Why Content Marketing is the Key to Business Success

The phrase “content is key” has been buzzing around the marketing world for quite some time now. It’s an easy statement to make, but not necessarily an easy one to fully understand for anyone who don’t specialize in marketing or writing.

 

In this article, I’ll explain exactly what content marketing is and why you should start using it ASAP.

 

     

What Is Content Marketing?

According to The Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is,  “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

 

Let’s break that down to make it a bit easier to understand.

 

Content marketing refers to media you create that is specific to your business. This can include the creation of blog and newsletter articles, videos, social media posts, photos, podcasts, e-books, webinars, and more.

 

The key to being successful with content marketing though is making sure the content has a specific goal related to educating, entertaining, and engaging your audience in order to lead them to perform a specific action.

 

For example, let’s say you’re a chiropractor’s office manager who recently hired an acupuncturist on staff and you’d like people to start booking appointments. You can use content to tell your audience about the benefits of acupuncture. You could create a blog post that documents a patient’s recent success with acupuncture, or a video that informs people about 5 things they never knew about Eastern medicine techniques. All of this content has the goal of educating your audience about acupuncture in hopes that they’ll want to book an appointment and try it out.

 

Now that we understand exactly what content marketing is, let’s go over why you should use it.

 

Why Should You Use Content Marketing?

 

1. It Drives Relevant Traffic to Your Website.

Almost every small business I work with wants to increase traffic to their website. But, what many people don’t realize is that traffic in general doesn’t necessarily help your business. Instead, you want to focus on driving relevant traffic to your website. This way, you know the people who are visiting your site are actually interested in your business.

 

Content marketing can help make this happen.

 

By creating good content that is relevant to your business, you open up opportunities for that content to rank in Google, which benefits your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

 

If you create a blog post focused on a topic that is specific to your business and it ranks highly in Google, then you know the traffic coming from that post is going to be from visitors who are interested in your products or services.

 

2. It Creates a Natural Opportunity to Follow Up with Customers and Leads.

Cold sales calls are tricky and require a lot of effort on the part of you and your sales team. Using content marketing opens up more “warm” sales opportunities.

 

Once you begin building an email newsletter list, you can create content to send out to the customers and prospects on your list that keeps them engaged with your company. Sending out monthly or even weekly newsletters with content your audience is interested in helps to keep you top of mind and opens up the doors for a more natural follow-up sequence. 

 

Sticking with the acupuncturist example above, after sending out an article about the benefits of acupuncture, it’s a much more natural phone call for someone from your office to follow up with clients to see if they’d like to schedule an appointment to try it out. Using content marketing to educate and engage with your audience helps to create warmer relationships.

 

3. Content Marketing Positions You as an Expert in Your Industry.

By creating content that educates your audience about your business, you’re automatically positioning yourself as an expert in your industry.

 

People love to learn new things, and if you’re the one who teaches them something new that is relevant to their lives, they’ll be looking to you for more advice in the future.

 

For example, I recently moved and needed tips on installing a wall mount for my TV. I Googled “how to install wall mount tv”. The first thing listed in the search results was an article from Home Depot titled “A Guide to Wall-Mounting Your Flat Screen TV”. I clicked on this article for tips without even considering that Home Depot would sell TV wall mounts. Because this article was highly relevant with good content, I trust that Home Depot is an expert in this and am considering purchasing my wall mount, or the tools needed to install one, from Home Depot.

 

See how that works?

 

4. Content Marketing Provides Opportunities to Engage With Potential Customers on Social Media.

There’s no question that social media is a huge part of any marketing plan.

 

According to Statista.com, Facebook had 1.71 billion active users as of Q2 of 2016. This provides a valuable opportunity for your business to engage with potential customers through social media platforms.

 

Drafting engaging social media content is a big part of content marketing. It’s important to identify which social media channels your ideal customer is using, and then to create a content plan that will engage your audience. Organic content, paired with paid social media advertising is a great way to reach potential customers.

 

I was recently on the receiving end of successful content marketing using social media. A few months ago, fitness accessory company, Caeden, was running a Facebook ad campaign to promote their new fashionable fitness tracking bracelet. Their product not only tracks steps, calories, and heart rate, but also uses the information to report on your stress levels and then pairs it with a meditation and breath app to help relieve some of that stress. This ad repeatedly came up on my Facebook and eventually lead me to click on a video post that featured a woman using this bracelet while practicing yoga.

 

This was genius because I’m their ideal customer — a female yoga instructor who has an interest in fashion. After watching the video and reading more on their blog, I became a strong prospective buyer.

 

I was shown well-crafted, relevant content which kept the product top of mind. A few days later, I ordered my Sona after using one of the promotion codes that popped up on my Facebook account through their retargeting campaigns.

 

Sharing and promoting your content, especially if targeted to your ideal customer, can help to connect with prospective clients.

 

5. Content Marketing Gives Your Business A Voice

What do you want the “feel” or overall perception of your company to be? If your target audience is doctors or engineers over the age of 40 you’re likely to want a different reputation than a business whose target audience is millennial social media marketers.

 

Content marketing helps establish the voice of your company which helps you attract and retain more customers who get along with your company culture.

 

Whole Foods is a great example of a business who uses their content marketing to establish a voice. Their Whole Story Blog focuses on healthy recipes and video cooking tips all containing words like healthy, better, benefits, and greens. This establishes their voice as a brand focused on providing meal prep inspiration targeted to people looking for healthy recipes with exciting ingredients — i.e. their ideal customers.

 

6. Content Marketing Helps Create Partnership Opportunities

Forming partnerships within your industry is a great way to get in front of a new audience that is likely interested in the product or service you are selling.

 

Content marketing opens up opportunities to engage with partners. You can reach out to influencers in your industry and invite them to exchange guest blog posts with you. This not only provides your audience with compelling content from a thought leader in your industry, but allows you to provide content to get in front of a new audience as well. And, circling back to reason #1, it will drive relevant traffic to your site… which is what you want.

 

Whether you’re exchanging blogs, social media shares, webinars, or other types of content, these types of partnerships help to expand your audience and potentially generate new clients.

 

Conclusion

Content marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to educate, entertain, and engage your audience. By establishing the voice of your brand and positioning you as an expert in your industry, it can help you connect to potential new clients. Creating a content marketing plan targeted towards your ideal client, with help you turn those prospects into new customers for your business.

9 Ways to Measure Digital Marketing Success

A positive return on investment is the goal of every digital marketing campaign.

 
However, while the endgame of digital marketing is to increase profits, not every campaign directly leads to dollars and cents. Some campaigns raise awareness of your brand, while others might bring visitors to your blog – both help increase profits in the long run, but short-term results can’t be quantified with monetary values.
 
This begs an important question – how do you know whether your digital marketing efforts are successful?
 
Here we’ll review nine ways to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns. And to add further clarity to the question above, we’ve split these methods into two categories: conversions and website behavior.

 

     

Conversions

Conversions occur when visitors or customers take specific actions as a result of your digital marketing. Unlike website behavior, conversions are more directly linked to sales and revenues. Since your ultimate goal is increasing profits, making sure your digital marketing converts is absolutely essential.
 
Here are five types of conversions that can indicate successful campaigns:
 

#1. Online sales

Online sales from your website is perhaps the simplest conversion for gauging success. Tracking your online sales is easy if you use Google Analytics or another Web analytics platform.
 
After installing a small snippet of code on your website, you’ll be able to see which of your campaigns are driving the most online sales. This is the most important conversion for strictly e-commerce business owners.
 

#2: Online-to-store sales

Not everyone who finds your business online will buy from your website. Local customers are likely to visit your store and make in-person purchases. How do you measure these conversions?
 
Don’t worry, there are ways to gauge online-to-store sales.
 
For example, you can collect information from prospective customers on your website, such as email addresses, that can later be compared with data collected at the cash register.  Or, you can offer a special discount code on your website so when customers redeem the discount you’ll be able to easily match it back to the marketing campaign.
 
Or, you can be really low tech and just ask customers whether they found your business online. Clarify how they found you – such as via a PPC ad, Facebook or a Google search — and record their answers in a spreadsheet. Then you can see which campaigns drive more in-store conversions.
 

#3: Leads from Web forms

Most websites have forms that customers can use to request services, schedule appointments or get more information. If you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see which campaigns result in the most use of your various Web forms.
 
Any visitor who completes a Web form to request a quote could later convert into a customer. Therefore, marketing campaign success can be measured by the number of leads (Web form submissions) generated.
 

#4: Leads and sales from phone calls

Tracking leads and sales from phone calls is also important for businesses that drive sales via the phone.
 
To track calls, you’ll need to set up dynamic number insertion (DNI), which shows visitors different phone numbers depending on how they arrived at your website. You can then view your phone logs to see which campaigns result in the most calls.
 

#5: Leads from live chats

Does your website offer live chat for visitors? If not, then you might consider adding it as another way to engage your visitors.
 
Once you have chat installed on your website, then you need to track which marketing campaigns are driving the most chats.  This can be done using the built in tracking in your chat program or by integrating Google Analytics into your chat tool.  In both cases, you’ll be able to see which campaigns are driving more leads for your business via live chat.
 
Now that we’ve covered 5 ways to measure conversions from digital marketing, it’s time to move on to tracking how visitors behave on your website.  Just because a visitor doesn’t convert right away, doesn’t mean she’s never going to.  For that reason, it’s not enough to only look at conversions.  We must also review website behavior metrics to measure digital marketing success…
 

Website Behavior

Here are four ways to determine digital marketing success based on website behavior:
 

#1: Website visits

This one is simple – which of your digital marketing campaigns are putting the most eyes on your website? Although this is a rather shallow metric compared to e-commerce and Web form conversions, it’s still important to measure visits per marketing channel.
 
This is especially helpful when you view the traffic trends over time.  For example, you’ll want to measure traffic from Organic Search (SEO traffic) over time so you know if your SEO efforts are working. 
 
Plus, you’ll be able to spot potential problems early on if you see a sudden drop in SEO traffic.
 

#2: Page Views per visit

Website visits are important, but they don’t really indicate whether people are engaged by your business. What if nobody who visits your sites clicks around to your various products and pages?
 
Fortunately, Google Analytics can show you how visitors click through your site while also providing average numbers of page views per visit.
 
Pay close attention to which webpages your customers are visiting most. You might find that online customers are more attracted to certain aspects of your business or specific products in your inventory. If you’re promoting your blog, you can also get ideas about the topics your visitors find most interesting.
 

#3: Time spent on the website

How much time are people spending on your blog or website, and which of your digital marketing campaigns is bringing in the most engaged visitors?
 
Analytics can track this, too. Again, time spent on your website doesn’t directly lead to sales, but folks who spend more time browsing are more likely to later buy.
 

#4: Bounce rates

In the world of digital marketing, bouncing is bad for several reason.
 
If any of your campaigns have high bounce rates – meaning people hit their “back” buttons as soon as they land on your website – then there’s probably a serious disconnect between your marketing strategy and your landing page. Just as bad, though, Google might interpret websites with high bounce rates as low-quality or spam, resulting in an SEO penalty.
 
Use Google Analytics to measure your bounce rates over time to spot trends in each of your marketing campaigns.
 

Conclusion

Knowing how to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns will save you a lot of stress down the road. You won’t need to guess whether you’re wasting your time with various campaigns. You can adjust or turn off campaigns that aren’t working, or you can sharpen campaigns to really hone in on your goals.
 
And one more thing – always know how you’ll measure a campaign’s success before you launch it. Yes, this requires a more carefully constructed game plan for your marketing efforts, but you should never launch a digital marketing campaign that doesn’t have a specific goal.
 
Plan ahead, aim at your target, and you’re more likely to get good news when measuring the success of campaigns.

Google expanded text ads are live, and device bidding & responsive ads for native roll out

Standard text ads will no longer be accepted as of October 26.

The day has come: Google has officially launched expanded text ads. 

Expanded text ads rollout begins

As Sundeep Jain, who oversees text ads at Google, told the audience at SMX Advanced in June, existing standard ads will continue to run alongside expanded text ads (ETAs). As of October 26, 2016, however, advertisers will no longer be able to create or upload standard text ads. Google has not set a date when standard ads will no longer run with ETAs, but Jain noted advertisers should have sufficient time to test standard and expanded ad formats against each other to ensure they are properly using ETAs.

In other words, the expectation is that advertisers will run A/B tests with standard and expanded text ads for a period.

Expanded text ads include two headlines, each with up to 30 characters and a description of up to 80 characters. Google has said the extra copy was specifically designed to give mobile users more information and cited an average CTR bump of 20 percent in early tests. Robert Spears, digital marketing director for Guitar Center, whose ads are featured in the screen shot below, said as an early adopter, its non-brand campaigns “have seen more than a 2X increase in CTR.”

AdWords Editor and the AdWords API support ETAs, as well as third-party tools including DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo and Marin.

A caveat is that even though Google gives advertisers a total character count of 60 for headlines, advertisers have seen the second headline get truncated on desktop if Google doesn’t wrap the headline. On Twitter, Google actually suggested using just a total of 33 characters on the conservative side to avoid headlines getting cut off, though that seems extreme. You can use the ad preview tool to see how your ads will appear before launching them.

Google has published a new best practices guide on using Expanded Text Ads and device bidding, which is also getting a big update.

Separate device bidding is here

Advertisers can now start setting base bid adjustments for mobile, tablet and/or desktop, control that was lost with Enhanced Campaigns. (Update: Google has clarified that this roll out is going to take up to a few months to get to all accounts.)

Bid adjustments can now be set for each device type at the campaign level in AdWords.

Even as it rolls out these new controls, Google is pushing its automated bidding tools — now under the umbrella of Smart Bidding — and recommending that advertisers not go back to separating their campaigns by device type. Automated bidding will soon take advantage of the device separation as well, initially with the ability to set Target CPA by device.

Despite Google’s downplaying this new manual functionality, there’s likely to be quite a bit of experimentation in this area among advertisers that have the expertise and resources to test new campaign structures now feasible with separate device bidding.

Responsive display ads for native inventory

Also announced at Google Performance Summit are responsive display ads that Google will auto-generate from a headline, description, image and URL provided by the advertiser. The ads can serve across the GDN (Google Display Network) on all devices and, more interestingly, are eligible for the native ad inventory Google has opened up across publishers on the GDN.

Advertisers provide a short 25-character and a long 90-character headline, a description up to 90 characters (This might appear cut off with an ellipses in some cases), an image and a landing page URL.

These are rolling out now, and advertisers will find the option to set up a Responsive ad in the +Ad drop-down in AdWords when they become available. For more on setting up Responsive ads, see the Google help page.