Advertisements are pricey. While they are a “necessary evil” for any marketing strategy, ads can burn through your entire budget faster than you can say “help!” Enter: content marketing.

Content marketing is a cost efficient way to get your name in front of prospects most likely to convert.  By creating and publishing your own content using proper SEO practices, you can cut down your advertising costs for good.

SearchEngineJournal.com says:

Organizations now have content teams with specific people and resources focusing exclusively on creating content, using it to engage specific audiences and drive business.

Having a designated team doesn’t fix all of your problems though. Over 54% of the companies surveyed claimed their biggest content marketing challenge is creating content that generates leads.

Here’s a quick brush-up on content marketing from Ahrefs to get your creative juices flowing:

Quick Takeaways:

• Companies spend A LOT (even too much) on advertising

• Content marketing is an effective tool to reduce spending and increase traffic on your site

• Providing content people want to read is the most important part of the puzzle

So is content marketing that difficult? Well, it can be – but it is worth the effort. Content marketing is sustainable and gives the benefit of offering exponential growth to your brand.

There are some rules and guidelines you should follow to give yourself the best chance for optimal SEO rankings:

How To Effectively Use Content Marketing

Create must-see quality content

At the end of the day, content marketing is a business opportunity. How can you publish pieces that get the most out of this opportunity? You have to be relevant, credible, and aware of your prospects’ thinking processes.

Think about what your target audience is asking themselves on a daily basis. If your business was in power tools, your prospective clients might be researching DIY how-to projects around the house.

Publishing content like “10 ways to modernize your bathroom” or “Tools you should go buy TODAY” is a great way to build a portal directly to your site for an ideal prospect that you couldn’t get from a traditional ad.

These prospects are more likely to convert than say, someone who is not in the market for a drill seeing your advertisement on a banner ad. Creating organic interest in your product drives up your credibility, and thus your brand authenticity with a prospect.

Follow a distribution plan

Source: Ingram Content Group

Creating content is all well and good, but ultimately means less if you aren’t sharing it everywhere you can. A good first step is a social media audit. Where is your company plugged in – more importantly, where do you have a voice?

By keeping up on your social media presence, you are also opening an avenue to get your content in front of your customer’s eyes. Posting your new content across different platforms gives you a variety of outlets to send the same message to different people.

Not to mention, an open comment section is a place for your community to discuss ideas and connect with each other. This organic engagement is important to the viewership of your content and the overall value of your brand.

You don’t just have to use social media! Content marketing automation has made it easy to send out newsletters across different platforms quickly and easily. Places like Mailchimp and Constant Contact can keep your reader lists organized, not to mention provide excellent metrics for analysis.

Measure your efforts

Source: E-Commerce Germany News

What’s the point of putting in all this effort if you can’t tell what’s working? When creating your content marketing process, you have to define your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Examples of KPIs include:

• Measuring how a content marketing campaign impacts your sales team’s productivity
• Understanding the percentage of customers that were marketing-generated and what business was earned from content marketing
• Measuring hours of work put into content marketing vs money put into ad spending

After you define your relevant KPIs, you tackle key these metrics to support your conclusions:

Traffic:

Traffic is about pageviews and users. Services like google analytics can give you an accurate read of this data. It also helps you see where exactly your views are coming from. This will show you where your efforts are succeeding and where there’s room for improvement.

Conversions:

Views are great, but what happens after the initial click? Conversion rate shows how many prospects are becoming customers. This metric is the real meat and potatoes of your content! Converting prospects should be your number one goal with content marketing.

SEO:

Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content, because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?

Put it all together (get help if you need it!)

You CAN and SHOULD use these tips to improve your content marketing. By creating quality sustainability, you can increase traffic to your site and awareness of your brand.

If you have a small operation, or simply don’t have the time to put into a content marketing campaign, hiring help could be the option for you. Hiring quality blog writers to work for you can be an important addition to your marketing team.

That’s not your only route though! You can also hire a marketing agency to create and curate content for your website. Many companies have experience with a wide array of clients, providing valuable insight you might not get from just hiring one or two writers.

Regardless of which way you go, content marketing is here to stay. If you’re only pouring money into advertisements, you’re missing out on free engagement with the most important people to your business – your customers.

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? What luck! Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation.  If you’re ready to boost your revenue and cut down on ad spending, let’s talk. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business!