By Pedro Dias Marques, Product Marketing Analyst

Successful Education of your Prospects through your Website

Nowadays` customers have access to a wide range of information that is conveniently made available online. In this massive and competitive digital environment, international companies need to make use of the best practices in order to capture and retain the consumer`s attention. 

Irrespectively of your company`s business or of the customers you want to attract to your site, one thing is certain: these prospects will use search engines, such as Google, to search for answers. This means that if your site or e-commerce platform doesn’t have relevant content, your company may be losing impact on organic marketing and customers won’t come naturally to your business. 

When your content is considered relevant by online users, your site pages will start to have better search engine rankings, which could lead to an increased traffic, more leads and more sales. In order to improve the online visibility of your business, you should consider having: 

• Landing pages for each one of the services or of the products that are offered.
• A blog that conveys news or insights to the business’ customers and audiences.
• A FAQ page that addresses the questions that your prospects or customers often ask.
• Case studies detailing technical and business challenges, as well as solutions that were implemented.
• Other types of formats.

Why is Online Content Vital for your Business

Content marketing pertains to the creation of materials in order to promote a brand for a target audience. It also involves publishing and sharing contents on social media in order to acquire customers. By posting relevant and frequently updated information on your site, your business shall improve its search engine optimization (SEO) and build a deeper relationship with its customers.

It should also be taken into consideration that content marketing can give a significant positive impact on lead generation. After analyzing three months of data concerning inbound marketing activities for 1,400 HubSpot customers, HubSpot concluded that:

• Every 50 to 100 pages of indexed pages in Google, leads achieved double digit growth. 
• Customers with blogs gathered 68% more leads than customers without blogs. 

Taking your target audience into consideration, the marketing team must choose which social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) are the most adequate ones to be the source of distribution and promotion of your content, thus generating the right kind of traffic to your website. 

To maximize the engagement with your audience and improve your business´s presence on social media sites, your content suppliers will need to:

• Create appealing materials to your customers and prospects.
• Understand the nuances of the different countries and regions where your company is involved.
• Offer experiences to attract the interest and the user satisfaction, instead of just selling products and services.

Developing a Content Marketing Strategy

If you are thinking about building a content strategy for your business, there are some vital steps to consider in order to guarantee an innovative and compelling effort.

How to create a sound content marketing strategy:

1. Conduct a content audit: Gather and analyze the results of all the content that is currently produced by your organization (such as a blog, a website and social media). Afterwards, you will need to assess their usefulness and success, as well as to identify potential gaps. You may also take this opportunity to check how your content compares with that of your main competitors, so that you may learn from their experiences.

2. Set up your goals: The content marketing goals must be aligned with the goals of your company. If you are trying to obtain awareness, the content will need to be educational-based in order to achieve more traffic in your website. If you want to boost sales or interest in your product/service, your content needs to be focused on its specific benefits in order to attract high quality leads.

3. Determine your KPIs: Your goals should be specific and measurable and the key performance indicators (KPIs) will provide you with milestones to check off. They should include what you plan to achieve in terms of traffic, SEO, social media metrics, sales and other different aspects of digital marketing.

4. Get to know your audience: Determine your buyer personas – customer avatars that describe your target readers – in order to create the right content to reach them. This process will allow you to better understand your customers’ demographics, behavioral motivators and what are the main challenges they are hoping to solve by engaging with your content.

5. Choose content formats: Considering the goals and the audience that were previously defined, you will need to figure out what is the type of information you want to produce, deliver and promote with your content strategy plan. You can create blog posts, infographics, videos, newsletters or podcasts if these are considered to be the best formats to engage with your target audience within the available budget. Bear in mind that some of the beforementioned content can be repurposed in another format, such as a blog post turned into an infographic, for example.

6. Select the best content channels: You can share your content on owned platforms, such as your website or blog, or through social media sites, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Your publishing strategy must focus on where your target audience prefers to hangout and where your company already has a successful online presence. 

7. Establish a content production flow: You need to determine who is going to manage your editorial calendar – providing everyone else involved with the information needed to produce the content – and who is responsible for delivering the content materials – if you will have an in-house content team or hire outside expertise. It’s also crucial that you work out what the content production process is going to be so that you can guarantee the quality of the delivery and determine when the materials will be published.

8. Create Content: Your content needs to reflect your brand’s tone of voice and to keep in mind important SEO ranking factors, such as keywords and mobile friendliness, in order to optimize results. You need to research the information that is already available online and how your content can add value to your target audience.

9. Track results: You can measure the effectiveness of your content strategy using tools such as Google Analytics and SEMRush. Don’t forget to check the KPIs that you have previously defined in order to confirm if you are hitting your targets.

Overview of the Advantages and Challenges of Content Marketing

Although content marketing can be a strong asset in the promotion of engagement with your audience and in the boost of sales, there will be certain challenges, such as thinking of noteworthy content ideas and finding the right content producer.

In terms of advantages, content marketing will allow your business to:

• Build brand awareness, trust and loyalty, since people which consume your content will begin to develop an impression of your brand.
• Reach an audience that tends to avoid ads by using content instead of traditional advertising.
• Increase traffic and conversions by attracting an audience to your website. 
• Support other marketing initiatives such as SEO, social media and public relations.

There will be a trial and error period in order to discover which works best before your company achieves results, however, if done correctly, your content marketing strategy will improve your company`s online reputation and will certainly be an asset for your business endeavor. 

Get in touch with us to learn how BoaCompra can help your company expand to this promising market:

Other Sources:

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<https://www.bluecorona.com/blog/why-is-website-content-important>

Kucheriavy, Andrew. “Why Content is the Most Important Thing on Your Website”. Copyright 2018. February 28, 2019.
<https://www.intechnic.com/blog/why-content-is-the-most-important-thing-on-your-website/>

McGill, Justin. “How to Develop a Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide” Copyright 2018. February 28, 2019.
<https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-plan>

nibusinessinfo.co.uk. “Advantages and disadvantages of content marketing”. Copyright. February 28, 2019.
<https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/advantages-and-disadvantages-content-marketing>

Patel, Neil. “Comparing the ROI of Content Marketing and Paid Advertising”. Copyright. February 28, 2019.
<https://neilpatel.com/blog/comparing-the-roi-of-content-marketing-and-paid-advertising/>

Hall, Sharon. “11 Steps to Create a Content Marketing Strategy to Grow Your Business”. Copyright 2019. February 28, 2019.
<https://optinmonster.com/how-to-create-a-successful-content-marketing-strategy-in-8-simple-steps/>

Williams-Bennet, Marion. “How to Develop a Content Marketing Plan with Templates”. Copyright 2017. February 28, 2019.
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