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The Strategic Importance of Content

Posted by Andy Evanko

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June 20, 2014

     Content and the overall importance of remarkable content in the inbound marketing strategy has been a topic of emphasis throughout our blogs.  There are specific techniques to use while posting content to leverage web visitors to leads.  The main idea is to capture information about a web visitor to convert them into a lead for your business.  The correct placement of an irresistible offer on a content post should convince or persuade a web visitor to offer something back to you, their contact information.  Receiving just one simple piece of information such as a company name, email or website of a single web visitor can be powerful enough to convert this visitor into multiple sales. What can you offer? Content created to tailor to your perfect customer is what you will offer.  However, content can exist in multiple forms in the inbound marketing world.  There is a process of how, when, what and where to place your content and couple it with an irresistible offer to attract the most customer views and receive the most customer information.    

Producing and posting content to your website and social media sites is critical to the process of inbound marketing.  Content includes such items as blogs, related news articles, videos, case studies, white papers, buyer’s guides, videos, newsletter, product literature, etc. 

To incorporate content on your website you require a place to post the content.  This is typically done on a blog page or landing pages accessed through a call-to-action button (e.g., Download Now), or a resources page, or news page. 

The blog page and landing page should be incorporated into your website, but can be done external to the website, through a sub-domain (e.g., blog.companyname.com), and made to look like it is on your website. 

And these days, it needs to be original content, not repurposed content like copying and pasting a news article published by someone else, unless you undertake to do a thoughtful critique of an article you are reposting.

To be effective, the recommended frequency of adding content is a minimum of one or two posting per week of content, but to begin to rank well, three or four postings per week would accelerate the process needed by the search engines to acknowledge that you are serious about making your website a content rich destination for prospect.

The posting frequency is often described as slow, fast, faster, fastest way to inbound success.   The chart form HubSpot’s 2013 Report illustrates the impact of blog frequency on website traffic.

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Types of Content Used in Inbound Marketing

The key to successful content writing is to match the keywords with the buying persona of your prospects.  Buying persona looks at the behavior of your prospects buying influences and seeks to map and match that through content strategies and call to action strategies to engage and connect with prospects.

Blog

Blogs are the most commonly and prolifically used form of content.  They are intended to educate and inform in a highlighted way with a document that typically incorporates about 300 to 700 words.  The keyword is usually incorporated in the title and appears in the first sentence of the document.

Blogging is an absolutely critical component of helping you achieve inbound marketing success.  According to data from HubSpot, a market leader in inbound marketing automation software, companies that blog attract 55% more site visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. Furthermore, companies that blog achieve 126% more lead growth than companies that don’t. Blogging frequency does matter.  The graphs below illustrate the impact of blogging.

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White Paper and eBook

White papers and eBooks are considered premium content because they often provide a more in depth discussion on the topic of interest.  Their goal is to provide rich relevant (information) content to prospects in exchange for their e-mail.  Premium content is typically 7 to 12 pages long.  Both formats often employ photos, infographics, illustrations, graphs and data tables to make the content more visually interesting.

 

Videos

Videos are a great form of content.  They get high ranking, often create inbound links and is liked by the viewer.  YouTube where most videos are presented, is the second highest search platform after Google, which is another supporting argument to use video as a form of content.

Infographics

Infographics have become very popular form of presenting information and concepts for complex or process oriented topics.  When they are done well, they can draw a lot of interest and occasionally go viral with high volume of downloads.

Case Studies, Newsletters and Product Information

Case studies, newsletters and product information are popular ways to nurture prospects and current and past customers with up to date information about your products and services.

  Websites integrated with inbound marketing should offer several types of additional content for web visitors to engage with.  Visitors in your buyer persona may be interested by a different type of content on your site. Some web visitors are more visual than others and may be attracted to a video or infographic while others are technical and would rather enjoy a white paper.  It is of the utmost importance to offer several, if not all, of the content forms mentioned above.  Different inbound content has been found to be more successful at different stages of the buyer cycle. If a potential customers takes a look at one of your content pieces it is beneficial to follow up with a more detailed piece of content the second time in compliment to their first view.  Every piece of follow- up content should continue to guide your potential clients down the sales funnel and educate them into eventually buying your goods and services. 

 

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