There is a difference in the way of the buyers do research and buy products and services due to the availability of information on search engines. Traditional ways of marketing do not work for them anymore.

Research shows that to block ad messages, 50% use ad-blocking technology and 80% prefers to consider their options on their own without speaking to a sales team.

How do your market your products when your customers do everything they can to ignore you and make their own educated decisions?

This is where content marketing comes in. It is a good way to create trust with your customers by establishing your company as the leading voice in your sector. By producing content for your company, you can appear where your customers are looking for information.

We will explain the basics of content marketing and introduce elements of a framework and approach that works for many. It worked well for our client called They Ask, You Answer.

These tools will assist your company in making its content marketing strategy much more successful and worthwhile of the time and effort you are investing in it.

When done correctly, content marketing—think high-value, customer-focused blog articles, white papers, videos, etc.—can be a powerful tool for boosting your traffic, leads, and revenue exponentially.

Content marketing definition

Content marketing enables you to involve your audience and expand your clientele by producing important and useful material.

When it comes to creating content that promotes strong business-customer relationships, where your consumers are so satisfied, they not only make more purchases from you but also spread the word about your brand.

This tactic has the power to draw in, engage, and benefit a brand’s target market. This strategy enhances consumer perception of your brand and increases revenue for your company.

Benefits of Content Marketing for the Business

If done correctly, content marketing can bring a lot of benefits to your business such as:

When you can tap into the questions your customers are asking, content marketing can help your website rank higher in search engines for the words and phrases visitors use to do their research. Your website benefits from increased organic traffic and high-quality leads as a consequence. It also makes your content findable on search engines.

The best content marketing tactics, as outlined in Marcus Sheridan’s book They Ask, You Answer, obsess over responding to every question your customers pose, even the challenging ones. Starting with the articles we refer to as “The Big 5,” you should then focus on crafting your content around relevant keyword research (from Semrush, Surfer, or other keyword tools).

Gets more leads

Building trust with your readers and moving them closer to becoming customers happens when you produce high-quality, unrestricted content like articles and pillar pages that address reader inquiries and assist in problem-solving.

Customers will view your company as a helpful resource rather than just a company looking to take their money, which will benefit your bottom line. This makes it more convenient for users to fill out

Increased engagement

Effective content marketing encourages viewers to scroll and click through to more pages, which increases clicks and views. Better content, in other words, keeps visitors on your website and interested in your brand for longer.

Stronger customer relationships are facilitated by quality content, and search engines pay attention and consider this when determining your ranking.

Shorter sales cycle period

Additionally, effective content marketing can reduce sales cycles. It aids leads to get more knowledgeable and qualified (and more likely to close faster). However, you may also produce sales enablement content that is intended to assist your sales force in closing more deals.

Sales representatives purposefully use instructional content about your goods and services to allay fears and respond to inquiries from prospects prior to a sales conversation using a content marketing method we call assignment selling.

Low cost high ROI

According to research by Demand Metric, content marketing is 62% less expensive than conventional marketing strategies including paid advertising, banner ads, billboards, and commercials.

This happens because content marketing makes use of free or inexpensive platforms like social networking, blogging, and SEO. Hiring an experienced, talented professional to manage your content strategy can be expensive and the labor accumulates and increases ROI over time.

Builds trust with audience

You may demonstrate your knowledge and humanize your brand when your company focuses on educating (rather than selling to) your prospects.

This contributes to the development of trust with your target market, which is essential for considerable growth.

Creates value for the audience

Not only is the material you create and make available your clients helpful to them, it also conveys an important message that can be read by the right people at the right time. This can help your image for your audience surpass expectations, establish you as an expert on this topic, and benefit you and your audience at the same time.

Engage with your audience

Once you can provide useful and relevant information to your audience, they will feel amazed by it and are able to spread it around to their friends and followers. Not only so, but the readers of your work will engage in the product in many other ways, such as posting comments on it or rating it based on the topic.

Builds a positive brand perception

Content marketing is also beneficial to your audience at the correct moment because customers in this business prefer to do business with well-established brands than unknown ones.

Educates the market and audience regarding your products/services

Content marketing has the ability to get the words out there so your audience will know that your product and services exists.

Increases the client’s lifetime value

Customers are inclined to stay on your site for a longer period of time if you provide them with practical and relevant material.

Content marketing funnel

The content marketing funnel is a customer centred campaign that employs targeted educational content throughout the buyer’s journey. This is to draw in your ideal potential consumers and encourage them to complete a transaction.

This will help your marketing team to understand which part of the content that are the most crucial. This aids in narrowing their scope and enhancing the effectiveness of their content marketing initiatives.

There are three content marketing funnel stages:

• Discovery phase

At the beginning of the funnel, content is produced to inform customers who are first looking for information about how to alleviate their pain points at the top of the funnel (TOFU). Your prospects might not be aware of the solutions to their difficulties at this stage of the buying process.

• Consideration phase

It is also known as the middle of the funnel (MOFU). As they weigh their options, prospects are assisted by content in selecting the best solution for their issue. They are now more aware of potential solutions to their issues, but when they learn more about them, they still don’t know which one will work best.

• Purchase phase

This is where content—like customer journeys or testimonials—helps potential customers choose which business to do business with. Content that aids in the purchase phase, often known as the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), comprises anything that will describe what it is like to be a customer of that company.

Types of content marketing

These are the type of content marketing that can be used to increase and convert leads and to build a stronger relationship with your customers.

Discover (TOFU) information that informs and explains potential challenges and solutions to your prospects:

• Blog articles: Usually, business that does blogging gains 67% more leads monthly and makes 13 times the ROI. If done properly, blog entries assist digitally savvy customers in finding your website and discovering your goods and services via organic search. Begin with The Big 5 and explore the other business blog topics that not only gather revenue but also educate prospects.
• Video tutorials: People watch 19 hours of online video on average each week, and 69% said that they prefer watching videos to read about products and services. This is so that potential clients who might otherwise ignore reading your blog can connect with you in a meaningful way. A video is an efficient and straightforward way to absorb a lot of information.
• Email: Email is still a powerful tool for keeping customers interested in your brand, with an average ROI of 4,200%. That is RM200 for every RM4.75 spent! Keep your communication succinct, informative, and non-commercial (pushing people to buy). Inboxes get crowded rapidly, so if you want to be read and appreciated by your customer, you must be explicit about the value you’re offering.

Consideration (MOFU) content serves to help your prospects consider all the solutions available:

• Comparison articles and guides: Use comparative articles and how-to manuals to inform potential customers on the actions they can take to address their main pain points. There may be comparisons between your offerings and those of your competitors as well as the benefits and drawbacks of each alternative. Although the organic search traffic for this material may be lesser, the audience is far more interested in the subject at hand.
• Webinars: Consider doing a webinar to inform and entice more potential customers. You can increase the visibility of your brand by inviting a member of the sector to join you as you generate cross-branded content. This is so they can continue to be useful, capture these events and post them to your website or YouTube channel.

Purchase (BOFU) content serves to help your prospect to make a final decision:

• Case study: Case studies are some of the most effective pieces of content you can publish on your website since they may act as client testimonials or customer journeys. Prospects can see how they can benefit from your business by partnering with you if you can demonstrate how a firm or client got exceptional outcomes. It makes individuals feel more at ease about making the risky decision to select your business over all others.
• Live trials and demos: The BOFU material that interests your prospects includes trial offers so they can try the products before they buy if your company provides a membership or subscription service where clients make a long-term commitment. Demonstrations can also be useful in instructing customers on how to use your products and services profitably and effectively.

• Free consultation offers: Give customers access to someone who can guide them through the purchasing process when they are ready, whether electronically or in person. Offer to meet up with them in person to go over their available options without charging them extra. Aim to assist rather than to sell so that your prospects feel at ease discussing their issues and looking for answers with you.

Content marketing examples

Keep in mind that the main goal to build an effective content-based marketing is building authority and strengthen trust with prospect via education.

Two-thirds of Malaysian adults agree that when making a major purchase, trust plays a significant role in their decision. You must produce valuable material of the highest calibre to win over your audience’s trust, regardless of whether they choose to buy from you or not.

What is an Overhead Crane?

In this awareness-phase video, Mazzella asks one of the first questions on your buyer head which is, what is your product about and what exactly does it do?

After responding to the original query, they also discuss the various components of the crane and how they function. These explainer videos provide your potential customers a better understanding of what your goods and services can achieve for them.

Why is My Commercial Roof Leaking?

West Roofing Systems, captures readers’ attention in this thorough blog post even before they are aware of the problem’s solution. It covers all the warning signals and symptoms potential customers can experience as well as how to lessen the harm.

Top 5 Fiberglass Pool Problems and Solutions

The Big 5 playbook is used as an example in this problems essay. The post, which was written and released by Marcus Sheridan’s company River Pools, demonstrates how to increase trust in your audience with your content by outlining all the potential problems with the goods you sell.

Short Sale vs. Foreclosure: Which Is Better For Buyers?

When evaluating their alternatives, homebuyers frequently search for answers to inquiries that begin with “What’s the difference between…” For purchasers who are interested in learning more about the distinction between short sales and foreclosures, lender Rocket Mortgage provides a response to this query in this instance.

By offering to assist customers in determining their eligibility for a loan via a loan generator, they also provide them the ability to dive a little deeper into the mortgage application process.

How Much Does Commercial Flood Insurance Cost in MA?

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Develop a content marketing strategy

It’s time to develop your genuine content marketing plan at this point. The following are the tips that can help you prepare your business for success:

Get organizational buy-in

Getting the leadership of your company’s organization to support your content marketing strategy is the first step in building a successful one. Here are some points that explains why this is important:

• If your leadership and stakeholders don’t back you from the ground up, your content marketing efforts will fail. Your content marketing will constantly be overlooked and viewed as a pointless activity if they’re not completely on board.
• If you want everyone to participate, you need to make content creation a cultural shift that everyone in the organization understands and values.

Hold a session to discuss the advantages of content marketing, or persuade everyone by outlining how it may address common values (such as the fact that buyer behavior has changed and trust is the foundation of strong businesses). When creating content, solicit feedback from relevant departments. You can do this by asking them for their opinions or conducting interviews with them as subject matter experts, which can assist to increase buy-in and spot market trends.

Encourage cross-department collaboration

You need sales and marketing to be very well connected to get the most out of your content marketing efforts, and this is challenging to do without buy-in. This makes it much simpler to develop customer-driven, high-quality material for assignment selling because your sales staff will be participating.

Additionally, we advise you to assemble a revenue team made up of all of your companies’ top sales and marketing performers. They should get together twice a month to discuss the type of material the sales team needs to complete more deals and to assess the effectiveness of the content that has previously been produced.

Set clear goals (with some room for unexpected changes)

What marketing objectives do you want to accomplish? This is a crucial topic to think about depending on your sector, especially how current events may effect your plans. Although the outside world shouldn’t alter your mission, it may have a significant impact on your annual goals and results.

Get a clear idea of your audience and user pathways

At various points in the buying process, consumers require different types of material. They could initially be more focused on their problems than on possible solutions. Buyers who are in the “awareness stage” are different from those who are weighing their alternatives in the latter stages.

Keep track of the questions your customers pose at each stage of the buying process and utilize their inquiries to develop your buyer personas and content because the ideal content strategy delivers compelling information across the whole customer lifetime.

Research

The Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are typically where the audience interacts with your information for the first time, therefore choosing pertinent keywords is the greatest approach to appear there.

You need to figure out what search terms your audience uses to find material similar to yours.

Use Search Engine Optimization practices

Only one element of the overall Search Engine Optimization strategy includes keywords (SEO). This group of strategies is used to rank first on search engine results pages, like Google.

Your chances of having your buyer persona find your blog, proceed through the marketing funnel, and seal a deal with you increase with your Google ranking.

Top content marketing tools

There is nothing more gratifying than building a collection of content marketing tools that help us do our jobs better every day. They automate the tiresome tasks we perform and streamline our processes to increase productivity.

These are some content marketing tools you may consider:

HubSpot

A fantastic CMS for digital marketers is HubSpot. When you have a marketing hub and a sales hub, you have access to unrivaled content ROI reporting that shows you which content marketing strategies are bringing in new clients and which ones aren’t.

It’s one thing to be able to demonstrate traffic and lead growth to the rest of the business, but quite another to be able to demonstrate how particular pieces of content truly contributed to a transaction closing.

Semrush

Semrush is mostly used as a keyword research tool because it offers vital information about the quantity and popularity of keywords that a website is ranking for.

However, Semrush also provides analysis that goes far beyond keyword research, such as technical SEO, backlinking, competitive analysis, brand monitoring, and content gaps. It is a crucial tool for developing a successful organic search strategy.

Surfer SEO

With the help of Surfer SEO, an analysis and planning tool, you can quickly develop a content strategy focused on SEO with pillar pages, supporting material, and more.

You can immediately grasp the competitive environment surrounding each issue using the SERP analysis, content planning, and auditing features. As an added bonus, Surfer has a plugin that enables you to send recommendations to your writing team directly through Google Docs. This way, they can see detailed recommendations for each page’s primary and secondary keywords as well as the supporting language they should use to achieve search success.

Vidyard

Vidyard has been a remote company for some time. However, when you only use text to connect with anyone, things can still be lost in translation, regardless of how long you have been remote.

Your capacity to forge stronger bonds with your coworkers and clients is greatly enhanced by your ability to follow up after meetings, reply to customers, and even just to simply show up with a smile.

On top of everything, you receive notification when someone views a video you’ve sent. You can also see how much time they’ve spent watching.

Placeit

Placeit is the tool to use when you need to customize your material and graphics. The options are unlimited because to the thousands of pre-made images and the option to submit your own photographs.

The program makes it quick and simple to produce feature photos or any other images you might require because you can test out several variations of your images before you buy and download what you need.

Ways to set content marketing goals

There are countless content marketing metrics that covers different categories.

This is a focused list that has been cut down to 7 KPIs. They will help your track what is working or not for you so you can modify it accordingly.

These are what to track:

• Amount of content marketing published weekly

The most crucial measure to monitor is publishing at least three pieces of high-quality content (articles, videos, etc.) each week, especially when you’re first getting started.

Search engines will understand that your website offers a wealth of useful information when you consistently produce transparent, quality content that is correctly optimized, and you will rank higher and more quickly in SERPs.

• Organic website traffic

One of the best methods to gauge how effectively your business is teaching people is through organic traffic (more traffic means more people are finding you). Additionally, it’s a sign that you’ll generate more leads and close more deals. You have more chances to convert leads the more visitors you have to your website.

• Rate of session-to-contact

It’s great to see organic traffic start to flow in after posting a lot of content, but you want to make sure it’s the appropriate traffic rather than just any traffic.

Divide the number of new contacts by the total number of website sessions to determine your contact conversion rate. A high contact conversion rate indicates that website users are clicking on your calls to action (CTAs) and completing forms in exchange for valuable material.

• Sales opportunity generated (SQLs)

You want to be sure that the content you’re producing is not only increasing the amount of organic traffic to your website but also the likelihood that it will result in more purchases.

By putting The Big 5’s concepts into practice, you may draw in real prospects that have issues that your business can help them with. Your sales staff will have more (and better) opportunities, and the sales cycle will be shortened.

• Average length of sales cycle

The revenue team is in responsibility of creating and implementing a content strategy that can be used to speed up deal closing and increase closure rates. To do this, we employ the assignment selling process. Your sales cycle will be shorter when your content is doing as it should, so monitoring this is a good indicator of how successfully you’re producing content and utilizing it in the sales process.

• Ranking important keywords

When your website begins to rank for the most competitive keywords in your sector, it proves that your efforts to provide informative content and establish yourself as the authority in your field are paying off.

As a result, there is a snowball effect that increases your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) as more of your material ranks well. Consequently, the rate at which your material generates results quickens.

• New sales due to content marketing

It’s no surprise that this shows a content marketing success when your sales are rising as a direct result of the content you’re producing. Again, content-tracking solutions like HubSpot can show you exactly where a prospect accessed your site, including which articles or videos they saw, as well as how many pieces of content they viewed before completing a purchase.

The cost of content marketing?

Honestly, it varies. So, we will give you the average prices with the assumption that you are going for the highest quality work.

You can hire someone to produce RM47.50 blog post for you on Fiverr, but it’s unlikely that the material will be of the calibre you need to attract readers or rank well in search engines. This is true for practically any content marketing effort.

These are the estimates:

• Written content – A content manager makes around RM284,700 annually, per PayScale. If outsourcing is your choice, you might collaborate with independent writers or writing services like Verblio. You should budget RM355 to RM710 on average per piece for high-quality content.
• Video content – According to PayScale, the average annual compensation for videographers is $45,000. When businesses outsource their video production, they pay a premium for a select few well produced videos that may look great but may not generate income.
• Search engine optimization – A full-time SEO consultant will cost you roughly RM218,300 per year, but you may decide to engage an outside expert to analyze your website only occasionally.

You will also need to consider the cost of the program. A basic HubSpot CRM membership is available for free, but the industry-standard Salesforce subscriptions cost RM120 to RM1440 per user every month.

How to begin content marketing

Make a team

If you’re prepared to commit to content marketing, you must first confirm that the appropriate individuals are occupying the appropriate positions. In order to manage the additional content creation workload, it is advised to have both a content manager and a videographer on staff.

This is an essential first step, and without at least one content manager on your team, it is almost hard to begin with content marketing.

A group of content marketers who have received internal training will produce blog posts, videos, and email campaigns that reflect your company’s subject-matter knowledge, core values, and voice. They have a vested interest in your company’s success unlike other freelancer or marketing organization can.

Come up with a strategy and begin posting

Create your content strategy once you have a content manager in place. What inquiries are your sales reps getting from customers? is a good place to start.

Make a content calendar to keep up with content production and add topics that will answer the questions that the buyers have.

Next, have a meeting with your sales team to come up with a list of 15 to 20 questions your customers want you to respond to. Starting with the articles that generate the most traffic and lead conversions, such The Big 5, is advised.

Work with the content manager to decide which buyer queries are best answered in video prior to meetings with the sales team. A same subject can frequently result in both a video and an article. As a result, it’s crucial that the content writer and filmmaker coordinate their plans for content creation. The Selling 7, which are the videos that generate the most revenue, is where you should start.

Have regular meetings with the sales and marketing team

Every other week at Resolute, the sales and marketing team get together to brainstorm. We use an upvoting technique to rank the topics and queries after creating a list.

The aim of these meetings is to:

• Come up with attractive content ideas to reel in qualified buyers
• Think of which part of content that can be used by the sales team during the selling process to make people buy the product
• Know which content does not serve the purpose during sale process and take it put of the planning so the team will not waste time to create it

Make sure the sales staff is informed when an article is published. Change it if it isn’t accommodating their needs.

Additionally, bear in mind that you might need to edit older articles if key details alter as you start to compile a library of information.

Judge your progress and adjust as you see fit

Once you’ve written a significant number of articles, analyze the data to determine how well they’ve done. Utilize the tools at your disposal to keep tabs on their traffic, online visibility, connections to completed transactions, and more.

To track the success of your content thus far, use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, keyword growth tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, and CMS platforms like HubSpot.

Decide how you’ll utilize that data to improve underperforming content, and then recognize your content successes.