Content Marketing Guide | StartUP MQL
“Provide good content and you’ll earn the right to promote your product.”
- Guy Kawasaki
How to use content marketing to get more leads, build your brand, and generate revenue. This guide will help you create a content marketing strategy that’s unique for your business.
Content marketing is content that's designed to attract and engage prospects, with the goal of acquiring or developing business. Content can include articles, blog posts, videos, webinars, guides, whitepapers, infographics - whatever content will help you attract and retain customers.
It isn't just about content. It's about content as part of a larger demand generation strategy. As content marketing has evolved to encompass so much more than blogs and eBooks it's important not to forget that content used poorly doesn't deliver results at all. Good content is only good if it drives good outcomes for your business.
Our goal is to help B2B companies understand the approach behind building a successful content marketing strategy complete with best practices and tools also know as our agile framework.
At its most basic level content marketing helps educate people who are looking for information on the problems you solve, the tools you offer, and the content you produce. Content marketing can help attract visitors to your site, build trust with prospects, and lead to them wanting to learn more about your company and services.
The content marketing process has six steps: research and content ideation; content creation and promotion; optimization and measurement; refinement based on content performance; content promotion and additional content creation.
The ultimate goal is for content marketing initiatives to create high-quality leads that convert. But it's not just about getting new customers - content can be used as a powerful retention tool as well as a way of increasing revenue from existing customers. With such an emphasis now placed on content as part of marketers' overall tactics, it's important to ensure that each piece of content is created with specific goals in mind.
If content is king, then context is the king of kings. The content you create should be specific to the person reading it and designed to help them accomplish something. It should fit into their existing journey and not push your content marketing too far ahead in the buying cycle. The content itself should include features that will assist your target audience with tools they can use immediately or save for later
High-quality content increases your search engine visibility, improves brand awareness, attracts relevant website visitors, builds trust with prospects, differentiates you from competitors, helps close more sales, and retains customers longer.
Articles posted on a blog are a form of content marketing . However it's important to recognize that content can take many forms - each one designed with a specific audience and content marketing goal in mind.
Guides - comprehensive, evergreen content that prospects love. Guides are usually longer than other content forms making them perfect for B2B content marketing programs. You can use content marketing to drive more demand for content that educates your buyer at different stages of the buying process.
Whitepapers - content designed to share knowledge with prospects, while also providing them with downloadable content they can keep and reference later. Whitepapers are best used in content marketing programs where you want to create content rich content assets that educate prospects on a particular subject.
Industry reports - content designed to provide insights on an industry or market segment so people can stay up-to-date on important trends, discover new competitors, learn about purchasing behavior within your space, etc. They're perfect for content that helps build credibility (i.e., "thought leadership"). If you think of something like Gartner reports, a content marketing version would include content designed to help prospects understand the state of your industry, trends/insights they should know about, and actionable content they can use to do their jobs better.
Website content - content that people come to your site for; including blog posts, product pages, service pages, etc. Each type of content has different goals (e.g., blog posts might generate more traffic while service pages are used in lead nurturing programs) but each one is designed to guide prospects through different stages of the buying process.
Marketing content - content you distribute via paid ads usually on social media or search engines . Content marketing is about publishing content that people actually want, but it also makes sense to include content in your content marketing mix designed to help you achieve specific objectives (e.g., content used for lead nurturing or content guiding people toward a sale).
List of content types by content marketing goal:
- Attract new visitors to your website
- Drive more qualified traffic from search engines
- Increase brand awareness and thought leadership
- Educate prospects on particular topics/industry trends/etc.
- Differentiate yourself from competitors
- Inform customers about the value of your product or service offering, etc.
- Close more sales, improve retention rates, reduce customer service costs, etc.
Websites - having a website is nearly a requirement these days with most companies now expecting customers to find information online about you before they purchase from you. The content on your site needs to be useful, relevant and engaging.
Blog content - content that is published regularly with the goal of keeping your audience up-to-date on your company, industry, technology and/or solution set. It might include content about recent announcements, customer stories, market trends/developments, tips and tricks related to your industry or space.
Landing pages and microsites - landing pages and microsites can be used to further engage people who have already visited your site or want to visitors through the sales process step-by-step. In content marketing, content designed to attract people from other sources (e.g., social media, paid ads) might include content such as articles or other general content types while content designed to help people through the purchase process might include a path/series of landing page and microsite examples.
Complementary content - content that's designed to be used in conjunction with content on other sites. For example, content complementary content might include content that complements content on your blog or content that complements content found on a landing page.
Content for lead nurturing - content designed to educate and engage prospects and leads during the buying process. Lead nurturing content might include things such as content used for drip marketing, content designed to inform prospects about the value of your solution or content designed for prospect engagement.
Content for lead generation - content that is meant be consumed by people who are not familiar with you/your company/industry/solution set. Examples might include content about trends in your industry or content that talks about how your solution set could benefit companies with certain needs.
FAQ content - content you create when there is content that comes up frequently in the course of normal business activities. FAQ content might include content such as answers to commonly asked questions, explanations of common industry jargon or content that helps people solve everyday problems.
Evergreen content - content designed to remain relevant and useful over time. It's content that will be accessed many times over the course of months or years by people who are interested in your company, industry or solution set.
Repurposed content - content you create for one purpose but then repurpose to create additional content with more value for your prospects/customers down the road. For example, content repurposed content could include content from an e-book that you then used as a resource on your site or content that was first published as a webinar then turned into related blog content.
Social content - content created for social networks to be shared and distributed by people who follow your company/industry/solution set. Social content might include content such as status updates, tweets and blog content that's shared via other social networks.
Content redesigns - content that you've already created but then go back and rethink the content to add even more value for your prospects/customers down the road or update to align with current trends.
What does your buyer's journey look like? Do you need help making it better, or do you want to know how content can make it even more effective? StartUP MQL is here to help. Whether you've got a marketing and sales messaging strategy in place but are struggling with finding the right content for SEO (or vice versa), we'll work together to find what will resonate most deeply with your customers. Once that is established, our team of writers will create thought-provoking blog posts that provide insight into topics they care about.
