Content marketing isn’t a new marketing concept or trend. Marketing companies have been doing it for years, but for a lot of companies it’s a brand new ball game.
So why is content marketing so important? Because it can get you brand awareness, trust from customers, increase your web presence through rankings and traffic, and help to make you become known as an industry leader.
Oh, and it can also gain your business more leads. So what kind of content can get someone on your site to fill out a form?
Let’s talk about the most common types of content. They may take more time than blogging, but are well worth the time.
EBooks
These are generally a little bit longer. Some may say you only need a couple pages to a dozen, and some say make them longer. It all depends on the topic and how much resourceful is in it. If you create fluff or constantly repeat yourself just to get to a magic number of pages or chapters than you are doing it wrong.
You can repurpose your blog posts and go into more detail in your eBooks. Be sure to use visuals and media to break up the text and make it more visually appealing to the reader. Find an issue in your industry, or a topic that has a lot of material that can be useful to your niche, and get to writing.
Then create calls to action on relevant pages on your site that will drive traffic to your landing page where the visitor can fill out their information to download your eBook. You can also promote it online through guest posting, paid media services like Outbrain, and by driving traffic to your landing pages.
Case Studies
When you want to convince people about how great you are, show them proof! When people see real-life case studies of what you did for another customer and how it improved their life or business, then they will be more inclined that you will be able to do the same for them.
Show them statistics like how you gained them more traffic, got them more leads, brought them more revenue, increased their conversions, or improved their profit margins. Whatever it may be, if you provide compelling statistics then surely others will want to see the same results.
Giveaways and contests
Everyone loves to win something for free, or at least have the chance to do so without much effort. Make it easy for them by having a simple and short form for them to fill out to enter the contest.
Also, to gain more awareness, give users more entries to the giveaway if they share the contest on their social accounts. This will give it a much wider reach, and not only get you more leads but also introduce your brand to new people.
Webinars and slideshows
Most webinars are done live and use slideshows as their visual. Try to make them appealing and not just a list of bullet points on each page. If you are having trouble getting people to attend your webinars, host them on other popular and industry related sites to get your name and brand out there. Also, record your webinars and post them on your site so visitors can view and listen to them on their own time.
Then repurpose those slideshows on sites like Slideshare to gain more attraction to them. If they are great slideshows that provide a lot of value, then you could expect that they will also drive traffic back to your site. People that visit your site from these generally have an interest and want to find out more, as you just showed them you know what you’re talking about.
Have a call to action where you have the slides posted and then setup a landing page where you can get their information to find out more, or to receive more materials like an eBook or case study.
Blog posts
These can either be blog posts that you have on your own site, or guest blog posts that you write on industry related and non-competitive sites. Generally blogging is a very affordable method for content marketing. Either way, you need to show off your expertise, make them resourceful so that the reader can take away something from it, and then you can hopefully begin to see some of that traffic converting into leads.
When you are doing keyword research or looking at trends to find out what to write about, don’t write your posts for the search engines. Find a problem that a current or potential customer has, and provide a solution within your post. Relevant keywords will naturally be used in your copy so that you don’t have to stuff them for the sake of getting more search engine visibility.