But where’s the catch? And if it’s so phenomenal, why isn’t everyone doing it.
Content marketing has been one of the most widely spoken about marketing channels in recent times. A widely popular approach – but does your business really need to employ content marketing, and when is a good time to focus on it? We look to answer some of these questions in the blog.
Creating, publishing and distributing content online is basically what constitutes content marketing. And most of the companies agree that it’s important to invest in content marketing. However, much like in the world of finance and investment (like the popular get rich quick fixes), content marketing and ‘investing’ in it needs a well thought out plan. And consistent investment. The magic of content marketing is only truly realised with time and consistency.
Notice this Google Analytics audience graph. The content marketing effort for this client was started in the month of February (that’s when the blog went live). The numbers in the initial months don’t look boast-worthy. Even though there’s consistent, healthy growth. But look at the growth in the last couple of months. The traffic for the month of August was around the 1000 mark and within a period of two months, we were easily able to double that.
(This was a completely new product. The domain name was purchased end of December 2018.)
What is more important is the fact that the number of leads, as well as the quality of leads, improved drastically in the last couple of months. We were able to generate more worthwhile leads in the month of October alone than all the months preceding it combined.
Have a Plan for Content Marketing
From an execution perspective, Content Marketing has two parts:
- Content Creation
- Content Distribution
A lot of marketers (almost everyone, I believe) understands that creating high-quality content is important. But it is the second part – Content Distribution – that often gets overlooked.
Building solid distribution channels is imperative for a successful content strategy. Distribution channels could include search platforms, social media handles or third party content platforms like LinkedIn Pulse, Medium or Quora.
How Do You Start
The question is not IF you should consider content marketing but rather, WHEN should you consider investing in content marketing*.*
If you’re a new company and heavily depending on digital channels for your lead acquisition, content marketing might not be the first thing to consider. It’d be advisable to focus more on channels with immediate returns (like a solid PPC strategy) for your marketing. We’d recommend a 70-30 split between paid acquisition and content marketing in the initial phase.
If you have a running business, are not under budget constraints and are looking to level up your lead acquisition – content marketing can be a solid proposition. How we usually start is an audit of your digital presence, a study of competition and differentiating factors. Then, we build a website optimised for conversion, setup a blog that’s optimised for reading and conversion flow, create a content calendar and have a distribution plan in mind. That’s a good starting point for a winning content marketing strategy.
We’ll deep-dive into Content Marketing in our upcoming articles. Stay tuned!
