20May 2023
A well-executed content marketing strategy can lower the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) of a new client. It can also save the sales team time.
Whether you use social media, email or corporate blogs, your buyer persona needs relevant content to navigate the marketing funnel and make a purchase. That’s why content marketing is so powerful.
1. Lead generation
A key goal for any business is to generate leads, and content marketing is a great way to do it. By creating content that is relevant to your audience you can attract potential clients and capture their details through lead capturing methods like email opt-ins.
Lead generation is achieved through a range of different content formats including blog posts, webinars, podcasts, case studies and white papers. It’s important to research your audience in order to understand what type of content they want to see, which can be done through a customer avatar or by performing keyword research.
It’s also important to focus on the user experience. This means not getting too caught up with SEO and always thinking about how the content will benefit your target audience. A good example of this would be writing a blog post about the benefits of using a spare tire instead of waiting to replace it with a full one.
2. Brand awareness
Brand awareness is a critical component of every content marketing strategy.
However, many content marketers focus too much on SEO and other metrics, and forget that the audience should always be the main goal. Content that isn’t created with the user in mind will fail to deliver on its goals, which can include building brand awareness.
The best way to achieve this is through consistent, helpful information. This can be through blog posts, info pages, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and even social media posts. This will help to demonstrate your expertise and create affinity with your target audience.
It’s important to remember that building brand awareness takes time. Buyers operate on their own schedules, and it can take nine months for a prospect to move through your sales funnel. That’s why it’s important to be patient and stick with a solid content marketing plan. Consistency is key, and your efforts will pay off. This includes using your data to make strategic decisions on what content to produce and how frequently.
3. Conversion
A content marketing strategy that drives conversion requires more than just SEO or a blog. It requires purposefully producing multi-page experiences for a specific idea and audience segment. These are the modern reincarnation of microsites and take advantage of the fact that SEO-primed clusters of targeted, engaging HTM pages perform better than single-page experiences.
The best conversion-oriented content is often educational in nature, providing value for your audience members without promoting your products directly. This helps you build trust with your audience, and is especially important for top-of-funnel audiences (awareness, interest, or consideration).
However, don’t be afraid to include product mentions in this type of content. As long as you don’t use them excessively, they can help people understand how your products fit into their lives. For example, hair care brand Curlsmith doesn’t push their products until the very end of this informative blog post on how to achieve a healthy balance of protein and moisture.
4. Customer retention
In addition to helping companies acquire customers, content marketing can help brands retain loyal followers who are willing to recommend products and services. A company can do this by providing useful content that adds value to their audience, such as how-to articles or comparison articles.
To increase customer retention, businesses should focus on educating their audience at every stage of the buying process. This can be done through content that answers commonly asked questions, product descriptions, or videos.
As a company develops its content marketing strategy, it should set attainable goals and decide what metrics to use. It is also important to collect and analyze data on a regular basis to make sure that content marketing efforts are working. This can be done through software such as Airtable, which provides a free, user-friendly tool for storing and analyzing data. The more accurate this information is, the better a company can determine its current strengths and weaknesses.