Content creation is one aspect of content marketing. Yes, it must be done consistently and repeatedly with your customers in mind. That’s the starting point. Promotion is just as important; otherwise, your carefully crafted content will stay unseen, unread, or unheard on your website.
The promotion plan is just as crucial. Initially, try out several digital media options to see what gets the best traction. Match social media to the customer profile. Send out content on a schedule. Tell them what to expect and see if they land on your website. Track results through HubSpot's Content Hub.
It’s an exercise that involves several bumps on the way. Expectations of high interest right in the beginning are unrealistic. It’s a slow and steady process where you won’t see instant results but definite dividends over time. Long-term rewards are sure to follow if you’ve gone about doing this consistently and evaluating progress periodically.
No one has a monopoly over ‘good’ content. What customers respond to is what solves problems for them. Well-explained concepts, simple but striking expressions, and the use of video or audio to stand out are all methods to be explored.
Customers aren’t looking for your products – they are looking to solve their own issues. So, they respond when they find solutions in the content they read or watch. They don’t want to be told how good your product is but how well it solves the problems they face.
Content Hub helps you promote content to reach further. Your website is one point on the net. You need to build trails back to your site from as many diverse locations as possible. So, distributing the highlights of content across as many relevant points as possible increases the chances that content will reach the audience it is intended for. As more and more customers converge from those points to your site, momentum builds and the traffic increases.
Check on-site analytics from time to time, or you’re flying without instruments. Create a routine built around analysis to help figure out why people are visiting your site and what they prefer.
Don’t be fixated on one parameter, like traffic. The overall picture is complex and needs to be teased out. But you’ll begin to see some articles getting more traction over months. If you’ve got a good mix of promotions and content, you’ll see visitors come back time and again for more.
The bounce rate will drop. Time spent on site will increase. You’ll see connections between articles that visitors read or watch and begin to form a picture of the problems they encounter. When the average time spent on your site increases, it’s a sign that customers or prospects are getting value. People don’t spend time anywhere unless it benefits them, And Content Hub helps you get into the smallest details.
Once the traffic is built, retention is crucial. The benefit is that it gets easier to drive traffic over time because you have some high-performing aspects of the site that draw prospects in.
It’s a virtuous cycle—the more value visitors get, the higher the numbers, and the more conversions will happen. However, conversion rates, even for the best sites, don’t go up exponentially. That will always be a smaller footprint.
The way to maintain consistency is to identify what works and keep doing more of it. Once they built readership, the magazines and newspapers of the past century continued with the same themes of general interest. A new generation of readers has arrived, but they have the same interests and questions.
What changes are the ways articles and product benefits are expressed, and how do customer needs evolve over time? Content marketing is a continuous process, not a stop-start event. In fact, getting traffic numbers back after losing them is a bigger problem than most companies realise. A redesign every few years keeps the brand fresh and up-to-date in the visitor’s mind. All of these can be managed easily with Themes and templates within Content Hub.
Do this simple exercise. Visit the site of all your competitors every quarter. You’ll know exactly who is doing the best job of attracting new customers and keeping existing ones happy. That can be your formula for success.