You’re ready to start investing a solid monthly budget in content marketing for your business.
It might be because you’ve been told a good content marketing strategy is going to increase traffic on your website and leads for your business.
Maybe you like the idea of establishing yourself as an authority in your industry and know a quality blog can do just that.
Perhaps you’re BIG on meeting your customers where they spend their time so you know your business needs to find a way to be on social media.
Regardless, you know not only is content marketing a thing, it’s THE THING.
And if you don’t know it yet…well we’re telling you now.
Content Marketing is da’Bomb
Content marketing needs to be a part of your overall marketing strategy if you want to reach your customers. It’s how your customers are going to find you, interact with you and come to trust you.
When you search – what’s content marketing? – you’ll likely come across a definition like this:
“marketing that tries to attract customers by distributing informational content potentially useful to the target audience, rather than by advertising products and services in the traditional way:” (Dictionary.com).
Or
When you break it down the main point of content marketing is really positive human connection.
You’ll be using content platforms (ie. blogging, newsletters, social media, web content, etc.) in order to help your ideal customer, connect with them on an empathetic level and build trust.
It’s kind of a big undertaking. But you’re going to do it in simple ways that lead to big rewards.
Reaping the Rewards
The number one thing you need to know about content marketing is to get to the payoff, you need to be patient.
Content marketing takes time, consistency and quality. It’s a long-term plan and can feel slow moving.
In fact, content marketing plans that don’t work have a lot more to do with businesses giving up than on the strategy itself.
Content marketing takes at least a full year to start showing major benefits. A lot of this depends on your exact goals. However, you’re not likely to see any huge payoffs until after at least a year, more likely a year and a half.
If it takes so long to work, why bother?
Let’s answer this question with a question: Do you plan on your business running and thriving beyond a year or are you closing up shop?
You have a long-term vision for your company. You see growth, profit, a chance to really create change.
You’re planning on your business being here in a year. So why wouldn’t you plant seeds that’ll bloom in a year’s time? Heck even if it takes two years?
It might take time but content marketing can make big waves down the line.
According to a Hubspot Benchmark report, companies with 400 or more published blog posts get twice the amount of traffic than those with less. And more, those companies with 400 or more published blog posts also get three times the number of leads than those with a hundred or less.
The long-term strategy doesn’t mean thumb-twiddling.
In the beginning, you can expect to grow slowly.
The key is you should still see growth. It may not equal what you’re putting out but if you’re answered repeatedly with nothingness, then you’ll want to adjust. Emphasis on adjusting. Don’t abandon what you’re doing, simply tweak it as you learn more about your audience and what’s working.
Content marketing is 100% a long-term strategy. You won’t publish one blog and instantly become a huge success. However, you still want to be tracking your content’s progress and short term successes.
This way you can continue to build upon what’s effective for your business and move away from what’s truly not working.
Commit to Strategy
Whatever you do, don’t just throw content out an hope something sticks. Develop a strategy – work with our marketing team – and work with consistency.
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