How Content Marketing Can Grow Your Business In 2021
If you’re a small or a medium-sized company and you’ve never heard of content marketing, I’d like to ask you something: have you been living under a rock all this time?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a “strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
What is “valuable, relevant and consistent content” in content marketing?
Valuable content is the type of content that your specific customers are searching for. Let’s say you are a CBD oil company and you have an online store with CBD oils, supplements, and oil diffusers. Your customers will probably enjoy articles on how to use CBD oil for lowering stress, anxiety, and physical pain. They’ll also like to read on ways to lower stress using natural approaches.
Relevant content is the kind of content that relates to your reader’s problems.
For example, if you usually write about CBD oils on your blog, it does not make sense to start writing about cameras. Focus only on one topic that solves a pressing problem. As a result, your readers will start trusting your company and what you have to promote.
Consistent content means that you need to be able to offer written or video content on a consistent basis. Decide how often you’re giving out content, tell this to your audience and stick to your promise.
As I said before, your audience needs to trust you in order to consume your content. Trust is earned through behavior that is consistent and promises that are fulfilled.
Another important thing is to make sure that your ideal reader doesn’t feel as if you’re trying to sell him/her something.
What your ideal customer wants is not necessarily your product. They first need that precious advice or information that would help them manage their current situation.
The type of content readers are more likely to consume
According to content marketing specialist, Krishna Shastry, not just any type of content will create value for your readers. Quality content that gives valuable insights into the readers’ problems is likely to convince online readers to jump on a subscription train (aka a newsletter) or place a sale.
Quality content is simple, easy to read, and informal. In other words, it will make you feel like you’re being advised by a good friend who has solutions to your problems.
Famous brands that use content marketing for growth
In order to succeed in business, you need to follow other people’s examples. Agreed?
If you’re not yet convinced of the power of content in creating long-term success, look at the following brands that have made used of content (video and written) to grow and keep their clientele over the years.
This company is famous for its traditional, specialty, and custom pizza. Domino’s Pizza is committed to using tech to better serve its customers. They know that, as long as they are up-to-date with the new technology around marketing and sales, their ROI goals are going to be accomplished every year. It is known that half of the company’s sales come from its content marketing efforts.
The company used a content marketing strategy idea called “Wedding registry”. This strategy was created to promote pizza to young pizza lovers who are going to walk down the aisle. How interesting!
The French luxury brand known for its expensive leather bags is a firm believer in content marketing. They create visually appealing videos showcasing their leather products and adding behind-the-scenes content to be open about their manufacturing process. Here’s an attractive video promoting one of their well-known bags (warning: the video may make you cry)
MailChimp, the email marketing service provider is one of the greatest companies in digital marketing. They use content marketing to promote brand visibility and create trust in the company’s services. The company uses a learning resource hub and a blog to educate people on the values of email marketing and give an inside look at the company.
This company had incredible success since it started in 2001 and its revenue in 2019 was a whopping $700 million! (yeah, I am jealous, too!)
Its unique brand and interesting graphics make MailChimp an approachable email marketing platform that is fun and easy to use.
Everyone knows what a Rolex is.
When I was little, kids would walk around my block with fake Rolexes to show off (if you had an expensive watch-even a fake one, you were considered “rich”).
The Swiss watch manufacturer uses elegance and professionalism in their content to attract high-class clientele and promote their brand worldwide. Here’s one of their videos that I think captures the company’s fine brand:
I don’t think there is anyone on this planet who has never heard of Coca-Cola. My first memory of Coca-Cola was at my grandparents’ place. My uncle brought over several crates with Coca-Cola soft drink bottles, and that’s when I drank my first ever Coke. It was sweet, bubbly, and refreshing. I instantly fell in love with its taste.
I now associate a bottle of Coke not only with a hot summer’s day at my grandparents’ place but also with my years as a student of Psychology, and with feeling awkward among strangers at my friends’ dinner parties in Helsinki, Finland.
How can you not love Coke when it reminds you of so many wonderful things?
However, the company has faced some challenges around retaining customers during the years as people were drinking less and less soda. That’s when Coca-Cola started making use of content marketing. As a result, they created an online magazine to maintain their customers and continue to shine as a leader in the manufacturing, retailing and marketing of nonalcoholic beverages.
Here is a piece of video content that shows the company’s top values: recycling and sustainability.
Random House is an American book publisher and a part of Penguin Random House owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.
The publisher came up with the idea of starting a content marketing practice using Medium.
On Medium they publish interesting content for book lovers and they promote content from various literary magazines. Here’s one interesting article on bullying.
You’ve probably never heard of Hubspot if you’ve never tried content marketing. As a long-term content marketing user, I know that Hubspot is the number one company that educates people on the importance of creating, promoting and repurposing content for online business success.
Hubspot is a master at making people understand that content sells and creates long-term success for brands.
One of their strategies is to get people’s emails so they can sign up to their newsletters and free educational blog posts.
When someone signs up, they receive a free giveaway. This can be a content strategy template, an editorial calendar template or a SEO strategy plan.
In addition to this, they also provide free classes that teach young entrepreneurs SEO, inbound marketing, and content creation methods.
As a result of their incredible effort to educate people for free on the importance of content marketing, the company brought in $883 million in 2020.
And this is 31% more than they brought in 2019.
Are you interested in following Hubspot’s incredible content marketing success steps?
Here is what you should do:
- Set SMART goals
In order to be successful with your content, you need to set SMART goals. SMART goals refer to goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
For example, you can decide to increase your monthly revenue by 20%.
This means that, if your company only brings in $1500 per month, you need to bring $300 more. You can either create a course that it’s worth $299 or a service that gives tremendous value to your audience. However, you don’t need to come up with a product that is the exact sum of money that you want to raise.
As Ramit Sethi would say, you can either create a $4.99 e-book or e-course and sell it to 60 people or an in-depth online training package priced at $299 and sell it to at least one person.
For more information on how you can set SMART goals regarding your content, check out this video:
2. Determine your KPIs
What are KPIs? KPIs are key performance indicators that you can use to measure your content’s performance against your goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, your KPIs would be an increase in site traffic, more newsletter sign-ups, more social media followers, or reviews and mentions by other brands or users of your services.
If you want to learn more about KPIs, Skillcrush has a sweet and short video that explains the term really well.
3. What is your content budget?
In order to increase your revenue through content marketing, you need to know how much your company can afford to spend on creating and promoting content. The old business adage saying you need to spend money to make money applies very well here.
You also need to remember that the type of content that converts is high quality and addressed to your online clientele. Online content differs from the type of journalistic content that newspapers use.
Hiring a great content writer is critical for your business’ success. Thus, make sure you hire quality content writers to word your business story in a way that engages people and leaves them wanting for more.
4. What is the type of content you need to create?
This step is a bit more difficult. You need to understand the type of customers your company is attracting. What kind of people would use what you offer? Are they young, old, or middle-aged? What kind of social media channels do they use? Are they tech-savvy and do they often make online purchases?
Would they like to watch a video before buying something or they’re more interested in written content and online reviews?
After coming up with some ideas of what your ideal customer might look like, you can then start creating your content. The type of content you can create is blog, video, infographics, social media content, podcasts and paid ads.
Every one of these types of content is highly effective in promoting your brand’s core values and strengths.
5. Create and promote your content
This is the “action” part of content marketing. Write, edit and promote the online content using your company’s social media channels. Remember to not skip the “promotion” part of this step. If you write a blog post and decide to skip on promoting it, it’s like you have written nothing.
Writing and promotion come hand in hand. It is very much like that saying:
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
This is a philosophical statement raised by George Berkely in “A Treatise Concerning The Principles of Human Knowledge”. It basically means that once something happens and there is no spectator to observe this specific event, the event is canceled (as in, it never happened).
This explanation is related to the nature of our mind that perceives reality through a subjective lens.
If I don’t see any yellow roses in my garden and if I haven’t seen a yellow rose in my life, I would conclude that yellow roses don’t exist. Or, in the words of George Berkely, ” “To be” means “to be perceived”.”
The same thing goes for your content. Your content doesn’t exist if it’s not read by anybody.
You can write the best content in the world, but without an audience, it will go to waste.
Reality is highly subjective, remember that.
6. Analyze your results
You can use Google Analytics to see how your content performed and if you hit your content goals in a specific time frame. Your Google Analytics profile will show you the articles and pieces of content that resonated most with your audience. It will also reveal to you if your content performed well.
You can check this by measuring the bounce rate of each blog post.
According to Yoast, a bounce rate is a percentage of people who came to your website and did completely nothing on the page they have landed. This means that, if you have a high bounce rate, you have attracted a high number of people that do not resonate with your website’s pages and content. They also do not receive value from your content, and they exit your blog fast.
The lower the bounce rate, the higher are the chances that your readers are getting value from you. Thus, if your bounce rate is low, your content is doing really well.
You can get into the meat and bones of content marketing by accessing HubSpot’s blog and online materials.
Conclusion
All in all, content marketing will skyrocket your business success.
However, you need to make sure that you follow a strict publishing schedule, that you write and promote content that serves your audience and meets their needs.
You’ll also need to analyze your results to see if they’re in line with the goals you’ve set for your business.
Companies like Hermes or Hubspot have always used high-quality content to increase brand awareness and make their followers feel as if they’ve found answers to their problems by engaging with their brand.
You can also create a memorable experience for your customers by tapping into the powers of quality content to promote your company.
Have you used content marketing to reach your business goals? Let us know in the comment section below.