7 Signs You Should Invest in Content Marketing

 In Marketing

Content marketing goes by many names: inbound marketing, contextual marketing, and even brand journalism. But for the untrained marketer or business owner, it can be difficult to learn where to begin – or even how to begin.

That’s why we’ve outlined seven different signs that you should invest in content marketing:

1) If your competitors are investing in content marketing 

What are you waiting for? Your competitors have an edge-up on you, and there’s no reason to resist building a strategy to keep up with the competition. Besides – if you’re doing great without it, why not just take your success to the next level? And if you’re struggling – then this is definitely the time to move forward.

2) If you’ve started to notice your traditional “Outbound Marketing” efforts aren’t yielding results

Prospects don’t really base their purchasing decisions on advertisements anymore. It doesn’t matter what they hear on the radio, which billboard they saw on the way home, or even what commercial was playing on the TV. Buyers now typically base their decisions on online research, referrals, and reviews – so why not spend more time engaging with future prospects there?

3) If you haven’t updated your website in over 6 months 

Your website is the most public, easiest way for your prospects to find out more information about your business. If you aren’t giving your website the attention it needs, you’re letting your most valuable real estate become overgrown and ignored. It’s about building trust with your prospects, by being part of the communities they value. If that means monitoring social media, start tweeting. If that means conversing in forums, get posting. You should be where your prospects are!

4) If you aren’t getting any new leads from your website

Content marketing is actually a mixture of strategies – one of which is SEO. If you find new leads aren’t coming to you from your website, it likely means your website content is stale and not especially relevant to the leads you’re hoping to capture. Content marketing is all about creating relevant information that draws in these leads, so you can help educate them and nurture them into customers.

5) If the leads in your sales funnel aren’t very qualified to make purchases

Did you know that approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy? This tells us that buyers need to gain information about products before they make purchasing decisions. There should be relevant information that your website that visitors can access, so that they become informed, and eventually make a purchase.

6) If you find that your sales leads always have a lot of questions about your industry 

A great example of a company that has developed a strong strategy for this is Hubspot. They have pioneered what it means to create useful content in the form of e-books, reports, white pages, guides, and other materials that are used to educate their audience – not immediately sell to them. If you look at their blog for example, you’ll see that although they are looking to gain new leads – most of their content is written to inform, push themselves as a leader in their industry, and provide genuine knowledge for their prospects and customers. An educated lead is a higher converting lead.

7) If you already know you need to invest in content marketing, but aren’t sure where to begin 

You shouldn’t feel like it’s too late to start! It’s all about taking the plunge at this point. The Content Marketing Institute states in it’s 2015 content marketing report that even though 83% of marketers have a content marketing strategy, only 35% have documented it. This means that lucky for you, not everyone out there has figured this whole “content marketing” thing out yet and there’s still time to get in the marketing game.

Still feeling stuck? We’d love to set up a consultation about what content marketing could mean for your business. Check us out!

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