jcollins

M Posted 9 years 3 months ago

t 9 min read

Leverage these Benefits of Content Marketing to Drive Growth

Believe it or not, content marketing has been around since 1732 when Benjamin Franklin published the Poor Richard's Almanack in order to promote his printing business. While the times have changed and the printing business is much more digital, the fact remains, there continues to be many benefits of content marketing. Surprisingly, many marketers have not implemented a clear content marketing strategy and some even resist this as just a fad.

After 284 years of leveraging the benefits of content marketing it is safe to say content marketing is here to stay. In fact, according to Hubspot, 39% of today's marketing budgets are spent on content marketing, which produces 27 million pieces of content every day. If you already take a sophisticated approach to content marketing you probably have an effective performance strategy, but here are 5 benefits of content marketing that you might not have considered yet:

1. Content marketing can turn customers and prospects into advocates

Engaged customers and prospects are more likely to become active brand loyalists. If you can connect the dots between content and the business impact for your customers and prospects, you have a winning formula. Think about how you found this blog post.  Were you looking for the "benefits of content marketing"? Are you trying to implement a more effective content marketing strategy? Maybe you are just getting started in your content marketing plan and are looking for ideas. When content consumers find value there is a good chance they will post/share on their social networks or email it to a co-worker. It may seem like a small gesture, but this type of endorsement will help to grow your base of brand advocates. Watch how some of our customer advocates are leveraging the value of the BrightEdge platform to capitalize on content strategies that make a positive business impact:

2. Content marketing can connect the dots between marketing and sales

Sales and Marketing alignment can sometimes feel as hard as aligning Republicans and Democrats, but it doesn't have to be this way. In many organizations Marketing is responsible for generating leads and Sales is responsible for closing deals. The implication of this mindset on your content strategy is that your content ends up producing the dreaded "low-quality lead". We are all in an evolved business environment where a Smarketing (Sales + Marketing) approach helps support the buyer throughout the buyer's journey. One effective way to align your content strategy with the buyer's journey is to work with your sales and customer success teams to determine the different stages of the buyer's journey and the personas that influence each stage. Once you have collaborated and agreed on the stages you can start developing the content that relates to each stage of the journey. Now, instead of hearing about "low quality leads" you can start discussing how to convert the prospects through a seamless path from prospect --> opportunity --> customer --> upsell and renewals --> references. Once you have valuable content for each stage you can start mapping the content throughout the sales process. This will not only help your sales team sell more efficiently without having to painstakingly search for relevant content, but it will ensure your marketing message is aligned to the needs of the customer. If you're looking for a more prescriptive guide to how to establish this connection, make sure to read our white paper on how to Execute an Integrated Campaign Successfully.

3. Content marketing builds on your core vision and drives a productive working culture

Your content is a reflection of how your company positions itself within the market. The employees are the driver of this position - in short, they are the ones to get stuff done. If your content is aligned to the corporate messaging and the corporate messaging is aligned to the efforts of your employees, it becomes difficult to be disjointed. Additionally, whether you realize it or not, your future employees are reviewing your content and making an informed decision about whether they want to dedicate their time to your company.

4. Content marketing can be leveraged to build your own personal brand and professional portfolio

You may have heard the term "Thought Leadership" and wondered how you can position your unique perspective into becoming an established thought leader. Think about your perspective as the engine and content marketing as the car. If you have an engine without a car you aren't going to go very far. You need the engine (your perspectives) to power your car (content) in order to drive your company and personal brand forward. Taking this approach will not only help you in real-time to generate results, but it will expand your networking reach. When you combine the performance of the results with a connected network it is easy to see how your own personal career interests quickly becomes one of the default benefits of content marketing. See how the DataCube can help understand the demand and performance of your content. This is a great way to test the market demand for the type of thought leadership you are looking to provide.

5. Content marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing channels

SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand. In order to generate significant organic traffic you will need effective content that is optimized to find your buyer. It is important to understand that content marketing is not a quick fix. It is going to take time and a strong commitment to all the benefits of content marketing and creating SEO reports. One piece of killer content is not going to be the game changer, but if you can find the striking distance keywords and develop relevant content you will be in a much better position on ROI then if you exclusively deployed an SEM strategy. It may be tempting to get the quick fix of a windfall of paid media, but once your program is over, the leads are over. Alternatively, your optimized content establishes content equity that will continue to compound to drive business results. Check out your opportunities in organic with this free Search ROI Opportunity calculator. There are many more benefits to content marketing, and at times it may feel overwhelming. However, the benefits are increasingly obvious. If your interest is piqued, check out this webinar to get some helpful tips on how to balance this strategy and make a positive business impact.

kartiky

M Posted 9 years 3 months ago

t 9 min read

As a valuable strategy for marketers, keyword awareness can boost a site's flow of organic traffic as well as engagement metrics.

A few months ago, I was returning from a concert when I noticed a small flier placed on my car window, which read "If you enjoyed this event, lookup [artist name] on Google". It was an ad for another concert organized by the same company whose event I had just attended.

I ended up searching for [artist name] as per the flier on Google a few days later to look for tickets and found myself clicking on the management company's website. While clicking around the site and learning more about their upcoming events, the strategy from a marketing standpoint intrigued me.

The flier was essentially a way to explicitly build keyword awareness, that when searched, would lead to more traffic on the company's website - a feedback loop to generate repeat customers. By encouraging people to research a particular term that they already ranked highly for, the company was able to secure the organic traffic and build engagement. This untapped strategy can build brand awareness and boost engagement metrics for companies that employ it.

Understanding the role of awareness in brand promotion

We understand brand awareness to be the likelihood that consumers recognize the existence and availability of a brand's product or service. Keyword awareness could be similarly described as the likelihood that consumers recognize the existence of search terms. When terms enter the vocabulary of those familiar with a particular topic or industry, they become more likely to use these phrases in their searches, thus increasing the traffic for those sites that were already optimized for the topics.

Marketers can use keyword awareness to drive up their organic search traffic. Similar to the experience above, brands can suggest keywords and promote different terms to particularly receptive audiences and begin to build themselves a strong audience for their particular areas of expertise.

When you build keywords in the minds of consumers, you can help influence both current and future behaviors. For example, if someone sees a list of related search terms on your site, even if they do not choose to click on one right now, they have a higher chance of remembering that term in the future and using it to search. When you rank highly for this term as well, the search will lead them back to your site, helping you to further build your relationship.

Before you can build keyword awareness, however, you have to have an understanding of which terms will align with your target audience's needs. If you're still trying evaluate which related topics will resonate, try our free 30-minute webinar on 3 Steps to Boost Content Marketing Results.

Building keyword awareness

One way to build keyword awareness is to publicize the high-ranking keywords via your product recommendation engine. Typical product recommendation engines calculate the likelihood of a product attracting a visitor’s attention by computing a likability score for related products and ranking them. This is done through a mathematical indexing formula that takes into account the browsing behaviors of other users.

In addition to the browsing behaviors, if the product likability score is made a function of organic keyword search volumes and ranking, marketers could have recommendations that are influenced not just by product likability but also search engine optimized content. In addition, publishing the list of keywords as a social proof-- for example, listing current popular search terms-- reinforces these keywords in the visitors’ minds, thereby creating an organic traffic feedback loop.

A strong keyword awareness campaign can encourage people to visit your site while also boosting the engagement of those who have already landed on your page. Linking to related topics will encourage people to explore more material, keeping them on your page and laying the foundation for a strong relationship.

Improving engagement on your website serves a critical purpose in encouraging more prospects to enter your sales funnel. Customers today are inundated with content and information from a variety of different sources. Experts believe the digital ecosystem will grow from 130 exabytes to 40,000 exabytes by 2020. While the growth in digital usage is beneficial for customers, this means also that brands will have to compete even harder for attention.

Building engagement on your platform will boost your brand recognition and reputation. It lays the foundation for your relationship with the prospect, demonstrating that you can answer their questions and address their needs. Strong engagement metrics can also boost your ranking on the SERPs and encourage more people to enter your sales funnel.

Building keyword awareness and demand with BrightEdge

BrightEdge is a powerful tool that will help you find the right keywords to capitalize on, empowering you to raise awareness for visitors and build the positive feedback loops.

1. Using the BrightEdge API, you can easily pull your top ranking keywords, search volumes and other SEO metrics, out of the BrightEdge platform. This will let you see the terms for which you regularly rank highly.
2. Monitor and measure the search volume and the ranking URLs to better understand the keywords that will be the focus of your keyword awareness campaign. See our on-demand BrightEdge API webinar. 
3. Create a site recommendation engine that uses the data pulled out of the BrightEdge platform, to help bolster your target keywords while using social proof to boost interest in the terms. Link people to content that is likely to interest them, encouraging them to explore more terms and the topics where you excel.
4. Use A/B testing to further optimize your recommendations. Look at a variety of KPIs including how well the recommendations boost engagement, encourage people to enter the sales funnel, and result in repeat customers.

Keyword awareness and demand can be an important part of building an online strategy. By interesting people in your terms and topics, you can encourage them to engage with your brand through your website. Used correctly, it will boost your traffic arriving from organic search engines and it will encourage people to remain on your site longer.