invest in content marketing

Content marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that will yield a high return on the investment. Especially in today’s online era—and as long as it’s done properly and thoroughly. But, you cannot convince someone to use a strategy or sign up for your services if you cannot express the benefits of why (in other words, the benefits of content marketing). Showing the benefits, however, doesn’t mean spouting off a list of advantages. It is all about backing up your ideas with facts and presenting your sales pitch in a beautifully wrapped package. If delivered properly, your recipients will be ecstatic to start using content marketing by the end of the pitch. So, to help get those customers clawing at the doors to get access to your genius powers, we’re going to help you better understand those benefits and more importantly, show you how to demonstrate them. You can take the credit. It will be our little secret. First, Help Them Get Over The Assumption It Doesn’t Work Unfortunately, even in today’s internet age, there are still plenty of people that don’t embrace content marketing. The reason you aren’t getting traction with this group is likely because you don’t exploit the benefits of content marketing, and there’s plenty of them to use. KISSMetrics came out with an insightful blog that highlighted why content marketing strategies are failing. If you think content marketing isn’t worth it, or your clients are rejecting the idea, it is likely because they’re committing a deadly marketing sin of their own. We’ve also written a guest piece on SiteProNews with more on the subject. What are those sins? 4 Reasons Content Marketing Isn’t Working (So You Can Stop The It-Doesn’t-Work Argument In Its Tracks)  Before we go into the six major do’s (how to convince), let’s talk briefly about the don’ts, so you’re not unconsciously scaring anyone away. 1. You Don’t Have A Refined Strategy If you haphazardly threw something together and then prayed it would work, you’re going to be disappointed. Content marketing requires constant changes, innovations, and updates. If your strategy is even three months old, we recommend changing it up. You’d be surprised at the progress you will make by doing so. 2. You’re Not Putting In The Effort Again, content marketing requires work. It doesn’t self-automate here. If it did, we’d all be billionaires. In the content marketing world, you get what you pay for. So, if you don’t see any improvement, look to see where you’re spending your money and see if you can squeeze more out of the budget to put it toward content marketing. 3. Your Content Sucks, Sorry Bottom line, content marketing will never succeed when the content holds no ground. Your content needs to be on point, relevant, interesting to read, and worthwhile for today’s reader with the epically short attention span. 4. There Are Too Many Brand Inconsistencies A brand should be definitive. If you read one piece of content from a particular brand, it should have the same tone, flow, and style with every other piece out there. When everything appears disjointed, mismatched, and doesn’t meet up with the mission statement, it won’t be effective, according to Mike Templeman at Forbes. Now, Let’s Move On To The Good Okay, now that we’ve dispelled some of the reasons you think content marketing doesn’t work (or the reasons your clients assume it doesn’t work), now we’re going to dive right into why you need to use it. 6 Ways You Can Encourage Anyone To Use Content Marketing Sure, you need a compelling sales pitch. But, you can’t just say “content marketing works,” and expect the world to jump on board. Instead, you need to deliver a convincing pitch that makes it almost seem as though without content marketing, the internet world would fail. 1. Sites With Excellent Content Marketing Grow 7.8x Faster Content marketers are the leaders in site traffic. You could be one of those leaders. According to Aberdeen and mentioned by Neil Patel, each year, unique website traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders than followers. The team at Search Engine Journal is one you can reference. (I love them and write for them consistently.) They keep up with consistent, high-quality content (there’s that quality content reference again), and they are at the forefront of content marketing. Even better, they churn out over 900,000 unique visitors per month according to their LinkedIn profile. So, how could you implement this fact and amplify your content marketing strategy? Start working on high-quality blogs. We’re talking long-form, short-form, research and newsworthy reads. Be a leader that sets the standard for your field. Whether you’re blogging about peanut butter muffins or your love for coupons, you need to establish yourself as the authority in that area. Track what other leaders do in that industry, see what they write about, and learn from their examples. 2. Sharable, Great Content Is What Is Trending Content that people want to read is the cornerstone of a great content marketing strategy. After all, what is the point of churning out all that content if no one shares it? A great offering for content marketing managers would be creating shareable content and then actually sharing it on social media for their customers. This means sharing on brand-owned social media channels, sharing content at the right time on social media, linking up with other similar or competing brands, and providing valuable information that people will continue to share. According to Pew Research Center: 65 percent of adults now use social media networking sites. This was a ten-fold jump from last decade. So, if your websites aren’t going viral, you need a strategy to help them capture at least a handful of those millions of people engaging on social media. Here’s another fact to chew on: DemandMetric states that 78% of content marketers believe custom content is the future of marketing. It’s true. With everything trending online, you need content that is unique, custom and … Read more