image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at www.freedigitalphotos.net
When you publish helpful content relevant to your audience (content marketing), you get a number of benefits that solidify your authority in the marketplace. You become the go-to business when customers need the products and services that you offer.
So what specifically can you get from your content marketing?
Confidence
People tend to get what they need from people they trust. And one of the best indicators of credibility is knowledge. Informative web pages and frequent blog posts establish your authority as someone who knows what they’re talking about. Yes, you’re giving away free information, but in return you make it easy for your prospects to buy from you.
Conversation
Wouldn’t you rather buy from someone you know and trust? Think back to the days when you actually did know the owner of the local supermarket or hardware store. When you had questions you had a conversation with them. And you got answers. Your blog posts and articles anticipate your customers’ questions and answer them just like the face-to-face conversations people had in the “old days.” (Quotes because I remember the “old days” like they were yesterday but I’m slightly afraid to admit it!)
Attract New Prospects
Word travels fast, especially on the internet. Getting your fresh content out there regularly attracts attention, especially on social media. If your headlines grab interest and posts satisfy your readers’ curiosity, you’re in the green. You get clicks to your website because new prospects want their questions answered. Once they’re on your website, they’ve virtually entered your store or office. Right where you want them!
Discover Your Customers’ Pain Points
Consistently interesting blog posts demand constant attention to your customers’ needs. This is great for everyone in your organization. Your front line service reps, their managers, and the executive suite form an information culture focusing in customers. What are they complaining about? What are they currently happy with? What products sell and what tends to sit on the shelf. Consistent content marketing changes the corporate culture to a more customer-centric marketing machine.
Paint a Picture of Life With Your Products
Every blog post and sales page on your website is another opportunity to describe how nice a life it is with your product or service. You don’t want to do much direct in-your-face selling with content marketing, but working in the benefits of doing business with you is absolutely fine. And then link to the sales pages on your website where your readers can get further information.
Improve Your Search Engine Optimization
Google has updated its algorithms over the years to improve the search results for its millions of users. That means that quality content pleases Google. So the more great content you publish online, the better search ranking you’ll get. There are some other basic SEO tactics you’ll need to get right, but quality content wins the competition for good search results.
If you think of content marketing as an ongoing conversation between you and your audience, you’ll see how it builds relationships just like the old days…but at a scale so much larger and more powerful.
Until next time,
Nick
Nick Burns is an SEO web writer specializing in persuasive copywriting and content marketing. He provides clients a winning content strategy plus the special web writing to make it work. You can contact Nick here.
