As it is with any marketing strategy, the objective of content marketing too is to generate qualified leads who may eventually convert into paying customers. While the success of content marketing is often measured by the number of new visitors to your site or the increase in social vanity metrics such as likes and shares, they do not necessarily imply a success with your campaign. The success of your content marketing campaign must hinge on only one metric and that is lead generation.
What content works for your customers?
One of the core objectives of a content marketing campaign is to demonstrate your authority among customers. This can be done in a number of ways. A wealth management company may want to organize webinars or newsletters advising the most profitable investment opportunities. Subscribers who benefit from your advice start viewing your business as an authority in your industry and would thus eventually turn into paying customers. If you are a marketing agency, you may want to showcase a few case studies and also publish Op-Eds on popular industry blogs – this is a wonderful way to demonstrate your knowledge in the industry.
The other major objective of content marketing is to serve as a gateway for your target audience to notice your business and hop on to your platform. This can be done with the help of unique, well-researched content pieces that bring in new visitors from search engines and social media. The first step is to identify what your customers want and how you can fulfill this with content.
Determine content frequency
At the outset, content marketing may seem like a numbers game. The more articles you have, the higher is the chance of being seen by a prospective customer who may then turn into a lead or a paying customer. But it does not work that way in reality. It is not just enough for your target audience to notice you through a blog post or a social media submission. Rather, your content should make your readers informed and also influence their opinion – this is a vital aspect of using content marketing to generate customers.
To put this in short, quality trumps quantity. But this doesn’t negate the fact that more quality content does mean more visibility and higher lead generation. The volume of high quality content you can generate is limited by your budget. You should take a call on your blogging frequency depending on the cost of publishing new content as well as marketing them to reach your target readers.
Market your content
Content marketing does not end with simply publishing quality content. For the best returns on your investment, this content needs to be marketed as well. There are several ways to do this. The most common strategy deployed by many businesses is to spend money on Facebook advertising. Even a few dollars of ad spend can cause a dramatic uptick in the number of readers. On the flip side however, not all visitors from social media platforms are targeted. Consequently, the conversion rate of your content may not always meet your expectations.
Another way to make use of your content to bring new visitors is through organic marketing strategies like search engine optimization. Long form content pieces are relatively easier to optimize and this makes it easier for your business to rank on top of search engines for relevant keyword terms. As a result, businesses may bring down the overall turnaround time for their organic marketing campaigns which improves ROI and contributes towards a healthier cashflow system for your business.
Monitor and tweak
There are dozens of variables that influence a customers’ journey and it is not always possible to predict what will work and what wouldn’t. Marketing thus involves an element of trial and error and this is true for your content campaigns as well. Not all content marketing campaigns bring in the same quality of prospects. Also, your marketing efforts to promote your content also influences the kind of customers you attract. It is important to monitor your conversion rates (both from visitor to lead, as well as from lead to customer) to track the performance of your content marketing campaigns. This way, you can dedicate more resources to campaigns that work and eliminate campaigns that do not show the desired results.
