According to a Forrester study, the average person looks at 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchasing decision. Some of that content is likely about deciding whether they should buy one thing over another. It’s important to understand how your customers navigate the path from awareness to purchase. Which content drives them further down that path? How does that content compare to the product or service you offer? Its fair to say your content is the backbone of your digital marketing strategy, no matter what stage of the funnel it’s for.
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What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing that focuses on attracting relevant leads through content (such as blogs and videos) that doesn’t directly promote your brand or products, but implicitly drives interest in them. For example, a post with how-to instructions on making lasagna might not mention the business’ name, but it still supports the brand’s mission to provide quality recipes.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
Content marketing is one of the most powerful ways to promote your business online. Content marketing is about more than just creating interesting online material. It’s about providing your prospects and customers with valuable information, with the goal of generating trust and driving loyalty, engagement, and ultimately sales.
What are the Benefits of Content Marketing?
Engaging your audience with high-quality content is one of the best ways to promote your business and grow your audience. From blog posts to ebooks, infographics and video, content marketing creates valuable content that can be used to attract customers on your website and on tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest to maximize their reach. An eye-opening study by Kapost found that content marketing produces 3x more leads per dollar spent when compared to paid search. Finally, content marketing is a great way to generate backlinks and indexed pages, shout out your brand, and maintain a consistent presence in news feeds.
What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
A content marketing strategy is the first step in creating brand awareness with potential customers. An effective content marketing strategy is a multi-stage process that involves a variety of tactics. One part of the strategy focuses on awareness, driving people to your website or blog. The other part focuses on attraction, converting visitors into leads by offering products or information they want to buy. Its so much more than just writing blog posts. It’s about identifying the right message, delivering it in the most relevant way and making sure people take action. Your goal is to increase awareness, generate leads and ultimately drive sales and revenue.
What are examples of Content Marketing?
There are various types of content marketing strategies you can use. At Scrape Inc. our Content Marketing Specialists design content marketing funnels across 3 main areas. At every stage of the funnel, we create a content marketing calendar that is relevant and valuable to visitors. Unfortunately, too many companies focus on one part of the funnel while neglecting others. ToFu (Top of the Funnel) Content focuses on brand awareness and site traffic through great headlines, teasers, and photos. MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) Content educates and informs prospects by answering questions on landing pages, product pages or eBooks/Product Guides. BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel) Content focuses on conversion to paid service or product through personalized email nurturing campaigns and targeted landing pages that educate visitors about how your product or service will solve their problems.
How Content Marketing Works?
It’s a fair assumption that most of us will do our homework before making a final decision about a product or service. We ask friends for recommendations, we look at reviews and blog posts, compare prices and features. We all ask questions before making decisions. This means that your content marketing efforts need to cater to these questions. Research by Kapost shows that creating blog content for your website is the best kind of SEO you can do. It is also one of the top things Google recommends for boosting your website ranking, and it also increases your customer base by providing more value to people who visit your site.
How to Start Content Marketing?
There is a few things to keep in mind before you start creating your marketing funnel.
- Don’t try to do it all at the same time – Focus on one area of your funnel based on the outcome you want for each of them.
- Update them regularly, and when you have everything set up correctly, it will increase your conversion and lead to better results over time.
- Focus on building thought leadership content marketing instead of sales copy
- Don’t forget SEO and key word research – Check out our blog on “How does SEO work” for tips on developing keyword optimized content.
- Start with the aim to build awareness about your brand and what you offer with the use of great headlines, teasers and photos. Once your audience learns about your brand, the next step is to educate and inform them by answering questions they have on landing pages, product pages or eBooks/Product Guides and once they are familiar with your business, it’s time to focus on converting visitors into paying customers through personalized email nurturing campaigns and targeted landing pages that educate visitors about how your product or service will solve their problems.”
We hope this blog has highlighted how content marketing can help grow your business. We understand that its not easy to create good content REGULARLY (consistency is key here). Successful content marketing is a balance of thoughtful topic selection, solid keyword research and analysis, proofreading for grammar mistakes, and an eye towards information architecture. Scrape Inc is a Content Marketing Agency Toronto Leader. We work with our clients to strategize and develop content marketing funnels and email marketing campaigns that help them build trust with their consumers, attract more qualified leads and increase sales and customer retention. Starting at $250 per month, our Content Marketing Managers will curate monthly blogs consisting of up to 500 words, linked sources, and a relevant stock image.
Email contact@scrapeinc.com to book a free strategy discussion on your content marketing, email marketing campaigns and lead nurturing campaign requirements.