One of the biggest mistakes business owners, managers and marketers make is trying to force content marketing to sell their products and services.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love sales. I think it’s a top priority for any business.
However, content marketing is about branding. It’s about getting people to know that you exist. If sales is about the 3% of the time that people are in buying mode, content marketing is a way to engage people the other 97% of the time.
Content marketing does lead to sales. It’s just usually in a different and less direct way than most realize.
Here they are…
1. Awareness
Content marketing is about creating and distributing content as a way to earn attention. In order to earn that attention the content you create has to be educational or entertaining or both. Advertising is a way to pay for attention. With advertising, someone else creates the content and earns the attention, but they don’t have anything to sell so they sell the attention to a business that has something to sell.
Content marketing is a long-term effort to earn attention from consumers. Then once you have that attention you see sales increases. Usually from people simply recognizing you and your brand and diving into what you’re selling.
2. Upfront Value
Humans are reciprocal by nature. When someone provides us with value we often feel a need to reciprocate the relationship. Not always. And it really shouldn’t be expected, but in many cases there is a give and take. At least for one time. If you help a lot of people by providing educational or entertaining content, a good percentage of those people will purchase from you at least once to return the favor.
3. Respect
Content can earn you respect. From peers. From influencers. From potential customers. Content is a way to show that you know what you’re talking about. It’s a way to show that you care for other people. Consumers like to buy from respected people and brands because it’s usually a good bet that their money will provide a good return.
4. Reputation
Reputation is a big factor in business. If someone sees that a brand has a positive reputation they will often purchase from that brand, if they need or want the product, without doing much research. The reputation provides the filter and confidence that the choice will be a good one. Content can help create your reputation. One of a brand that is willing to provide value without necessarily expecting anything in return.
5. Authority
Content can increase awareness. It can lead to respect and reputation. These all contribute to authority, which is being one of, if not the, top brands in your industry. When you’re the authority, people will often choose you because many people want the best. They don’t have to fret over a decision if they choose the authority. We do it all the time because we want things that are valuable without putting in a lot of effort.
6. Search Traffic
Content marketing does lead to search engine traffic. In fact, that’s one of the main benefits. And search traffic can lead to sales. In a few ways, actually.
However, most people overestimate how quickly they will get search traffic from content marketing. Especially blogging. It’s usually a 3+ year effort to build some traffic. Some pieces do better in search than others. And some will perform well the older they get.
Another area to pay attention to with content marketing is that branded searches and general searches relating to your homepage will improve. This is often not attributed to content marketing, but it should be. As content builds awareness and respect for your brand, your general rankings typically improve and lead to sales.
7. Sharing Traffic
The social media sites want to keep users on their platforms. You can still use your content to create traffic to your content. But you can get more value by sharing content natively on social. Letting users digest it there and looking for the corollary benefits like higher awareness and branded searches and things like that. But you can still get traffic from sharing, including people sharing your content via text and messaging.
8. Trust
People generally buy from businesses they trust or when they see that others trust the brand. Content marketing is a great way to build trust. You provide value without asking for anything in return. You build your authority. People see that if you provide consistency and quality content that you probably do the same with your product.
9. Education
You can use content marketing as a way to educate your target customers on your industry. This is especially the case in new industries. For example, I’ve been looking into golf simulators. This is a relatively new industry. I don’t know much about it so I’ve been reading blog posts, articles, forum threads and watching videos. Most of the content is from brands. I’m getting an education on how and what to buy.
10. Your Knowledge Development
Creating content is also a great way to build your own knowledge within your industry. It’s great to read. It’s great to see speakers. Definitely do that. But you learn a ton by creating content whether it’s video, audio or text. The more you create the more you learn.
Conclusion
Notice there is no mention of asking for a sale. Many brands create content that they think is content marketing, but really they focus only on their products and services. That is sales content. It belongs on the sales pages of a website or in a brochure. Nobody is searching for it. Nobody finds value in it unless they’re in buying mode.
Create content with the aim of helping people. Do your best to make sure people know that you’re the creator. Let the rest work for you in the long run to build sales.