Five Forgotten Ways Content Marketing Increases Sales | Simplemachine
Today, businesses are becoming increasingly aware of how content marketing can drive sales. Because of the way we do business constantly changes, new strategies are created every day. Many procedures involve using a variety of content marketing techniques to boost sales. However, many people tend to forget the basics of content marketing and how it can be harnessed to increase sales.
The goal of all content marketing strategies is to increase sales. However, this also calls for a deeper understanding of content marketing. Here are some of the five forgotten ways that content marketing is used to drive sales. This list includes techniques that have been used for years but remain relevant today.
#1. Developing Stellar Content
When it comes to creating great content marketing strategies that generate sales, it all revolves around using keywords. However, content is not all about using keywords. It also can be used as a tool to convert prospects. It is something valuable you can offer your customers and is a strategy for reaching new audiences.
Content marketing works when your potential customers search the internet for information concerning product or services like what you offer. These customers typically will find various blogs, web pages, social media posts, and other content that has been designed to answer the questions they may have. The material offers solutions and information that can be used to make informed decisions.
When you post engaging, relevant, and authoritative content on the web, your chance of potential customers viewing your content increases. It allows you to build deeper relationships with customers that lead to conversions. Great content comes in various forms, including:
- Infographics
- Blogs
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Animations
- Lists
- Product reviews
- Guest blogs
- eBooks and whitepapers
- User-generated content
- How-to-guides
When it comes to inbound content marketing strategies, the main goal is all about the content. With a laid out inbound plan in place and great content to help drive sales, you will have more customers visiting your website. It is essential to optimize your content with relevant keywords. You should also ensure that the keywords are related to the type of content you are posting.
#2. Staying Keyword Wise
Before keywords were used in content marketing strategies, they played a crucial role in driving sales. Without keywords, your potential customers might never find your products and services. Keywords form the cornerstone for most of the SEO strategy.
For example, consider if you were selling handcrafted handbags with an African touch. You could use a typical keyword phrase that will rank high in websites like “handcrafted African handbags.” However, there are other keywords and phrases that other customers might use to locate products similar to yours. Therefore, you need to determine what keywords you should use, and then implement them into your:
- URLs
- Content
- Web pages
- Headings
- Image descriptions
- Metadata
- Emails
- Page titles
It is a good idea to use Google AdWords for your keyword research. AdWords provides other useful tools for keyword planning. The right keywords can help connect you with potential customers who are searching for your products and services.
#3. Importance of Reputation Management
When it comes to SEO content marketing strategies, one of the most forgotten strategies is reputation management. It is essential to the success of any business entity. Reputation management revolves around controlling what customers view about your business online.
Often, there are instances where customers will not feel satisfied with your services. This could result in complaints, comments, dislikes, or even worse, negative Yelp reviews. When other potential customers consider your business, they will read through complaints and bad reviews posted by other customers. This will affect your potential customer’s decision about your products or services.
Reputation management leads to painting a positive image to potential customers who are searching for information about your products and services. It can be achieved by:
- Reading through customers online reviews
- Maintaining a high level of professionalism when dealing with customers online
- Responding to complaints, feedback, comments, and negative critiques with professionalism
- Posting positive reviews and customer testimonials from satisfied customers
#4. On-Page SEO
There are many reasons why on-page SEO is vital to the success of all content marketing strategies. If you want to boost your sales, you need to pay close attention to some of the SEO techniques that have been forgotten over the years.
When using on-page SEO, your site becomes more user-friendly, and your search ranking goes up. It simplifies the indexing of your pages by search engines and optimizes your essential sale elements like infographics. Even if you are not familiar with the use of an on-page strategy, there are other crucial steps you can use, including:
- Increasing landing page speed to reduce bounce rates
- Creating unique and descriptive title pages
- Optimizing headings with keywords and other relevant descriptions
- Regularly writing descriptive and keyword optimization of other alternative text for images posted on your site
- Linking your site content with other internal links to improve navigation and indexing
- Making use of sensible and readable URLs
- Always writing meta descriptions to develop your visibility on search engine results pages that improves your relevance
#5. Understanding Sales Funnels
The sales funnel is a critical component that forms part of the potential customer’s decision-making pattern. It revolves around three significant phases:
- Awareness
- Evaluation
- Purchase
Personnel involved with sales and marketing need to pay attention to the process to gain a better understanding of how customers go through the funnel.
Content marketing tops off the sales funnel. It is an essential part of digital marketing. There are four stages when it comes to the sales funnel before conversion. This can translate to the establishment of brand loyalty. As a strategist, you should be focused on:
- Outreach – attracting potential customers
- Conversion – convincing prospects to purchase
- Closing – making the sale
- Retention- creating brand loyalty and returning customers
At the top of the sales funnel are brand awareness and lead generation. This allows you to increase your reach with growing your customer base. Apart from building relationships with customers, you are also able to understand the in-depth analysis of your strategy. You will need to understand the engagement process with customers throughout the different parts of the funnel.
The ways mentioned above will help you with thinking ahead with content marketing solutions and tools for your business. However, keeping up to date with the problem-solving world of content marketing is also as important. Simplemachine is always ready to work with you to choose the best mix of methods to develop the best content marketing strategy for your business. Contact us today to get started.
