We’ll start this week as we should - by wishing you all a Happy New Year for 2018 and hoping that the coming year is a prosperous one. When it comes to Internet marketing there are a number of truths that don’t change in the slightest no matter which pair of digits are at the end of a calendar year. The importance of smart content marketing is most certainly one of them, and as such it makes for a good refresher topic for us to hit the ground running with as January arrives.
Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re proud to be a top Canadian web hosting provider and we also enjoying seeing our valued customers have success with making themselves more visible to prospective customers of their own. It’s safe for us to assume that you’re already creating valuable content for your site, but are you doing so most effectively?
The aim is always to be nurturing the public with quality content - whether that’s with text, video or audio - in order to educate it, foster relationships and provide the types of necessary information that creates an informed consumer that will accredit a portion of their becoming informed to you on the way to becoming a loyal consumer.
Here’s the consensus most impressive and recent statistics on content marketing that will give you even more motivation to revisit your content marketing strategy.
Genuinely Informative, Well Written Blogs Generate Traffic and Leads
Creating, writing, and maintaining a blog related to your website or e-commerce site is always going to be priority number one for anyone who wants to increase traffic, but without a good supply of content for the consumer and the ability to write (and produce) quality materials for readers is an absolute must. There’s 2 sides to this equation, the knowledge / insight AND the ability to share it in attractive, readable form.
If you can cover both sides of it, great. If not, you need to connect with someone who can take care of that for you. That may become an expense, but it’s entirely worth it.
Look no further for proof than a Hubspot survey showing that companies that publish at least 16 posts a month have 3 and a half times more traffic than those who post 4 times or less per month. Companies that put up 16 posts or more are also able to generate 4.5 more leads than those who serve up only between 4 and 6 posts.
Looking at it elementally, a blog is intended to generate content that interests the public and is - ideally - then related to your market and products. You make the connection stylistically and indirectly, and writing skills do have a lot to do with that. With a good volume of traffic comes a greater number of visitors who have the makeup of potentially becoming a consumer.
It’s also important to consider leads. Visitors who demonstrate a clear interest in what you have to offer through a registration are essential for any business. Being in possession of submitted contact information means you can keep in touch with that individual until the time is right for your business team to offer one of your products or services. And with continued quality content, you increase the chances of this even further.
Bearing out that point - Survey information suggests that 47% of consumers only contact a sales representative after consuming between 3 and 5 brand content they are reviewing.
Quality Strategic Content Positions You Better on Google
We imagine there’s not even one business that doesn’t entertain hopes of being at the top of Google’s search pages. Not something easy to do, but content marketing is also a good tool to help you get as close to it as possible.
Consider this. Do you make an online survey before making a big purchase? Right, we do too and nearly everyone does. When a brand is presented among the first results, they’re more likely to choose it. Having quality content that informs, helps, and educates the user is one of the most important requirements for Google to position your site highly and make you increasingly visible to prospective customers.
Long story short - producing relevant content is the most effective tactic for making your site one of the highest ranked on Google.
Content Marketing is Increasingly Less Optional
It would be a mistake to think that producing brand content is something that only small businesses do as means of keeping up with the big players. Content marketing is a priority for everyone, and well it should be. Consider this next:
According to yet another Hubspot report, 53% of professionals tab blogging as their top priority for business development. Not that you likely to be convinced, but consider the following important points as well as the primary one of simply getting down to creating your content:
- Content distribution
- Creating more interactive content
- Creating more visual content
Video Itself can be Valuable Content
Video has emerged as a very interesting and potentially powerful content format for brands, and many companies and professionals are now giving it more focus when it comes to their content marketing strategies.
Look no further than the ever growing popularity of product reviews on Youtube. It’s a fact that prospective buyers do put significant value on them, with a sort of ‘real person’ belief in what they’re seeing regarding the product and its quality and suitability.
Content marketing has proven to be an effective way to convey information to the customer before he or she buys a product, and similar data is indicating that the income of companies that use videos can expand up to 49% faster than those who do not create content in this type of media. 48% of companies want to invest more in YouTube and 46% also have plans for videos on Facebook, the most popular social media network for consistent disposable income and specific buying prerogatives.
Making your content marketing efforts more a priority is as good a new year’s resolution as any. We look forward to meeting all sorts of new customers throughout 2018, and never hesitate to be in touch regarding anything related to getting the most of out of your online presence.
