Content, Marketing

Why Your Business Needs Content Marketing

Written by ContentZipSeptember 3, 2019

Content marketing is an absolute must for your business in the 21st century. Marketing and advertising are changing drastically, and in an evolutionary process of natural selection, it’s either sink, or swim.

Content marketing is a key part of executing an effective marketing strategy and can be instrumental in driving the continued growth and success of your business. Creating and sharing relevant, impactful content that provides value to your audience is the ultimate objective in a content marketing campaign. Great content marketing will pay for itself many times over by engaging your audience, growing your audience, and earning their attention and trust. When this is achieved, your business will be top-of-mind, naturally leading your audience to making purchases from your business.

Effective content marketing for small business owners can be the difference between stagnation and snowballing growth. In order to accomplish this, your online content marketing strategy needs to identify content that your audience will find beneficial to their lives.

Below, we’ve listed five reasons why your business needs content marketing, and how content marketing will help to transform your brand’s strategy and aid growth at relatively little cost to you.

1). An Affordable Way to Expand Your Audience

When your content marketing campaign is in full-throttle, its relevance and value will attract prospective clients and expand your audience. You can fight and pay for readers, followers and site visitors, or you can craft a content marketing strategy that captures the attention of a broader audience and sends visitors flocking to your site. Content marketing is so great because instead of paying for a non-existent or irrelevant audience, you’ll get connected with a receptive audience eager to engage with you.

2). Build Strong, Lasting Relationships with Your Audience

Businesses with the ability to consistently add value to the lives of their prospects and clients will establish strong, meaningful, lasting relationships with their audiences. It’s not enough to just to expand your audience and have 100,000 followers—you have to build a relationship and connect with your audience on a personal level. Demonstrating your value and commitment to the B2C relationship through a content marketing campaign your audience will engage with on a regular basis will help you maintain close ties and an ongoing relationship with your customers.

3). Establish Credibility and a Positive Reputation in Your Market

The ubiquity of Internet has given the average consumer the knowledge and power to better understand products and resist traditional sales pitches. Establishing credibility and a positive reputation in your respective industry will go a long way. Sarah Smith, PhD, a content marketing specialist and former marketing professor at Missouri State University, notes that studies show the majority of consumers prefer to learn about both companies and products through articles, not advertisements.[1]

4). Improve Content & Search Engine Rankings

A happy consequence of a killer content marketing plan is that you’ll have more high-quality content floating around, which search engine algorithms will respond to by improving your website’s ranking. As its name suggests, content is the key component of content marketing, and a successful content marketing strategy will fill your website with relevant, timely, useful content—all while bumping you up in search engine rankings.

5). Convert Your Audience into Paying Customers

Utilizing content marketing as a means of converting your audience into paying customers is a highly effective, sustainable strategy. Content marketing will help automate your broader sales and marketing plan, and yield compounding results through referrals and repeat business. By continually presenting your audience with content that is both practical and helpful, your business will grow its audience, earn a reputation for trust and excellence, educate prospective customers, and position itself to close more new, repeat, and referral sales.

[1] https://www.campaignium.com/blog/why-is-content-marketing-important-for-your-business/

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Content

6 Ways to Come Up with Content Ideas Your Audience Will Love

Written by ContentZipMarch 22, 2019

It’s no secret that content marketing has proven itself to be one of the best ways to build an audience, establish your brand, and increase traffic and sales. Coming up with great content on a regular basis isn’t always easy, but it’s an investment in your marketing strategy that will certainly pay dividends.

There are many ways to come up with unique content marketing ideas, and these are just a few of our tried-and-true favorites to help keep your content calendar full of valuable information that will help and serve your audience. Content creation will go a long way in keeping your audience interested and engaged, and maintaining your business’s reputation as a purveyor of timely, relevant, content

Check out these six ways to come up with creative content marketing ideas your audience is sure to love.

1). Turn to Your Analytics

When it comes to gauging your audience’s interest, there’s no better place to start than your business’s analytics. Analytics provide your business with invaluable statistics that can tell you what your audience is really thinking. Identify which posts are performing well and promoting engagement from your audience, and give your audience more related content to replicate these positive results.

2).  Ask the Audience

Ask and you shall receive. Instead of guessing what your audience is going to like, simply ask them. It seems like a no-brainer, but taking the guesswork out of the equation and just asking your audience what they’d like to see more of is a great way to come up with content ideas you know they’ll love. Using your frequently asked questions will give you an idea of what your customers are thinking and feeling, presenting an opportunity to address their specific questions and provide value through direct engagement.   

3). Competitive Snooping

In the connected age of the Internet, it’s hard to keep a secret. Fortunately, there is a distinct advantage in having access to most of your competitors’ content. Take a look at what sort of content your competitors are creating and use it to generate some of your own ideas. Following trends of the competitors in your niche is a good practice to make sure you stay sharp and keep pace with the competition—plus it will give you plenty of new ideas to beef up your own content.

4). Use Research Tools

Content marketing research tools like BuzzSumo help businesses find popular content that is being shared on social media platforms. You can also utilize social media management tools such as Oktopost, Sprout Social, and Feedly to see what consumers are reading, watching, and talking about, and respond to these topics using your own content.

5). Follow the Trend

Like fashion trends, Internet trends come and go. Trending videos, posts, ideas, and hashtags will give you insights into what audiences are consuming at any given time. Trends are a great opportunity to demonstrate your business’s ability to respond by impressing your audience with timely content creation on the latest news and topics. Try taking a look at hashtag tools like Hashtagify and For Display Purposes Only to stay on top of popular hashtags and make sure your content always keeps your audience in-the-know.  

6). Try Something Completely New

When all else fails, it’s time to take a chance and try something completely new. While it’s important to cover what’s trending and popular, don’t be shy about taking a risk every once in a while. Throw your audience a bit of a curveball every so often to keep them on their toes, and see how they react to it. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one setting the next trend that everyone else will rush to follow.

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