Have you wondered how content marketing can drive sales? Most of us realize that content marketing is a popular way to generate excitement and engagement, especially on social media. But is your content marketing actually impacting your sales? At HatchMark Studio, we help a lot of our clients with content marketing strategies and execution. In this article, we will gain an understanding of content marketing and five ways you can use content marketing to your advantage to positively impact your sales in a not-so-direct way. We promise it will all make sense later!
Understanding Content Marketing
It’s important to understand what content marketing is before doing it yourself. In essence, content marketing is a strategy where businesses create useful, interesting, or entertaining content. This content is intended to attract new leads or retain existing customers. This can be through social media content, blog articles, engaging emails, and more. The important thing to remember with content marketing is that it should be less product focused and more centered around being content that your customers or potential customers might enjoy. It’s an indirect way of attracting customers to your brand, positioning your business as a business that is helpful and creates great content. The customers will then find your product organically through the process. You can learn more about inbound marketing and how it’s different from your traditional outbound advertising by listening to this episode of our Practical Rebels podcast.
5 Ways to Use Content Marketing to Convert on Sales
But that’s enough talking about how content marketing might help your sales. You need some actual ideas to run with. Below are five easy ideas so that you can integrate content marketing into your strategy and boost your sales on the back end.
- Create educational blog content. This is one of the easiest ways to start using content marketing to your advantage. The reason we like it is because you don’t need to know how to design. You don’t need to know how to work a camera. All you need to do is open a Word doc and start writing. But you can’t just write about whatever you want. You need to do the keyword research and make sure you’re writing about topics your target audience wants to read about. The goal is to create search-focused content that will rank well on Google to push new organic traffic to your website. You can read more about how blogging can help your SEO in this article.
- Host live webinars. We love webinars. The beauty of the webinar is that it’s low stakes for your potential customers. It gives them a chance to say, “I want to hear more about what you have to say, but I don’t want to hear it right now.” They can easily sign up and have it added to their calendar so they know that time is carved out for your content. Once they’re in, you have a (hopefully) captive audience. The trick is to resist the urge to be selling the whole time. Just host a webinar on a relevant topic or host a live question and answer session just for customers. Focusing less on selling and more on providing valuable content is disarming and can make people feel more comfortable with your brand. Bonus: you can take recordings of your webinar and reuse that content on social media!
- Collaborate with social media influencers. Everyone is collaborating these days. There’s a good reason for it. The power of collaborating is real, especially on platforms like Instagram where you can invite collaborators on a post. This instantly boosts your organic reach and puts your brand in front of potentially thousands of people who didn’t know you existed. Again, this doesn’t need to be sales-focused content. Just come up with mutually beneficial content for both parties that will resonate with your target audience.
- Put together engaging email campaigns. One of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal, email is an effective way to reach your existing clientele. However, there is a tendency for marketers and business owners to feel the need to always stuff an offer in an email. A 25% discount code if you act now. While these emails can be successful, you are battling at least 12 to 15 other emails in their inbox with essentially the same message. People can become desensitized and disinterested in the perpetual deal. This is where creating interesting and useful content in your emails can be a difference maker. Create an email that gets people excited to open it knowing they won’t be accosted by the sale. This keeps your brand top of mind and creates trust between your business and your clients. Remember, these are people who have given you permission to send them content. Send them something useful!
- Create trendy social media content for brand awareness. Trends on social media are a great way to get organic exposure. Whether it’s using a trending sound on TikTok or Instagram or simply getting in on a funny dance or other trend, your business needs to be prioritizing trends on content shoots. The reason trends are so powerful is because they are highly shareable which can boost engagement and increase the likelihood that your content ends up on explore pages. Trends are a way to humanize your brand without selling your product so that customers become fans of your brand and your team first. A recent study showed that 84% of consumers say they purchase from brands they feel an emotional connection to. If that doesn’t sell you on the power of strong branding and content creation, nothing will!
Final Thoughts on How Content Marketing Drives Sales
Content marketing is all about creating a connection with consumers. It’s about providing existing and potential customers with useful content that they crave and search for. Overtime, this can slowly build up a reputation for your business as a trusted source. You will notice that the sales start to come as a result of all of your hard work with content creation. As with all things, content marketing is not meant to be your sole key to success or some sort of hack. Blending your content marketing with traditional outbound strategy is important to cover all of your bases and keep your leads coming!
Let Us Help You With Your Content Marketing
It can be hard to carve out time for content marketing in your busy schedule. Creating great content takes time and lots of planning to do it the right way. That’s why it can be helpful to have an agency in your corner with a team full of people who are content experts. If you’re ready to start talking about how HatchMark Studio can support your content marketing strategy, we’re ready! Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals!