Did you know that content marketing generates 54% more leads than traditional marketing?

If you aren’t familiar with content marketing, you’re missing an excellent strategy for growing your business online. Content marketing is a valuable strategy for helping you establish yourself as an authority in your field and build trust with your audience.

But what is content marketing?

On this page, we’ll:

1. Define content marketing
2. Talk about why you should use content marketing
3. Share the different types of content you can create
4. Provide five tips for creating killer content

Keep reading to get more information, and be sure to get the latest marketing tips and tricks by subscribing to our email list!

What is content marketing?

First, let’s define content marketing. Content marketing is a marketing strategy where you create and compile valuable and informative information that your audience wants. This industry-specific content helps you attract and maintain leads on your site.

Why use content marketing?

Content marketing is an indispensable tool for helping you grow your business online. Here are just a few stats to show the impact content marketing can have on your business.

1. Content marketing doubles website conversion rates
2. Content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing
3. Content marketing generates six times more conversions for businesses that use it than companies that don’t

This strategy can help you drive traffic and sales for your business. Here are a few reasons you’ll want to develop a content marketing strategy.

Content marketing helps you establish yourself as an authority in your field

Content marketing enables you to establish yourself as an authority in your field. The content you create allows you to share your knowledge and expertise with your audience.

By providing this helpful information, your audience sees you as a trusted source for information. They feel confident that you’re knowledgeable in your field because you offered useful information that answered their questions and informed them on a topic.

Building this confidence positions you as a trusted business that people can turn to for information.

Content marketing helps you drive traffic to your site

When you create content, you drive more traffic to your site.

This increase in traffic sends a positive signal to Google that your site is relevant in search results. When your site is more suitable, you can increase your rankings.

When you create content, you focus on integrating relevant terms into your pages to help your site appear in front of relevant leads. By targeting the right keywords and creating high-quality content, your content can rank highly and drive traffic to your website.

This increase in traffic on your site sends a signal to Google that your content is relevant to your audience. Additionally, if your audience spends more time on your pages, it increases dwell time, which is another positive sign for Google.

If you create relevant content that your audience engages with, Google will rank your site higher so more people can find your relevant content. It’s an effective way for you to increase your rankings to gain more valuable traffic gradually.

Content marketing helps you increase brand recognition

As mentioned previously, great content leads to an increase in dwell time.

When people spend more time on your pages, they also spend more time getting familiar with your brand — things like your mission, your products, and your services.

But beyond users becoming familiar with your brand by simply visiting your website, content marketing strategies also make your site visible in more places.

For example, you can use email marketing to market your content, social media to share links to content, and more. In addition to content marketing in organic search with SEO, you’re now marketing your content in three different ways and appealing to three different groups of people. Talk about increasing brand recognition!

Brand recognition is valuable to your business because it can help you earn conversions down the line. People convert with businesses they’re familiar with, so if someone is familiar with your business’s brand, style, and offerings, they’re more likely to choose your company.

Content marketing strategy: 3 popular types of content

Now that we’ve answered, “what is content marketing?” and “why use content marketing?” let’s start looking at how you can start creating content for your business. Here are three popular types of content you can make for your company.

1. Blogs

Most will talk about blogging as a valuable strategy if you ask someone to define a successful content marketing campaign. Blogs are written content posts that audiences can read to gain information. Blogs tend to be on the shorter side, around 1200 to 1500 words, but can be longer in some cases.

Blogs come in numerous styles, too. Some companies may create blogs with listicles, while other companies create blogs with steps. There’s room for a lot of creativity and flexibility with creating blog posts.

Many companies like to use blogging because blog posts rank well in search results. These posts provide helpful information for searchers, and Google can easily crawl these pages to understand the context and rank it appropriately.

Additional Reading:

Additional Reading: How to Start a Company Blog 

Additional Reading: How to Create a Blog Post 

Additional Reading: Why Your Business Needs a Blog 

2. Videos

Next to blogging, videos are the next most valuable content marketing tool.

With the popularity of platforms like YouTube, video content has skyrocketed in the past few years. Not to mention, U.S. adults spend about five hours each day watching videos, and 90% of shoppers use video to help them make purchasing decisions.

You can create multiple types of videos to engage your audience, including:

1. Vlogs
2. Behind the scenes videos
3. Explainer videos
4. Animated videos
5. Interview/Q&A videos

You have endless possibilities with video marketing! This content format is a great way for you to add an engaging element to your page and deliver an abundance of information to your audience fast.

Additional Resources

Additional Reading: Why You Should Use Video in Your Marketing Strategy 

Additional Reading: 8 Tips for an Effective Video Marketing Strategy 

Additional Reading: Why Video Matters to Marketing 

3. Infographics

Infographics are a great way to create visually appealing content for your audience. These graphics enable you to showcase critical information, like statistics or processes. It’s a great way for you to simplify your information for your audience.

If you have complicated information and want to create a simpler way to present it, infographics are a great way to present that information.

Additionally, infographics are easily shareable so that you can reach more people with your content.

Additional Reading:

Additional Reading: What is an Infographic? 

Additional Reading: 5 Steps for Creating Infographics 

Additional Reading: How to Use SEO to Promote Your Infographics 

How to create great content for your business

It’s time to develop your content marketing strategy! Here are four quick tips for creating impactful content.

1. Know your audience

If you want to create valuable content, you need to create content that your audience is interested in reading.

To determine your target audience, look at the users that typically visit your site or buy your products or services. You’ll want to define characteristics like:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Location
4. Hobbies/Interests
5. Occupation

When you know this necessary information about your audience, you can create content more tailored to their interests.

2. Keep your content focused on your industry

As stated in the content marketing definition, your content should remain industry specific.

If you try to create content that isn’t relevant to your industry, it may perform well and drive traffic, but it’s not likely to drive relevant traffic. For example, if you own a cookware company and you’re posting about the latest celebrity scandal, you may attract traffic, but not necessarily traffic interested in your cookware.

Instead, in this case, creating content about cooking would drive more qualified traffic for your business.

So, you’ll want to focus on content pertinent to your industry so you can capture more leads interested in your products or services.

3. Create content for every stage of the funnel

When people discover your business, they don’t always convert right away. Most people take time to become familiar with your brand, products, or services and do some research to decide if you’re the best fit. These leads move through a funnel known as the sales funnel.

The sales funnel typically has four stages:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Evaluation
4. Action

As leads get closer to the bottom of the funnel, they’re more likely to convert.

So, let’s say that Person A just discovered your floor cleaning business. Would a content piece about the benefits of your floor cleaning services help move them towards conversion?

In this case, probably not. This person doesn’t know much about your business yet, so they’re likely not ready to buy. Instead, a content piece that shares tips and tricks for getting out carpet stains may be more helpful.

On the other hand, if Person B has been engaging on your page often and has checked out your pricing page, content on your floor cleaning services’ benefits is very pertinent to that user. It could be a piece of content that convinces them to choose your business and convert.

4. Focus on evergreen content

When you define your content marketing strategy, make sure you’re creating evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that’s timeless and typically focuses on answering common questions in your industry.

The news, for example, is not evergreen content because it focuses on current events.

Evergreen content is valuable to your business because of its sustainability over time. Whether someone sees it the day after you publish it or six months after publication, it’s still relevant to your audience. It also means that you can continually drive traffic to your content, which helps you rank better.

This type of content still may need updating occasionally, but it will maintain its relevance as you update it. Overall, evergreen content will help you have a more sustainable content marketing strategy.

Launch your content marketing strategy today

Content marketing is one of the most valuable strategies for helping your business grow online. With a content marketing campaign, you can drive valuable traffic and leads for your business.

Feeling overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to start your content marketing efforts? WebFX can help!

We have a team of over 200 content marketing experts that can help you develop your strategy. With over 20 years of experience, you can feel confident that we can create a content marketing strategy that drives results.

In fact, we’ve driven over $2.4 billion in sales and over 6.3 million leads for our clients in the past five years alone.

So, if you want to start using content marketing to help your business grow, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our content marketing services!