by David Depman
Content and inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is marketing people don’t hate, and it starts with good content. It’s relevant information that your target audience searches for, and its goal is a resulting action on their part. At its heart, content communicates with your target market without pitching them.
If I sell goldfish, and I write an article on the best names for goldfish, and you like goldfish, there’s a good chance we’ll share a moment online in the near future. And when you read my article, you’ve validated my efforts. You might share my content, you might join the conversation with a comment, or you might just wait until I write another article about goldfish. But no matter what, you’ve just found me and you are interested.
Now, what if I’m a guy looking to prequalify for a loan, and you just wrote an article about tips to effectively prequalify. That article, that content is gonna interest me. It might just interest me enough to learn more about what you wrote. And if you ask for them, it will probably get me to share my contact details. After all, I just read your article, right?
It’s not just writing, either. All forms of media are in play: blogs, video posts, eBooks, podcasts, articles, goldfish lists, white papers and more. If you are providing relevant, useful information that addresses a pain-point or solves a problem for your potential customers, you are creating the chance for them to become clients. By providing them with timely, helpful information about a service you provide, that they find useful in their search for that service, you’ve created an opportunity to catch their attention.
Justify yourself
Today, customers are in control and they are showing it. They are looking you over and kicking your tires long before they contact you. They do more than 60% of their research before they make a move. And they are doing it by consuming content. 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe the organizations behind the content are interested in building good relationships. When people read your content, they start to build trust in you. And get this, Google loves original content. They recognize it and boost your ranking. Bonus!
Cost is an advantage too. The average cost to generate a lead through content for inbound marketing is about half the average for outbound marketing.
Eighty percent of business decision-makers prefer to engage with a company they are considering through a series of articles versus advertisements. Your content can put you in their view, so make sure that the information you put up answers their questions and positions you as a valuable, trusted option. When potential clients make the trip to your site, they are more likely to become your customers when they find value. Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for sites with relevant content over those without.
What is good content then?
Good content is anything that delivers you conversions. Converting a reader to a subscriber, from a subscriber to a potential, and from a potential to a client.
Good content speaks the client’s language, and matches their tone.
Good content identifies and addresses a knowledge gap. (Think about the most common question that people ask you about your service. That’s the knowledge gap you need to address first.)
Good content knows the audience, and makes them the focal point of everything. It grabs the attention of potential clients through genuinely useful information. It’s content that’s not about you, it’s content that’s about them, and what they need. Your content will work if it is focused on their needs.
And most important for success: good content is a call to action. It engages and informs the client, and then gets them to contact you. It might be with a call, or by simply sharing their info, but in some way, it makes the reader connect with you.