It’s understandable to have a few questions about how content marketing drives sales. I’ve been asked this question many times, so I thought it would be helpful to include several ways that content marketing directly affects a sales department. It can be a pretty cool relationship and one that can vastly improve your company.
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How Content Marketing Drives Sales: 5 Proven Ways
Before we get started, it’s helpful to gain a deeper understand of what content marketing is. Essentially, content marketing is a way of selling your customers. Instead of a sales pitch, you’re giving them helpful content.
Trust me, choosing the latter option still results in plenty of sales. But how? Let’s take a closer look at how content marketing drives sales in your company.
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1. Increasing the Visitors to Your Website
Think of websites as types of digital stores. As you would want with a retail store, you want lots of visitors to your company’s website. Fortunately, content marketing can help you out!
Unfortunately, most people aren’t going to find their way to your website unless they have a reason to check it out. Something needs to entice a person that sees your website show up in search results, social media, or somewhere else to take action.
You can get people to start taking that action and clicking over to your website with effective content marketing. For example, most people love reading list-based content. If you’re looking for more readers, create content about subjects your audience wants to know more about and watch the traffic start rolling in.
2. Warming Up Leads at All Stages
Another method for how content marketing drives sales involves warming up your leads. In the marketing world, leads are people who have some level of interest in your company. With that said, they’re not quite buyers yet. However, content marketing can help change this situation.
Let’s say that you’re wanting to buy a new computer. If you’re like most people, you’re going to research the best and/or most popular computers. Whether you realize it or not, a person or company’s content marketing strategy (the websites you’ll soon start reading information on) is working on you.
Take the previous thought in mind and apply it to your business.
What are your company’s potential customers have questions about?
What kind of keywords would they use to get answers to these questions?
By spending a little time answering those questions, you can come up with a lot of useful information for future content.
3. Owning Your Share of a Topic
When people search for answers to a question online, most aren’t going that far to get their answer. You’ve likely heard endless statistics about how many people don’t go past the first page of search results. It’s easy to understand why. People lead busy lives and want their information fast.
This brings to mind another explanation for how content marketing increases sales. Let’s say that a potential customer is looking for help with a plumbing problem. They type in keywords into Google about the plumbing problem they’re experiencing and a page full of answers pops up. Even though other plumbers might have better information, this searcher is going to choose one or two pages to get their answers.
After that, their search is over and they’ll decide to either fix this or call someone for help. When they most likely call a plumber, you can bet they’ll reach out to the website that they started reading content from.
4. Having a Meeting of the Minds
There’s something great when two departments (or more) within a company start collaborating. This situation can result in amazing outcomes for an entire business. With that in mind, it’s time to think about setting up a meeting between your sales and content marketing department. These meetings can be a key factor in how content marketing drives sales for your company.
When these teams meet, the content marketing team gets a first-hand look at your sales team. This includes challenges they might be facing or questions they’re getting from customers.
Wouldn’t it be great if your company’s content marketer or marketing team could create an entire page of content that answers these questions with the help of your salespeople?
Fortunately, content marketing drives sales by bringing a company’s teams closer together.
A content marketer can also learn about sales-related issues, research them, and help out your team. Why not take a different approach to teaching your sales team instead of traditional training like every other business?
5. Giving Your Business a Personal Touch
These days, most people are aware that almost every company knows how to market to them digitally. To stand out from the pack, use content marketing as a way to give your company a personal touch.
With content, you’ll have something that your customers and leads can look at whenever they want. There’s no committing to your business right away, although a few eager readers probably will. When you know how content marketing drives sales, your company creates personal connections.
Content marketing gives your business an authoritative yet patient approach. In the world of sales, this is the best strategy you can take.
Who Doesn’t Love a Great Story?
Quick, think of your favorite television show.
Got it?
I’m betting one reason why you chose this show is because of its story. Oftentimes, what separates a good or bad television show is how it does this. With that in mind, your company can utilize content marketing to tell its story.
Best of all, you’re in full control of this. You can tell the public about the challenges your business has overcome or accomplishments you’re proud of. It’s also a great place to write about your company’s mission, culture, and values.
With content marketing, you’ll also have a way to keep everyone informed. To ramp this strategy up, make sure you’re creating content that’s ready for multiple platforms. By doing this, you’ll learn how content marketing drives sales for your business.
By doing this, you’ll have email, website, social media, and other types of content always ready to send.
What Platforms Should Be in My Content Marketing Strategy?
You now know how content marketing drives sales. Now, it’s time to learn where you should start applying your content marketing efforts. Here are some of the best platforms for any effective content marketing campaign.
Social Media Posts
If you want to reach your company’s target audience, there’s almost no better way than by being active on social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others let you create social media posts that connect with your target market. Social media sites can also drive a ton of traffic to your company’s website and landing pages.
So, what kind of social media post should you create? Experts recommend maximizing audience engagement by mixing things up. When you’re publishing content for social media sites, make it a mixture of:
- Promotional content (info about sales, upcoming promotions)
- Valuable content (informational pieces your audience would find useful)
- User-generated content is always a plus!
Blog Content
Another great way to appeal to your target audience and see how content marketing drives sales is by creating content for your company’s blog. A blog can technically live anywhere, but it should be on your company’s website.
One of the best ways to create an amazing blog post is by taking a look at what’s already ranking well. Use your favorite search engines and start typing in your main keywords. Now, look at the websites on the first page and take note of a few things, including:
- length of content (word count)
- authority of domain
- backlink profiles of your competitors
YouTube Videos
These days, how content marketing drives sales is through video marketing. I recommend including videos posted on YouTube as part of your content strategy. YouTube is one of the most popular websites out there. Posting videos on YouTube can lead to a lot more website traffic and a big boost in your company’s sales funnel.
What’s great about video sharing websites is that you don’t need to be a producer to create quality content. With a decent camera or even a smartphone, you can start creating content that drives more sales and organic traffic.
White Papers
Your company can also experience how content marketing drives sales by creating what are known as white papers. In the marketing world, white papers are great ways to generate leads. White papers typically contain details and specifications about a product or service you’re selling.
While some people might want to see demonstrations and speak with your employees, other people want nothing but facts during the decision making process. You can help increase sales by giving the latter group white papers to look over.
If you want to use white papers to drive sales, you’ll need someone capable of taking the facts about your products or services and getting them written down or typed up. When you’re creating white papers, you’ll speak more to the technical crowd. So, make sure you’re using facts and statistics.
Case Studies
I can’t discuss how content marketing drives sales without mentioning case studies. This type of inbound marketing combines the conversational nature of a blog post with facts found in white papers. What’s also great about this form of content creation is that it tells a story.
You’re in control of the scope of a case study. Want to tell your company’s story from its beginnings until now? Maybe you’re wanting something that highlights how a customer used your business to generate sales. A case study also provides social proof that your company is worth partnering up with.
The ultimate goal of a case study is to convert a reader into a customer. While case studies can take some time and effort to put together, they can help encourage customers to choose your business over others.
Landing Pages
Most marketing campaigns wouldn’t be complete without landing pages. A landing page is where your business typically points potential customers during a sales cycle. You can use these pages to generate leads, boost sales, increase brand awareness, and just about any other business-related goal.
A landing page is typically designed to pull in a reader quickly, ultimately getting them to complete some sort of action. For instance, you might create a landing page that shows how your company can solve a reader’s pain points.
Lastly, no landing page is complete without a way to collect basic information from a reader. The kind of information collected typically includes a name and email address to further your lead generation efforts.
Need More Help?
Another way you can learn how content marketing drives sales is by having a plan. Fortunately, HubSpot made this incredibly easy with its free marketing plan template.
If you need help making your company’s marketing efforts more effective, you won’t want to miss this free tool. It’s super helpful and something I love using as I start working with a new client.
Since 2004, HubSpot has been a leader in the world of digital marketing. I highly recommend checking out HubSpot for expert marketing tips, free tools, and all sorts of beneficial marketing information.
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There you have it, awesome ways that content marketing drives sales. If you want to know more about content marketing, don’t miss our recent post about content marketing tips for small businesses. Also, make sure to visit Content Marketing Life’s social media pages and leave a like or comment about what you would like to see me cover next.
Alex Eagleton is a copywriter and digital marketer passionate about helping companies connect with customers. Throughout the past decade, he’s worked with companies including Referral Rock, Connecteam, and Ramsey Solutions. He’s a versatile writer who understands how to align with companies, truly matching their voices and tones.
When he’s not writing, he enjoys spending time with his dogs, reading, and playing guitar.
You can reach him by emailing alex@contentmarketinglife.com.