5 Content Marketing Resolutions
Content marketing brings your website and social media together in engaging ways. Maybe that’s why more organizations are discovering just how powerful content marketing can be. Unfortunately, just as many businesses feel that their content marketing programs are not making any real difference to their bottom line. If you want your content marketing to become a tangible and measurable contributor to your business’s success, keep reading.
Let’s start with the basics. No matter what kind of approach you choose, effective content marketing absolutely must do the following:
Help potential customers understand you better
Increase interest in your services
Develop trust and preference for your business
For some companies, that’s where their hopes for content marketing stop. And for some, that’s a reasonable and appropriate approach. If your organization consistently does these three things, congratulations! You should be proud. Seriously.
However, many others are missing out. These folks don’t know that content marketing can contribute significantly in many ways. Depending on the tools and approaches you use, content marketing programs can also:
Give customers an incentive to share their wants and needs
Help your business build a high-quality lead gen program
Redirect visitors from Google, Facebook, Twitter (and more) to your website
Dramatically increase your search engine rankings
Drive retail visits and online and offline sales
Make your website traffic skyrocket
Sounds great, right? But for many marketers, it’s not that easy. After all, 55% of B2B marketers say they are unclear on what content marketing success or effectiveness looks like. How can you caffeinate your content marketing if you’re not sure of your goals? Don’t fret. To help your team get started, the team at Cup O Content came up with these 5 goals to help you frame up your 2018 content marketing strategy.
1. Grow Website Traffic 2x, 5x, or even 10x
You’ve probably put a fair amount of time, energy, and money into a good-looking website. But professional websites are just the beginning. To get people to visit your site and interact with your content, you need an ongoing program that includes dynamic content, smart search engine optimization, and lots of off-site content that points to your site. A robust content marketing program can help you get there. Start by setting an aggressive traffic goal for your website. Once you have that big, foundational goal set, you’re better prepared to build an effective content marketing program.
2. Take Time to do a Monthly Site Analysis
While most businesses know how many hits they get on their site each month, the truth is that many marketers are not actually analyzing web traffic. Does your business track website traffic sources? Do you know what kind of content is attracting a lot of eyeballs and which is ignored? Do you know if your traffic comes from real people or if your numbers come from automated bot hits? How many people contacted you or visited your business because of a website visit? Are your numbers going up, or are they staying the same each month? Once you start looking closely at the data, mapping out plans for improvement becomes much easier.
3. Improve the Quality of Website Visitors
It’s not enough to get more hits. You want quality visitors. Once you start doing monthly website analyses, you’ll know what percentage of your traffic comes from bots and what percentage is coming from real people. A monthly website analysis will show you who is visiting your site and where they came from, and can even give you some valuable insights into age, income, location, and more. The goal is to get your site traffic profiles to align closely with your customer profiles. Make sure your content and keywords are set up with this in mind.
4. Funnel People off Social and Onto Your Website
Are you proud of the number of people following your business on Facebook? Do you have lots of Twitter followers? Building your social media following feels good, but for most organizations, it’s difficult to figure out how more social media followers translate into growing your business. Your business’s goal should shift away from building a following toward developing a traffic flow from social to your site. There are many ways content marketers do this, and only a few rely on the number of followers you have. Cup O Content can help your marketing teams develop these kinds of strategies.
5. Start Capturing Customer Information on Your Website
While Google Analytics and website tracking can tell you a lot about visitors, it may not tell you everything you want to know. There are many ways to get visitors to give you more information. Test limited-time offers on your website. Offer them a report or paper in exchange for contact info. Ask them to take a short quiz to qualify for a prize drawing. A good content marketer will have a list of ways for you to entice visitors to reveal more information about themselves.
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If you’re interested in content marketing for your business, contact Cup O Content with questions. We’re happy to share our approach with you and even give you some free advice upfront. We know one size never fits all, which is why you decide how much or how little content marketing help you want. Contact us today to find out if Cup O Content can help you caffeinate your content marketing program.
Want to find more blogs about digital strategy? Check out these Cup O Content articles.
