Hi there. Today, we’re going to look at content marketing and why you should put more marketing into your content marketing.
Anyway, so there’s been an awful lot of talk over recent years about content marketing.
Content marketing is often about blogging and content creation on your website and various other places, in social media and other platforms around the web, all with a view of creating this illusion of you being a really, really useful person, but also creating content that the search engines can latch onto as well.
The difficulty with that, and we’ve had this discussion with a variety of clients recently, is that oftentimes just putting out content marketing, whilst it’s good for your SEO, it’s good for your website, etc., it doesn’t readily lend itself to creating a return on investment for all that time and effort involved.
So I’m going to give you a few quick pointers on how to get more out of your content marketing and actually use it as a marketing and response-based tool, rather than just putting stuff out there in the hope that someone will see you as an expert.
So, first things first, when you’re doing your social media, when you’re writing on your blog post, do you actually try and sell anything? Are you putting out messages which have a call to action, a response that people can latch onto and do something with?
What I mean by this is, often at the bottom of our blog posts when we write them, we’ll always put a call to action along the lines of, “If you want more help with getting to grips with this stuff in your business, please let us know. Give us a call and we’ll be more than happy to help.” Now, it’s just a short call to action, but it does actually remind people that we’re not just there to be helpful.
We do run a business. We are here to make a profit, and we are here to sell products and services.
Far too few people do this on their blog. Yes, we don’t want to go over salesy. But, first things first, let’s put a bit more sale; let’s put a bit more call to action in your content marketing, particularly on your blog.
I mean it’s your website. It’s your content. Why wouldn’t you want to have a call to action just to prompt people? “If it’s been really useful, great. Give us a shout and we’ll see what we can do to implement it in your business.”
But it doesn’t just stop with your blogging. You should be doing it on social media.
I know that we, in our business, don’t do nearly enough selling on our social media. We don’t put up nearly enough calls to action, and we are in the process of addressing that.
But I heard it said not long ago that roughly one in four or one in five of your tweets, your Facebook posts, etc., etc., should be some kind of sales content.
Now, I’m not convinced. I don’t have any figures either way, whether that’s right or wrong. But the point is, do it a little bit more. Even if it’s just one in ten, once or twice a week, out of all the stuff you put out, it’s probably not too much, bearing in mind that you are pitching to an audience that you, one of these days, hope to sell to.
I don’t know if it’s a philosophical thing or not, but in Britain at least, we’re often quite reticent to sell. We’re often quite reticent to blatantly market to people.
Unfortunately, if that’s you, then you really need to get over this mental stumbling block and start pitching to your audience. Believe me, if somebody’s following you on Facebook, or following your business on Twitter, or following your business on LinkedIn for example, they’re likely to be in your market.
Now, why wouldn’t you want to sell to them?
Having worked in direct sales, if you’ve got a database of people and they could buy from you, why wouldn’t you want to pick up the phone? Or, in your content marketing case, why wouldn’t you send them an offer or some reason to respond to what it is that you’re selling?
So the key is to remember that just doing content marketing is actually just content creation.
The marketing element has to come into it. The marketing should always provide a return on investment and it should always be in some way, shape, or form response based.
Where’s the point in just putting out loads and loads of useful stuff if you can’t expect some kind of return on investment?
So I hope that really just gets you thinking a little bit.
If you’re writing blog posts, are you putting out a call to action? Are you writing something at the footer of your blog post that just prods people? Or, you could put it in the middle of your blog post. Put an image ad in the middle of your blog post. “Want some help? Give us a shout.”
We’re particularly good at doing that kind of thing in all of our marketing. But with the content marketing, we are improving.
We do put a call to action regularly. We do put out sales messages on social media, not enough I admit.
Like I said, we’re working on that. If you’re writing blog posts, are they just helpful or are you actually trying to convert people into potential customers? If you are, are you giving them the opportunity to respond?
So I hope this article on Why You Should Put More Marketing into Your Content Marketing has been useful.
At the bottom of all this stuff, if you do nothing with it, nothing will improve for you. But I’d love to hear about your success story.
Please, please write a comment below. Let me know how it works for you and what you think.