Today, the web is flooded with content. Recognizing and expanding sustainable competitive advantage could easily be considered one of the most challenging activities for a new business venture.
The process can often be extremely challenging for the regular small business owner, as the journey can often be both time-consuming as well as difficult. Developing competitive advantage can be especially demanding for new emerging businesses operating in industries where several other businesses already compete.
While every industry has its own eccentricity and best practices, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that publishing a handful of blog posts simply isn’t going to be enough for generating genuine growth.
So then, how do businesses really grow through content marketing? It all comes down to linking content with the growth levers in your business and creating a friction-free, intuitive next step for readers to extract something meaningful out of your marketing funnel.
In this post, we’ve listed down a handful of ways to do just that, collecting some of the best tips for leveraging content as a means of tapping into real growth.
Before you can create highly relevant content, it’s important for you to make sure it is revenue-focused, for which you’ve got to have complete knowledge of the conversion funnel.
When the consumer enters the conversion or purchasing stage, he/she reaches the bottom of the funnel. The best way to begin is by identifying that specific buy-intent, the bottom of the funnel keywords that directly generate revenue and have the potential to make your business reach the elusive hockey stick growth through a robust content strategy. This is the area of the conversion funnel you need to place prime focus on when it comes to creating highly relevant content.
The bottom of the funnel is your chance to explain to your customers why your service or product is the best for them. Try showing them how you differ from the competition. You can also have CTA’s placed strategically within the funnel so that they don’t come across as forced fits and grab the customer’s attention to drive conversions at the same time.
Educate the consumer. Explain what it will be like if they get converted into a customer. Marketing campaigns that entice customers can include free consultations, demonstrations, free trials, quotes, estimates, coupons, and pricing. Basically, it can be anything that gives them an incentive to buy from or subscribe to your channel.
Once you successfully interpret the conversion funnel, more specifically, the bottom of the funnel, it will get comparatively easier for you to adjust your content strategy accordingly to drive revenue.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a B2B or B2C company, you’ll still need to evaluate your funnel if you wish to generate maximum revenue out of your content.
Don’t just stick to one type of content. Try to repurpose and mix it up occasionally.
Some different strategies to consider include:
blogging
infographics
case studies
video content
This will differ depending on the audience you’re trying to target and the platform you’re using. However, based on the research you’ve conducted on your conversion funnel, UTM parameter tracking, customer journey map, and customer personas, you’ll have enough information for each type of content.
Now, the best type of content is always the one that is personalized.
You can even use customer experiences and storytelling to enhance your content since this approach will ultimately lead to more sales.
Research has shown that generating leads and traffic are the biggest marketing obstacles that businesses are struggling to overcome today. 54 percent of marketers report growing website traffic as their main priority while 69 percent believe that converting leads to customers needs to be their biggest area of focus.
Therefore, by simply diversifying your content strategy, you’ll greatly increase the chances of your content appealing to a much wider audience. That’s because it will be relevant to their needs and wants.
The most significant question here is, “Where exactly are your leads coming from?”
If you don’t know the answer to this question, that can be one huge problem since this is one of the causes why your content isn’t relevant and driving sales.
Since a huge segment of the customer’s journey is now completed digitally, you can easily figure out why your customers made a purchase if you know how they discovered you in the first place. Based on this information, you can then create content that’s tailored to suit their needs.
The best way to track your leads is by making use of UTM parameters.
Not certain as to what a UTM parameter is? Don’t worry, it’s pretty simple. If you’ve ever clicked on a link from an advertisement, the URL might have seemed to be somewhat complex-looking and long, even when you happen to be on the said company’s homepage.
That’s a UTM parameter. It’s how websites determine where a lead actually came from. Say, for instance, did it come from Twitter, Facebook, Google Ads, an email marketing campaign or a social influencer? Different tags are provided for each distribution platform to know precisely where the lead came from.
Furthermore, you’ll also have tags for each post within a platform. For example, knowing it came from Twitter is great. But from where on Twitter? Which particular post?
The most effective type of marketing at your disposal today is certainly content marketing. However, you need to ensure that you’re not just using content to generate traffic, but also to convert that traffic to sales. At the same time, you also need to ensure that your content is highly relevant if you wish to generate sales through it.
Try figuring how to extract complete value out of different elements at the bottom of the conversion funnel. Then, create a customer journey map to provide you with a better understanding of the consumer’s requirements.
Start using UTM parameters to measure the success of different campaigns and track your consumer’s overall behavior. Promote those ads on social media.
Use tools, resources, and analytics frequently to identify the type of content that speaks to your customers the most and adjust your content strategy accordingly to see your sales numbers progress significantly within no time.
Rahul Varshneya is the co-founder and President of CurveBreak. Rahul has been featured as a technology thought leader in numerous media channels such as Bloomberg TV, Forbes, HuffPost, Inc, among others.
As entrepreneurs, we tend to self-sabotage which sometimes leads to limiting our success. Discover these simple, proven, highly effective tools and strategies to clear that automatic subconscious program and pattering that's holding you back. Listen as Teri Karjala talks about the 3 key components that contribute to the success or failures of business owners.
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.