How Could Content Marketing Help Firms to Increase Sales and Increase Earnings?
In this digital era, running a business is a herculean task. Especially, today when every other company has gone online rather than just having a traditional brick-and-mortar store. Sale is the ultimate factor that decides how well your company is performing in the market and whether the business is generating profit or hitting rock bottom.
The old advertisement style to increase sales will not going to work for the modern-day savvy customers, who wait for the timer to skip the ads. You need more than a simple product selling strategy to lure the audience and let them know why your offerings differs from your competitors.
This is where content marketing comes into the picture. Not only it provides a unique strategy to increase business sales but it also helps in customer engagement. Content is the medium through which you interact with your customers and explain to them about your products and services.
So, you must be thinking, what exactly is content marketing? Well, to answer precisely and in a short and simple way, it is the type of marketing that is implemented to attract, retain and engage the audience with the help of various content such as blogs, videos, ebooks, podcasts, articles, etc.
Content marketing: the path to take your sales skyrocketing
Now, let us understand some of the magical benefits you can reap in your business through effective and well-planned content marketing.
1) Content is the king and will be
The level of retention and increase in viewers that quality content can give is second to none. Quality content is what provides the customers relevant information and also makes them aware of the options they have in the market. Creating quality content requires some important elements such as:
- Thorough research on the topic
- Complete understanding of the market
- Know about the customers
- Engaging
- Answers the question of the customer
- Google-Friendly
With all these factors considered in mind, you are bound to reach your business goals. The sales figure that you have in your mind will no longer seem to be a mountainous task.
2) Don’t just sell; build relationship
Content marketing is not about selling the product or service to any random guy surfing on the internet. It goes beyond the boring concept of finding a customer and selling the product.
Content marketing is all about creating the perfect content that the customer finds you, not the other way around. This all may seem to be fascinating and glittering, but doing it can be bit challenging.
You will have to create content that helps the viewers to find the solutions what they are looking. The accuracy of the information provided by the content will make them visit your website more often. Well, this is how you build loyal customers and in return, what you get are exciting goodies in the form of:
- Shares, likes, comments
- Rating
- Subscribing to a newsletter
- Word of mouth promotion
So, with the right strategy, you build a relationship with your customers who consider your brand as their brand. Hence, with more loyal customers comes more sales.
3) How Google-friendly is your content?
In the online world, no matter how good your product or services are, you might not get the customer base you deserve if you don’t keep your content search engine friendly.
To explain this further, very few only go to the second or next pages of the search engine results So, now you can understand that you need to bring your content on the first page to get the online audience. To do this, the content created by your marketing team should be search engine friendly.
Google loves quality content and will always place it on the top ranking of the search results. When we speak about Google-friendly content, then these are the things that you need to keep in mind:
Use of long-tail keywords
Create high-quality content
Titles should be catchy and unique
Provide relevant links on the content
Don’t overstuff
4) Paid advertising: a thing in the past
Having an effective and killer content marketing strategy that involves quality content will bring the audience coming back. Providing quality and informative content will undoubtedly lead to an increase in sales will maintain the flow of organic visitors.
You don’t have to waste more money in doing paid advertisements to tell customers about your business. Your content will do the talking.
An article that is well-written and relevant will make the viewer spend more time and compel them to dive through other pages of your websites by clicking the link you will be placing on the article.
Also, remember that if the content is not relevant, then chances of the customer to visit the website again drastically fall. Make the content engaging and help the viewers meet their requirements. If the content is the king, then engagement is the queen, and FYI ladies rule the house.
5) Finding the right customer
The internet is a big world, and it sometimes becomes difficult for people to find out the right piece of information. You need to realise that not everyone surfing the internet is your customer, and chasing after them is nothing but a dead end.
It is better that you find the right audience looking for the product or service that your business has to offer. The right content marketing strategy will ensure that your content reaches the most potent viewers who are most likely to purchase by the end of the day.
Here are some of the useful tips to find the right customer online:
- Analyse the customer behaviour
- customer segmentation is necessary
- have realistic goals
- do good research of the market
6) Content with a call to action is a great combo
Do you know what makes quality content more effective in terms of business perspective, it’s a killer call to action. It guides the potential customers where to head and what action to take to make the purchase. Also, an effective call to action will remove the viewer’s confusion and help take the right next steps without hovering around the website.
Therefore, if you are creating content specific to a product or service, then make sure to add a call-to-action (CTA) that encourages the reader to check out the offerings. The best thing about CTAs is that you can use them on all types of content, be it video, blog, ebook, etc.
However, don’t overstuff the content with CTAs, as this would nag the reader. Place the CTAs only on valid spaces where the chances of conversion are high.
7) Know your customer touchpoints
Finding the right audience with the help of content is not that easy as it may look. Even if your content is good, the chances are that they might end up just being a regular viewer, but the conversion of customers might require something special.
You will need to place customer touchpoints so that the most potent customer can easily contact or reach you. Providing customer touchpoints helps enhance the customer experience a lot and gives an easy option to interact with you. It will ultimately lead to an increase in the sales of the company and earnings.
Some of the best customer touchpoints that you must always use in your content marketing strategy are:
- Social media
- Events
- Ecommerce support
- Point of sale
- Online advertisement
- Customer support channels
8) Content is the next sales team
Creating quality content and making it available to the right audience on the right platform is the new modern way to sell. On the internet, the buyers find the path themselves to buy any particulars. To draw them towards your service or product could be the role of the content. After going through the content, the decision will be made by themselves to engage sales.
Also, remember that you are dealing with customers who are most probably a millennial and is a digital native. They expect the purchasing process to be seamless and direct, whether it’s buying a tangible product or any software.
It is better that you focus on creating the right content and placing everything in place. Let them explore and go through the content. If it is of their use, then they will surely make the purchase.
9) Customer testimonials and reviews offer massive benefits
Today, the digital market is customer-oriented, where they have the power to choose which brand they would like to go with and whose product/service to avail. Most people, before making any purchase try to find as much information as possible about the product/service. They don’t want to end up getting something they have no idea or don’t match with their expectation.
A great part of content marketing will be to provide customer testimonials on a particular portion of the website. This will make it helpful for the viewers to relate whether the product could be of their use or not at all.
Sometimes, the customer might be hesitant to buy the product or don’t have enough information. Thus, providing customer testimonials and examples related to product/service could help the potent customers.
For example, if you are a company that offers clothing and apparels, post customer-submitted images of the clothes or accessories, thus making your product more transparent.
10) Always be ready to do an experiment
There will be cases when posting regular content might not bear fruitful results or, as expected, even you are trying your best and producing quality content. This might be the indication that you need to do some experiments with your content marketing strategy.
To keep the content strategy fresh, try to do strong research on the market and find out what your competitors are doing. You must find out ways to relay information to the audience creatively. However, before creating content to match your competitor, don’t forget to check whether it is relevant for your business or website or not. Below is the list of different types of content that you can test as your strategy:
- Animated Ads
- Instagram IGTV
- Slideshows
- Infographics
- Case studies
11) Harness the social media platform wisely
Social media is a massive platform that caters to billion people to communicate and share their life’s special moments with their friends and relatives. Sharing content on social media will help you reach a billion-customer base and promote your business. However, making it too obvious will not work because social media platform is not like other platforms.
The marketing strategy for social media should be a bit different than the other platforms. Here, you have to be engaging and at the same time, promote the business. Create an official account and share relevant posts and also during the time of special occasion that will help the viewers to connect with your brand. Below are the some of the content marketing tips that you could perform on social media platforms:
- Target the right customer segment
- Always flow with the trend
- Hashtags goes the long way
- Always respond to customers
- Live stream can benefit
Well, generating sales for the business could come from various sources depending on the business size and type. If properly implemented and well-strategized, content marketing can surely bring more customers than any other campaign could ever have for your business
With the tips mentioned above, your business sales will definitely see positive results and will help in increasing the organic audience base.
