevant traffic and find leads.
Examples of TOFU content:
- Blog Posts
- Guides
- Pictures
- infographics
- Video
- checklists
MOFU content
For the middle part of your funnel, so-called MOFU content (Middle Of FUnnel) can sometimes suffice with keyword analysis if there is enough search volume linked to the search phrases visitors may have that are more directly linked to your product/service. But most often you may need to supplement with analysis of the visitors:
- How visitors navigate the website
- How visitors interact with existing content (eg Hotjar)
- What they look for when they are on your site
- What those who become customers read before deciding to buy
- Short questions to visitors (eg Hotjar)
Examples of MOFU content:
- Webinar
- faq
- Video
- Case study
- Ebook
BOFU content
For the bottom of your funnel, the so-called BOFU content (Bottom Of FUnnel) is about getting content that supports a person who is ready to make a decision to buy. Also content that helps a new customer become a regular satisfied customer and hopefully also an ambassador.
Examples of BOFU content:
- benefits
- ROI
- Explainer/demo video
Tips on new things to write about and content to create
For ideas? Here are some tips on how to come up with new things to write about:
- Questions asked at Quora within your area
- Forum categories and topics from a relevant forum
- Questions your customers have asked
- Lists of best influencers / tools / infographics / recipes / products or whatever is right for your business
- Wikipedia’s table of contents/headings on relevant topics
3. Create an editorial calendar
A Content Marketing Editorial Calendar is needed if you are seriously investing in Content Marketing.
The following factors determine how important it is to have an editorial calendar:
- How often content is created
- How many are involved
- How many different types of content and channels it should be published in
Depending on needs, there are different variants such as a WordPress plugin, google calendar or a spreadsheet if you don’t need a more complex and customized tool.
News jacking
What is news jacking? The idea is to quickly take advantage of existing news or topics that are being talked about. This way you can more easily reach out with your content because the media is happy to publish things that spin on hot news or make some funny twist on it.
But it’s not just the media that likes to spread such content, but we, as individuals, also seem to like to spread and talk about when someone has come up with a fun way to engage with existing news.
In order to take advantage of newsjacking you need to set up alerts (eg Google alerts, a signal signal for spoken media), keep track of twitter, and monitor relevant blogs. Of course, you need to be prepared to produce content quickly. Here you can both think of traditional media but more common is to use Social media.
Don’t forget to use the hashtags as trends and feel free to make outreach to the right influencers and journalists to maximize the possibility that your post will go viral.
