Blogging has plenty to offer your business. A blog allows you to demonstrate your business’ authority and knowledge within the industry. It can help you rank for keywords and phrases, giving your website better SEO. Most important of all, your blog helps you nurture leads and drive sales. That’s why you invest time and effort into building up your business’ blog; you want to see sales increase.
The only trouble is, everybody’s doing it.
Imagine a busy bazaar or a marketplace, where there’s only one stall owner who is shouting about their products. He is yelling and shouting about the quality of his products, making a general racket but he’s the only one doing it. Naturally, customers are more likely to gravitate to that stand and make a purchase. Well, in wise of businesses and blogs, all the other stands can’t help notice how that man’s shouting has brought him better business and now everyone else is now shouting.
How are you expected to be heard?
You must be different and innovate.
In this blog, we’re not telling you to abandon your blog. Having an abandoned blog on your website can do a lot of harm to how visitors perceive your business. No, in this Ricemedia blog, we’re looking 5 types of content that can help your business stand out in a busy marketplace and bring you more customers.
Whitepapers
Originally, whitepapers were downloadable government reports and documents, giving people information on areas of government. In recent years, whitepapers have been used by businesses and are about key focal points within their industry.
A business creates this piece of content and sets up a landing page for it on their website, where if visitors are interested in what that business has to say about that subject, they enter their email address and can download your guide. With that email address, you can set up marketing automation, nurturing that lead with further content directly. This could be from your blog or content that are exclusively for them.
They are used mostly in B2B businesses but B2C businesses have been getting creative with how they create and design, creating brilliant guides that consumers download.
A different type of content, this can help you directly nurture leads and generate sales better. Rather than targeting your efforts across a wide number of people, you can focus on a smaller number of high-quality leads.
E-Newsletters
I was meeting with an old friend who has recently got a job at an outdoor adventure park, managing their marketing and social media campaigns. Over coffee, I began inquiring what resources and assets they had in place. They had the usual, a pretty large social media following on Facebook and Twitter as well as a thriving blog but it doesn’t have many views.
Then I asked, ‘Do they have a newsletter or anything for email?’
To my shock, they’ve been gathering the emails of visitors for over the last two years but have yet to do anything with them. They’ve collected over three thousand individual customer emails. What followed was a rather geeky discussion on possibilities and opportunities with email marketing and why he needed to set this up.
E-newsletters are simply a type of publication, where you deliver content directly to someone. It would link back to your website or online shop, driving sales and traffic to your site. People say, ‘email marketing is dead’ or ‘no one buys from email promotions’, which isn’t really true. There are a number of studies, which shows a high ROI from email marketing and does better against social channels.
This is an ideal form of content marketing for web commerce or as a part of your lead nurturing for your whitepapers. It allows you to target your customers and prospects directly. If they’ve given you their email, you already know they’re interested in your product and services, and that they’re high-quality leads.
Also, there you won’t need to be creating more content unless you want to. If you have a thriving blog, which you produce regular content and publish regularly, you’ve already got a great source of content. By emailing this content a few days ahead of publishing it on your blog, this content becomes exclusive and more valuable to your leads and prospects.
Case Studies
When faced with the option of case studies, some businesses, especially those in niche industries or offer a niche product or service, don’t see why would someone read a case study about them?
You will be surprised. Case studies are a great way for a business to advertise their products and services through your successes and innovations.
Case studies are a brilliant piece of content, which can assist your lead nurturing with your prospects. You can publish them in the form of white paper as a way to draw prospects into your marketing automation or could be part of it. If a prospect has downloaded a guide about your products or services, they’ll be interested to read about it in action.
What makes your case study a great piece of content is that it is highly detailed, which breaks down what your business does and how well it does it. It is exactly what potential customers want to know about when considering making a purchase.
Infographics
Infographics are a great piece of visual content, which allow you to convey information easily and make it accessible to your audience. Especially when you want to convey statistics.
You can use infographics in many areas of your marketing campaigns. It does well on social channels but one of the best ways of using infographics for outreaching to blogs and industry websites. From that, you can get an image credit and a link back to your own site, driving traffic made of readers interested in your industry.
Also, infographics can be used as part of your marketing automation as one of the piece of content you follow up with a prospect. It is information, which leads needs to know.
Podcasts
Podcasting is a growing medium, which more businesses are beginning to use as part of their content marketing as it is a very personal way to communicate with your audience. You literally, have their ear and are directly communicating with them. It is a different and interesting way for your audience to access your content and is easier for them to digest.
Much like any other social media platform, you can grow a following of regular listeners and establish your business as an authority within the industry. A great resource, which you can use to nurture leads and prospects. Something that they can access through your website or sent to high-quality prospects through marketing automation.
If you already have blogs, whitepapers, and case studies, you already have content, which you can use as scripts for your podcasts as well you will know other leading figures within the industry. You can bring them along for discussions and interviews, creating more valuable content that prospects would appreciate.
These were our 5 alternative types of content, which businesses should be using but aren’t. If you’re interested in how else you can develop your content marketing campaigns, set up marketing automation and nurture leads better, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
