How to Succeed
with Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategy that leverages content, tailored and distributed to a specific audience, to attract and convert better-qualified leads and keep customers engaged long-term. Content is the cornerstone of inbound marketing, and one of the most effective ways to build trust with both new leads and existing customers.

Sounds promising enough, but why content? Isn’t there another way to yield the same outcome?

You rely on your marketing to achieve two things for your brand:

1. Help your organization stand out as a credible, reliable and trustworthy provider
2. Attract a steady flow of qualified leads, and nurture them through the buyer’s journey

Content marketing can help you achieve both of these objectives simultaneously. The more high-quality, high-value and properly optimized content you publish, the better your credibility and the easier it is for potential customers to find you.

At the most basic level, you need to publish content to achieve a favorable ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The more frequently you publish content, the more often search engines will crawl your site and the more opportunities you have to improve your ranking.

But beyond making it easier to find your site through search, content marketing also helps nurture customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

You can use content to address questions and challenges at the beginning of the process, help introduce solutions and success stories during the decision phase, ensure buyers are getting the most from their new investment after purchase and keep customers engaged until they begin the buying cycle again—even transforming satisfied clients into brand advocates.

Content is a crucial ingredient of your brand’s success on social media, too. Not only are social platforms a great channel for promoting content, but maintaining a steady stream of content also ensures your social accounts have plenty of activity. Each new piece of content you share is another opportunity to drive engagement with new and existing followers.

Content is the fuel you need to keep your marketing engine humming and, without it, your marketing efforts will eventually stall out.

Of course, it also takes a significant amount of time and other precious resources to create quality content. How can you make sure your efforts bear fruit?

To meet your marketing objectives, your content should be three things:

• Relevant.
  Every piece of content should be created for a specific purpose and must be tailored to your target audience or persona. In some cases, this might mean answering a common question or addressing a key challenge. In other cases, it might be sharing a customer success story or taking a stance on a new industry development.
  
  Regardless of what you hope to accomplish through your content, you need to first make sure it’s applicable to your audience.
  
  
• Valuable.
  Before you create a piece of content, ask yourself: is this valuable to my audience? Unless the answer is a definitive “yes,” you may need to rethink your approach. When people search online, they want to be informed, educated and walk away with a new bit of knowledge.
  
  If everything you publish is product-focused and self-serving, it’s going to drive readers straight into the arms of your competitors. Instead, share tips and best practices, research and data, timely and newsworthy thought leadership and other content that keeps readers coming back for more.
  
  
• Consistent.
  Publishing at a regular cadence isn’t easy. In fact, it’s one aspect of content marketing we find businesses struggle with most. But publishing at regular intervals is crucial to maintaining a steady stream of the right kind of traffic.
  
  

Think of your website like a theme park. Each new piece of content represents another attraction through which you can entice qualified leads. Your existing attractions will still bring people in, but if you never update those attractions or create exciting, new things to experience, eventually crowds will taper off and go elsewhere.

At the same time, though, you should never create content for the sake of creating content. If you have to choose between quality and quantity, always err on the side of quality. While a content farm can generate a massive amount of content for cheap, the caliber of content won’t be enough to keep visitors engaged—nor is this a good look for your brand.

Content marketing, like most things, benefits from variety. Each campaign should include a healthy mix of short, snackable content as well as heavier, more in-depth content.

Here are just a few content formats you can include in your content mix:

• Blog posts
• Emails/Newsletters
• Slide Decks
• Infographics
• Videos
• Podcasts
• eBooks/Guides
• Webinars
• Case studies
• Live demos
• Calculators
• Interactive webpages

Of course, your content marketing strategy should be designed to nurture leads through the buyer’s journey—and each content type should drive to another piece of content placed further down the funnel.

For example, let’s say your company sells project management software. A blog post about improving team efficiency might bring someone through the door, and end with a call to action (CTA) that guides the reader onto an infographic about employee productivity. The infographic may lead to a more in-depth eBook about using technology to improve workplace collaboration, which directs to a case study highlighting a client’s success with your software. After completing the case study, the lead is encouraged to sign up for a free demo.

But if so many businesses are creating content—including your competitors—how can you attract attention?

Earlier, we explained that for content to be successful it needs to be both relevant and valuable. But both of these qualities are subjective. What’s important to the VP of marketing may not be important to the CFO. What motivates a seasoned office manager will likely be different from what motivates an entry-level software engineer.

To make sure you’re able to stand out in the crowd, you need to identify your buyers and speak directly to their wants and needs. To build an accurate buyer persona profile, you’ll need to determine...

• Who has the final say when it comes to making the purchase?
• Who influences the decision?
• How many people are involved in the buying committee?
• What are the pain points and challenges of each person involved in the purchase process?
• How do these people spend their time online?

Once you’ve created relevant and valuable content, you need to use distribution and promotional tactics that align with your buyer personas’ behaviors, too. For example, you may be surprised to find a persona is active on Facebook but only uses LinkedIn as an online resume, so you’d want to focus your paid social promotion efforts on Facebook.

Just don’t forget that, regardless of persona, you’re still marketing to people. In addition to making sure your message is relevant, valuable and distributed through the right channels, you should also focus on being human. Be personable, be empathetic and, if it fits your brand’s tone, use humor. You’d be surprised how many otherwise great pieces of content fail simply because the delivery is too stiff or cold.