What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves the creation and distribution of content that is relevant and of value to your customers. Virtually any communication from you to your customers could be considered content marketing if it creates value for the customer. Give your customers what they’re truly interested in.

Consumers spend on average 79 days researching online before buying.

You may have read that content is king! But what is it?? The term “Content is King” is thrown around far too often without any reasons to back it up. Everyone says you need more content on your website but can’t really explain why. In this blog post, we aim to help you understand some of the core reasons why the content on your website matters and the more relevant content you have, the better. I like to think there are 3 types of Content:

• Content for Awareness
• Content for building trust and company research
• Content for direct communication

Content For Awareness

First of all, you need to understand you need relevant content. Relevant content does not just mean repeated content from other sites or content about any topic. Relevant content refers to original content surrounding your website’s industry. For example, if you are a Melbourne-based Accountant it isn’t relevant to write about the latest plumbing pipes from Home Hardware or new tax laws in New York City. You’d be better off focusing your supplementary content (Blog, News etc) on new tax deductions for 2017 in Australia. It’s all about the relevancy of your target market. Next, we need to start thinking of our website as a long-term sales tool and cog in your company’s machine. It’s something that you develop, analyse and refine to increase sales. You regularly look at your employee’s performance, your marketing and advertising performance and your everyday software tools such as your Point Of Sale System. If you analyse and optimise every other cog in the machine that is your company to ensure they are working smoothly and giving you the best results you need to dedicate the same resources to your website. Content plays the most important part in the sales process which is Awareness! If people are not aware you exist how are they going to be able to buy from you, contract your services or engage with you on any level? Content is a mechanism to open up communication channels for new business Opportunities. The reasons you should write content are:

• Improve Search Engine Rankings
• Attract new potential customers
• Grow your brand awareness
• Establish yourself as an expert in your industry

Blogs

Blogs are an excellent tool for both content marketing and SEO. This isn’t surprising with most business websites today having a blog or news page and the meteoric rise of the blogger.

Blog content should be interesting and relevant to your customers.

If you sell excavator attachments and excavator buckets, your target customers probably own an excavator. People who are likely to buy your product might also be interested in a blog post about how to check and tune excavator track tension. Although you don’t sell machine tracks, you do sell attachments for tracked machines.

The idea is that by publishing a blog post that excavating machine owners would find useful, you are bringing your target market to your site. If they hadn’t heard of your brand already, they have now. Not only that, but you just gave these potential customers something of value to them, for nothing, and that is a great way to start building trust with future potential customers.

Web Pages

Webpages describe and showcase your products and services to your customers. Standard, right? But did you know they’re also a great way to share the benefits of what you offer?

If you run a physiotherapy clinic. Your web pages are most likely to detail your physiotherapy services, dry needling, soft tissue massage, core stability training etc. But why do people need a physiotherapist? Mostly because they’re in pain. That’s why it makes sense to include pages detailing how your clinic diagnoses and treats different injuries and ailments. The pages explain how physiotherapy can help relieve pain or Sore knee.

More content equals the unique pages on your site which can be listed in Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP). More listings in Google SERPs mean a greater chance of increased traffic. This is the online equivalent of driving foot traffic into your retail store on a regular basis for people who are interested in your product. In this case, content has kicked off your sales process. More content also means more for you, your fans and your followers to share on social media to increase brand awareness and establish yourself as an industry expert. If you’ve ever flicked through your Facebook wall or Twitter feed you will undoubtedly see a lot of shared news and informational posts. These posts are shared and commented on and help drive massive amounts of traffic through minimal effort. If your information is useful and relevant people will visit your site to read it and kick off the sales process. As helpful as content is, it isn’t the core focus of many companies’ businesses. You may be a masseuse or plumber and just not have time to focus on your content. If this is the case why not outsource it to an expert? Arcadian Digital can help you increase the content on your site with our content writers and grow your traffic.

Read our blogs on what content is and why fresh content matters to find out more about producing quality content for your business.

Feel free to contact us or call us on (03) 9090 7070 for an obligation-free chat on content no matter where you are in the world, we can help!