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What are the benefits of content marketing?

Benefits of content marketing

In this blog post you are going to learn about some indisputable benefits of content marketing.

I have never advertised my content writing and content marketing business.

I have “boosted” a few posts on Facebook and recently I also “promoted” an update on Instagram just to see how it affected my followers rate (I got just one follower), but other than these, I have never used the conventional tools, even AdWords, to promote my business.

It is just content marketing.

When and why did I start using content marketing to promote my services?

In the very beginning itself. Back then, there was no concept of content marketing, but I knew that if I published my tutorials and articles on other article-publishing and tutorial-publishing websites, it would bring traffic to my own website.

Blogging wasn’t invented yet and I used to manually create HTML, PHP and ASP pages on my website, linking to them from a single web page (just like we have the blog home page these days linking to the latest blog posts).

I didn’t have money to spend on banner ads or link ads and to be frank, I never even found them attractive. Promoting my services through content always fascinated me. I got a high.

I promoted my web design services through content marketing in the very early 2000s and then post 2005, I have really started using content to promote my content writing services.

I was so enamored with text that once I had my website just made of text, not a single image.

Text-only content writing website

Of course, in between I have lost track, gotten distracted or gotten busy in other pursuits, but whenever I have come back to promoting my website, I have solely relied on this form of marketing and promotion.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Listed below are some indisputable benefits of content marketing:

Brings down marketing costs

Conventional advertising and marketing can be costly. You pay for every view. You pay for every click. You pay for every exposure. You pay for every engagement.

With content marketing, yes, you pay for good quality content, but it is a one-time cost. Some pieces of content work, and some don’t, but the collective benefit that you get from it is far more potent than the benefits that you get from conventional advertising and marketing.

You need to spend more on conventional advertising and marketing because people notice you as long as you are paying. Otherwise, it is “out of sight out of mind”.

Improves your conversion rate

Since, through content marketing you are building relationships and not simply promoting your products and services, your conversion rate is better.

By the time people decide to become your paying customers and clients, they thoroughly know about you and whatever you are offering. Through relevant content, you have educated them, you have informed them, you have also helped them.

Makes it easier to find you

One of the most important parts of content marketing is spreading your content on different platforms.

When you publish your content and then post the links on social networking and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, people like it or share it on their own timelines. Hence, people on their timelines can find your content.

Other bloggers and publishers who appreciate your insight link to your content through their own blog posts, articles and web pages, giving you more exposure.

You also publish your content on other platforms exclusively, making it easier for people over there to find you.

Improves your SEO naturally, organically

Although this is one of the most common reasons why my clients come to me for my content writing and content marketing services, I always advise them to let their search engine rankings improve naturally, organically, based on the strength of the goodness of their content.

But this is a reality: if you persist with relevant, meaningful content marketing, it naturally improves your SEO. You don’t have to separately focus on improving your search engine rankings.

In fact, over the past decade, Google has been incorporating changes into its ranking algorithms to make sure that only those websites and links rank higher that have relevant, high-quality content on them.

Brings more inbound traffic

Since content marketing makes it easier for people to find you all over the web and since it also improves your search engine rankings organically, naturally, you get more inbound traffic.

The best quality of inbound traffic is you are not telling people to visit your website or check out your link. People come on their own.

When people come to your website or blog on their own, they are more receptive to your message. They’re already tuned into what you’re trying to tell them. Hence, they convert easily compared to those who are drawn to your website through some advertisement.

Encourages engagement

The more people engage with you, the more they become familiar to your presence, and the easier it gets for them to do business with you.

Even when people come across your website (through an advertisement), they don’t do business with you because they don’t know you. At the moment they don’t trust you because you haven’t engaged them in meaningful interactions.

Without content, they haven’t gotten a chance to be helped by you, to appreciate your presence on the Internet.

Builds brand awareness without intrusion

Through content marketing, people come across your brand when they are accessing quality content rather than ads they will gladly ignore or block.

With every business available with just a few clicks or a few taps, brand visibility is very important. Whether you want to buy a highly expensive iPhone or one of the cheapest Android phones, they both are immediately available to you.

When you publish and broadcast/disseminate useful content people begin to relate your brand with quality content and hence, establish a positive association. This further boosts your conversion rate because people who already have a positive perception about your brand readily become your customers and clients.

Educates your customers

There are many products and services that need education before they can be used, for example CRM.

For a very long time I have been planning to start using a CRM to keep track of customer queries, lead nurturing and following up. Unfortunately, no online CRM service has beginners tutorials on how to start using CRM for a very small business.

I’m pretty sure whichever website is able to explain to me, I’m going to use its service.

Another example is content marketing. Still, there are many people who don’t understand this concept. So, they need to be educated. They need to be told the benefits of publishing high-quality content on an ongoing basis.

Builds and fosters stronger customer relationships

Many companies claim that more than 40% of their business comes from existing customers and clients. This is true even for my own business. In fact, more than 50% of my work comes from my existing clients.

Through well-crafted content marketing (especially email marketing), you can constantly keep in touch with your existing customers and clients by providing them valuable information.

You can also keep your existing customers and clients engaged through social networking platforms.

Remember that it just takes a few seconds for a customer to switch to another product or service. This switch is so important that many businesses offer a year of service free of cost just so that people move to their service from the other service.

But if you have built a strong relationship through quality content, your existing customers and clients won’t make that switch, even when prompted.

Builds your communication platform

It isn’t true that only big businesses and media houses can have their own communication platforms. Even smaller businesses can develop an audience that pays attention to their messages.

The communication platform can be your blog or your mailing list or even your social media or social networking profile – wherever your audience comes to access your content.

The benefit of having a communication platform is that you have an audience whenever there is something critical you want to say and it is very important that a certain number of people get the message.

Suppose, you’re introducing a new feature in your product and you would like to tell people the benefits of upgrading.

You want to make new offers.

You need to do damage control if someone has been leaving bad reviews just to tarnish your image.

Search engines need a place to regularly crawl and index new content and if you have a vibrant platform, the frequency of crawling and indexing increases.

Establishes you as an industry expert

Naturally, when you regularly share your knowledge, wisdom and insight, people begin to believe that you are an industry expert.

If you are an app developer and you regularly share your programming techniques and other app development experiences through your blog, whom do you think prospective clients choose when they need an app developer? Someone who is totally mum about his or her app development profession or someone who constantly communicates and engages with prospective clients?

Generates long-term, lasting traffic

As described above, your content is a constant source of traffic. As long as your links exist in the Google index, as long as people are able to find your content, you are going to get traffic on your website or blog.

Once you have increased your content wealth, once many people have linked to your content, once many people have shared your content, your links are all over the place.

Depending on where you are, if you search for “email writing services” you will find my link somewhere on the first page on Google. Now, the position has been there for more than 1 ½ years now, even longer. This link has been constantly generating quality leads for me and I don’t have to pay for it.

If I needed to advertise on AdWords, I would have to pay for every click Google sent my way. Through the above-mentioned link, whether I get 100 clicks every month or 10,000, I don’t have to spend money. It is an ongoing source of traffic for me.

Brings down your bounce rate

Your bounce rate is how many people leave your website without checking out other links your website or blog, after directly coming to a particular link.

A higher bounce rate is bad for your SEO. It is also bad for your conversion rate.

Quality content makes people stick around. If they like what you have published on the current link, they would also like to check out other web pages and blog posts on your website and this tells Google and other search engines that you have relevant content, and hence, your links should be ranked higher.

Helps you grow your mailing list

The benefits of having a mailing list that you have built on your own can only be realized when you have built a mailing list for yourself.

Since building your own mailing list requires effort, persistence and perseverance, most of the people fail to realize its importance.

Having your own mailing list is very important for engaging your prospective and existing customers and clients.

A persistent content marketing strategy and email marketing strategy are interlinked. Without high-quality content it is not possible to build your own mailing list unless you engage in other tactics like offering a case study in lieu of subscribing to your email updates, or offering a very useful e-book, or something like that.

When you publish quality content people expect the same content in your email updates and hence readily subscribe. Also, since your content is so useful, they don’t want to miss it. If you promise them that as soon as you publish something on your website or blog you’re going to send them an email update, they readily subscribe.

Gives you an edge over your competitors

A good thing about content marketing is it democratizes marketing. There was a time when only big businesses with lots of money could use marketing, but with content marketing, business of any size can use it.

Yes, you do need some money to generate quality content, but more than that, you need ingenuity and persistence.

Your competitors won’t be able to gain even a fraction of visibility with conventional advertising and marketing that you can gain with strategic content marketing.

With helpful and relevant content, you make it easier for people to do business with you rather than with your competitors.

I gave you an example of CRM above. Whichever website explains better how to leverage its CRM, is going to get more customers.

Reduces your support cost

Content marketing also involves publishing lots of helpful content on your website and blog, for example the detailed FAQs section.

People may have many questions. They may have many issues. They might be confused about using your product or service.

Normally they contact your support. But these days, contacting support is a hassle in itself and most of the people want to avoid it.

Helpful content on your website can provide all the information people need to be able to use your product or service properly.

When people contact you for support, you can prepare a list of questions and queries that they have and then publish their answers on your website.

The next time if another person has the same question, rather than calling you or writing you an email, he or she can simply check the section that contains answers to the most commonly asked questions.

Builds a community around your business

Apple built a community around its business and look how great the company does.

Amazon has encouraged a community of “skill” developers for its range of Amazon Echo gadgets and now they are selling millions of these gadgets.

The same goes for Android-based mobile phones. The examples are innumerable.

Building a community builds a support system. The community helps you refine and evolve your product or service. You instantly get feedback and since your community is devoted to your brand, you mostly get positive/encouraging feedback.

You want to introduce something but before making it available in the market, you would like a few people to test it. You can use your community for that.

Concluding remarks on the benefits of content marketing

Over the years I have learned that content marketing benefits only those who understand its benefits. Yes, it is like “Laws of Attraction”.

If you want to use it just because you have read a few blog posts and articles on content marketing and you think a nice strategy can be implemented without spending some money and effort, you are going to waste your effort and lose your money.

You benefit from content based marketing only in the long run, when you have nurtured it and allowed it to blossom into in its own entity.

You cannot “trick” it into bringing you business success. This is the reason why it works for everyone who seriously pursues it.

What makes content marketing successful?

Your understanding of it. Otherwise, you’re going to implement it halfway through and then lose interest or courage, or both.

It is an ongoing activity. Just like your other business activities, it has to go on.

For example, if currently you feel that you need to publish 2 blog posts every week, you may have to publish these 2 blog posts every week for an indefinite number of years if you really want to benefit from content marketing.

What’s the purpose then, you may ask?

Because it increases your business and even if you go on publishing just 2 blog posts every week, compared to the growth of your business, the cost of publishing these 2 blog posts will move towards negligible.

How to increase your email open rate

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How to increase your email open rate

In my previous blog post I mentioned that email marketing is an integral part of content marketing.

Rumor has it that for every $ 1 spent on email marketing, successful marketers earn $ 44.25.

But the success of your email marketing depends on increasing your email open rate.

When you send out emails, it has to cross many hurdles before it can make a positive impact on your bottom line. These hurdles include

Not ending up in the spam folder due to certain email service settings.
Arriving at the most appropriate time.
Getting noticed by the recipient amidst the deluge of other email messages in the inbox.
Grabbing the attention of the email recipient.

The opening of your email message is very important. Unless someone opens your email message, nothing much can happen.

How do you increase your email open rate?

How do you prompt people to click on your message in the inbox?

Here are a few things you can do to increase your email open rate…

Offer something compelling in the subject

Make a good offer in the subject line to increase your email open rate

Something compelling doesn’t mean offer something that would be unbelievable. Normally, you would know what sort of email messages your recipient is expecting from you if you have been building a mailing list of your own.

Make that offer in the subject line.

If someone has subscribed to your email updates to get notifications on some great discounts, then definitely use “10% discount on…” in the subject line.

If someone has subscribed to your updates to improve his or her SEO, have something like “Improve your SEO with this technique right now” or something like this in the subject line.

Make it compelling enough to open your email and check it out.

You can also use different emotions to compel people into opening your email.

This Constant Contact blog post gives many suggestions regarding what all you can include in the subject line:

Ask a question: “What will you do with this extra saving of $50?”
Give a command: “Open this message immediately or regret for ever!”
Teaser: “So, this is what you’re going to miss if you don’t read this email.”
Give a list: “20 sure short ways of making money with this simple tool.”
Make an announcement: “We have finally released the upgrade you have been waiting for!”

Here is another blog post that gives you 10 best email subject line formulas.

Make your subject line easier to read on mobile devices

Use mobile friendly subject lines to increase email open rate

Around 83% people might be checking your emails on their mobile devices. If your subject is too long to fit on their screens, they may skip your message.

Your subject message must be compelling, but it should also be shorter.

Use a name for the “From” field

Use the actual name in the From field

People are more prone to opening emails when they get them from individuals rather than from organizations and businesses.

There is a greater chance of people opening the email if it comes from “Amrit Hallan” instead of simply “Credible Content”.

Pay more attention to your analytics data

Pay attention to email analytics

Almost every email marketing service, MailChimp, for example, gives you data on when people open your emails.

23% emails are opened during the first hour of delivery, and this I have noticed myself. The greatest number of my emails are opened within 30-40 minutes of me sending out the campaign.

If you have been sending your email campaigns for many months, you can import, or manually enter, the details in an Excel sheet. Once you can see all the timings and the number of people opening your emails on those particular times, you will be able to arrive at the best time and this way you can increase your email open rate to a great extent.

Use icons and emojis in the subject line to increase your email open rate

Use icons and emojis in the subject line

Although I don’t believe in gimmicks as I think that people should open your email on its merit rather than for what sort of icons you have used in the subject line, it is a good way of standing out.

Don’t overdo it. If you use icons with every email you send out, it may diminish their utility value. They need to be very relevant to the message that you’re sending.

Ask your recipients to put your email ID in the safe list

Request the recipients to add your email ID to the safe list

Many of your recipients may never receive your messages because their email client, whether it is Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo mail, might be directing them to the spam folder.

This is why, when people have just subscribed to your email updates, request them to add your email ID to their safe list so that your message don’t end up in the spam folder.

The data on this blog post (slightly old) says that more than 20% marketing emails never make to the inbox.

How much email is consigned to the spam folder differs from region to region, according to this SlideShare presentation. 66% emails reach your recipient’s inbox in Asia compared to 86% in Europe.

By asking your recipients to put your email ID (the one that is used for your email marketing campaigns) in the safe list or telling them how to tell their email clients that emails from you are not spam, can considerably increase your email open rate.

Personalize your email subject line to increase your email open rate

Personalize your email messages

Using first language, using the name of the recipient, also increases your email open rate.

When your recipient sees his or her name in the subject line, it conveys to him or her that it is not a machine-generated message (although, such messages can also be machine generated).

When people see their names, directly or indirectly it gets communicated to them that at some stage they must have interacted with you and that is why you know their name. Or at least, they themselves have subscribed to your updates. This increases your email open rate.

Use email segmentation

Use segmentation to send out email campaignsfor

Recently I wrote about the importance of email segmentation.

Again, if you see the analytics given by your email marketing service tool (like MailChimp) it will tell you various aspects of your email recipients, such as, how many of them opened your messages, how many clicked the links in your message, in which regions they opened your message, and such.

For example, if there are certain email recipients who regularly open your messages, you know that they are interested in hearing from you. You can send them custom campaigns.

Those who click the links within your email campaign are interested in knowing more about your product or service. You can send them a different email message to increase your email open rate.

Build your own mailing list

The best way of increasing your email open rate is to build your own mailing list.

When people subscribe to your updates on their own they are more likely to open your messages. This is because they themselves want to receive your messages. They will also go to extra lengths to make sure that your messages don’t end up in the spam folder.

Keep refining your email list

Keep refining your mailing list

No emails are ever opened from certain email ids? Repeat bounces from certain email ids? Wrong spelling? Wrong email ID is just to download your e-book?

Remove these email ids.

You may feel reassured that you’re sending your email marketing campaigns to 10,000 recipients, but if only 2000 recipients are likely to open your messages, you should focus on those recipients. You will get a better email open rate like this.

Use a consistent schedule for sending out your emails

Maintain a consistent emailing schedule

This is something that I don’t do, but should. Actually, my email broadcasts are dependent upon the blog posts that I publish or the new content that I publish on my website and, I know this is contrary to what I often suggest in my writings, it is not a regular activity.

When you set a day and time for your emails people, unconsciously, begin to expect your emails on that particular day and at that particular time. This can have a big impact on your email open rate.

Interact with your mailing list subscribers

Regularly interact with your email subscribers

Don’t just send marketing messages. Ask your subscribers questions. Encourage them to respond. Try to know about their interests. Make an emotional connection.

When you make an emotional connection, you become familiar to them and when you become familiar to them, they readily open your email messages.

Occasionally you can conduct surveys asking 1-2 questions.

You can send them useful information you come across on other websites – for example, I can share with you an insightful blog post or article on SEO if I find it on another website, instead of constantly sending links from my own blog, and then ask you your opinion.

Never compromise on the quality of your content

If you constantly broadcast quality content your subscribers will be waiting for your messages.

When you subscribe to my email updates you expect to learn more about content writing, content marketing and in general, promoting your business online.

If I keep sending you good quality content on these topics, there is nothing to prompt you to ignore my messages if you happen to notice them in your inbox.

Concluding remarks on increasing your email open rate

Tricking your email subscribers into opening your messages may work once, may even work twice, but ultimately, it is the content that you provide that matters and contributes towards increasing your email open rate.

It isn’t just about increasing your email open rate, it is about delivering value to your email subscribers.

But, opening your emails is the first step. If they don’t notice your messages in their inbox, if your messages get buried under other, less important messages, if your messages are redirected to their spam folders, no matter how valuable content you send them, they’re not going to receive it, they’re not going to benefit from it.

5 content marketing trends for 2019

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Content marketing trends 2019

Content marketing is constantly evolving as more and more organizations adopt it as primary marketing and promotional activity.

For many years now it has been a trend among content marketing companies and online publications to predict the trends of the forthcoming year. 2018 is about to end and we are about to enter 2019.

Many publications will be coming up with their own take on how content marketing is going to change in the new year, what turns it is going to take and where it is heading in terms of adaptation, big data, artificial intelligence, analytics and technology.

The Forbes magazine has just published “Five Predicted Trends for Digital Content Marketing in 2019“. According to the projections in the article,

Content will be better integrated into email marketing strategies.
Content marketing departments will grow.
Content will need to be optimized for voice search.
Marketers will start making thorough content marketing strategies, not just editorial calendars.
Live video, as a content marketing tool, will catch on.

Content marketing will be integrated into email marketing strategies

I’m happy to see that email marketing, which was, for a few years, being ignored, is still being taken seriously. Email campaigns that can make personal connections with the recipients/subscribers, will perform better and personal connections can be made through customized, targeted content that is meaningful and useful.

Off late my landing pages that I have created to promote my email writing services have been generating lots of queries and I can see that most of the customers are better informed when it comes to how to use email communications to reach out to their prospective customers and clients; not just by blasting off random messages, but through targeting and segmentation.

Content marketing departments will grow

Since content marketing is maturing and it is no longer a “snake oil” field, many businesses are having dedicated content marketing departments and since these departments have experienced better and growing ROI, they too are bound to grow.

Content will need to be optimized for voice search

When people use voice to search they use slightly different language. They search the way they talk. For example, to find my content writing services, instead of merely typing “content writing services”, someone may say into the phone, “find me a content writing service” or “looking for a content writing service”, or “content writer for my garments business”, or “find me a content writing service to improve my SEO”, and so on.

The best way of achieving this is preparing your content in question and answer format. Anyway, this is a totally different topic but yes, content will need to be prepared so that it is optimized for voice search.

Thorough content marketing strategies instead of merely content publishing calendars

Strategy, in simple terms, means knowing what you want to achieve and then taking strategic steps to achieve that, using the resources that you have in the best possible manner.

Since many people are using content marketing and experiencing success, more documentation is available. More insights are available. Over the years people have discovered what works and what doesn’t. This helps in strategizing.

Strategy means publishing and distributing content on the basis of at what stage of the funnel your target audience is.

Live video will be a major part of content marketing

Live video is more engaging. Though the success of your live video depends on how many people are actually “live” at that particular moment, but yes, if you have a brand presence and if you publicize the event in advance, it is a great way to interact with your prospective customers and clients in real time.

This sums up the blog post on the upcoming content marketing trends in 2019 that are published in the Forbes magazine. I will be covering more such trends in the coming days.

How to build your brand using content marketing

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The biggest benefit of using content marketing is that it allows you to gradually build your brand and makes it easier for your prospective customers and clients to recall what product or service you provide in their hour of need.

Most of the businesses relate content marketing with improving search engine rankings and creating a vibrant social media presence. In itself it is not a misplaced priority, but it means under-utilizing the power of content marketing.

The greatest power of content marketing is building and strengthening your brand and make it more recognizable and relatable.

Why it is important to build your brand even if you are a small business

Brand building isn’t just for big businesses.

What is brand building? What is branding?

Branding is a mix of a message, an emotion, an experience and a memory that is immediately recalled when people come across your business name or your logo.

Your brand represents the entire essence of what you provide.

Even as a small business you want people to recognize you when they come across one of the entities that represent your business, whether it is your URL, your logo or your blog.

Your website faces lots of competition on the Internet. It is primarily because it is very easy to set up shop on the web. All you have to do is, register a domain name, set up a website, create the necessary pages and then start working at improving your search engine rankings and social media presence.

People who have money to spend can create and expand their online presence faster and those who don’t have money, can spend time and effort to achieve the same.

This makes it difficult for people to distinguish your business from other businesses.

Another problem is, you are not just competing with other businesses, you are also competing with other people to gain people’s attention.

If someone searches for a product or service that your business provides, it is not just businesses that appear in the search result pages, even the personal webpages and blog posts created by individuals show up in the search results that may end up confusing your prospective customers and clients.

This is why it is very important to create a very strong brand presence for yourself on the Internet so that people can immediately distinguish you from your competitors and from thousands of distractions that are constantly vying for the attention.

Using content marketing to build your brand

To build your brand using content marketing first of all you need to know what is content marketing?

Many people will say that content marketing means marketing your business on the Internet using your content. Theoretically this definition is correct. You ARE marketing your business using content instead of conventional advertising.

But it is more than that. More than marketing, you are creating a presence for yourself.

On the Internet it is all about creating a presence. People don’t like advertisements. In fact, the use mechanisms to avoid coming across advertisements.

Useful, educational content or the other hand, is appreciated.

Therefore, content marketing involves publishing lots of useful, relevant, entertaining and sometimes even controversial content to grab people’s attention and actively participate in a global conversation.

People on the Internet recognise you with the sort of help you provide them with their content. The biggest gripe people have with businesses is that it is very difficult to get help.

What does help me?

How to educate people with your content?

Take for example my own blog. Take for example this blog post. In this blog post telling you how to build your brand using content marketing.

You must have already known that you need to promote your business on the web in order to get business. You have always known that something is lacking and this is why your website is not generating the sort of business you deserve. Maybe you are not promoting enough? Maybe you’re not spending money on advertising? Even if you are spending money on advertising, maybe you’re targeting is not working. Or maybe the messaging is not working.

The thing is, you know that you need to make an effort.

Then suddenly you come across this blog post that tells you that you need to build your brand to get more business. How can you build your brand without spending a ton of money on advertising? This blog post tells you that you can build your brand with content marketing. There.

You have been educated.

Even if you have no idea how to build your brand without advertising, you at least know now that there is a concept called content marketing that can be used and it doesn’t even involve spending lots of money.

This is just one example of some sort of content being helpful.

An example from a bigger company could be the Open Forum from American Express. They have thousands of blog posts helping business managers and even small-business owners with premium business advice. Some of the blog posts are so insightful that you can get such help only from paid consultants. On Open Forum this premium advises available free of cost.

What is American Express trying to achieve? It is a financial services company after all.

When it provides free advice business executives, business managers and small business owners, it generates lots of good will.

There are different credit cards available in the market but there is a great possibility hat people who regularly use Open Forum go for an American Express credit card even when they can easily go for another credit card. Similarly, if the needs of financial services that are provided by American Express, they would rather get them from American Express then from another financial services company.

Aside from that there might be millions of customers who don’t know anything about American Express but to come to the Open Forum website for the wealth of information it contains. There, the find about the American Express financial services and since they already love the content on the website and they know who is providing the content, the go with American Express the next time they need such services.

This is one big example of building your brand with content marketing.

The relationship between familiarity and buying decision

If people are familiar with your brand they are more comfortable doing business with you.

There is a psychological concept called the “mere exposure effect“. According to this effect, people feel a preference for people or things (or businesses) because they are familiar with those people or things (or businesses). This is also called the familiarity principle.

Add to this the usefulness of your content and the effect is doubled. Now, people are not just familiar with your brand, they also find your brand useful.

Familiarity and likability breeds trust and trust is what is needed the most when doing business online. When you are selling products and services online, people to people interaction is almost missing. All you have is your content.

And the trust that you have built over time with helpful and educational content.

When people trust your brand, people not just buy from you, they buy more from you (source). They become loyal to you. They recommend your business to others.

So, whenever you think of content marketing visible your business, don’t just think in terms of increasing your search engine rankings for creating a constant buzz on Facebook and Twitter. It’s mostly about building your brand and creating a sustainable brand presence.

Importance of content writing throughout the sales funnel

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Content writing is not just about improving SEO – although without content writing there can be no SEO, but that’s another matter.

Throughout your sales funnel, high-quality content plays an important role. Even small oversights can send your prospects away to your competitor.

Read Content matters at every layer of your marketing funnel.

Typically, a sales funnel looks like this:

As you can see in the image, normally there are four stages in your sales funnel:

Awareness and education
Interest
Decision
Sale

Actually, there should also be an after-sale section in the sales funnel but normally it is not included (it should be).

The need to make your customers and clients aware and educate them about the benefits of your product or service underpins the essence of content marketing.

These days I’m working with a client who is planning to launch his service. He believes that most of his clients are unaware of the benefits of the services he is planning to offer. Hence, in the beginning, he wants to focus on the “awareness and education” part of the sales funnel through his content. For that he is hiring my content writing services.

Content writing for awareness and education

In this phase of the sales funnel, you may be targeting, typically, two types of customers (or clients):

Those who are totally unaware that they need your product.
Those who know what they need but don’t know how to find a solution and where to find it.

The first type of customers under this stage of your sales funnel, those who are unaware that they need your product, need to be educated. They have no idea what they are missing.

Suppose, there is a company that is going through work-management chaos, but it has never crossed their minds that a tool like Slack or Asana can help them streamline their operations. They might not even be aware of the concept of some “project management” tool.

Since they don’t know that such a tool exists, they may not even look for it. Although, day by day it’s becoming very difficult to manage their projects.

You need to make these people aware. You need to educate them through targeted content writing.

Again using the project-management-problem scenario, one of the managers may search for “how to solve project management problems”, or “cannot manage projects properly”, or “project management tips”, and such.

If you are selling a project management software, wouldn’t it be nice if people searching for such solutions come to your website?

A good example is Open Forum by American Express. The blog provides hard-core business advice. People don’t even have to be American Express customers. They may not even know what sort of services American Express provides. But they have business-related problems and solutions to these problems exist on Open Forum. When they visit Open Forum, when they visit it regularly, they begin to realize that many of the business problems that they face can be solved by using some of the American Express financial solutions.

You can apply the same content writing technique to make people aware of your product or service and educate them about its benefits.

During this phase, it is also important that you capture email addresses of your prospective customers so that you can send them regular updates. It is only due to the strength of your content writing that people subscribe to your mailing list.

Content writing during the “interest”phase of the sales funnel

In the interest phase of the sales funnel people are interested in a solution. They need to be convinced. They have different options in front of them. Through consistent and quality content writing you must convey to them there is a great solution to your problem that exists and it exists with you.

This is the phase when they know that (referring to the above project management problem) there are various project management software solutions available for their particular problem.

You need to keep in touch but not in the conventional sense.

Provide them valuable content on an ongoing basis. Keep their interest alive by providing them quality content on a consistent basis. Without being pushy, constantly, subtly, keep communicating to them how your solution can solve their problem.

He or she may explore other options available in the market. All the more reason you stand out by continuously publishing quality content on your own website as well as using other platforms. You should be visible and your content writing should be relatable to your business.

The decision-making stage of your sales funnel

At this stage, your customer is ready to buy from you. This is a crucial stage. Often the customer develops cold feet (because he or she finally must shell out money). At this stage, you should reassure him or her that he or she is making the right choice.

Your existing content plays a very important role. Your content writing needs to hook your customer who is about to buy from you so that he or she is not distracted or, there is no confusing information on your website to change his or her decision.

You must have noticed that above I have continuously used the expression “phase”, but suddenly I started using “stage”.

I did that purposely.

A phase can last for a long time, in many instances, even years. A stage, on the other hand, is short and hence, more crucial.

The importance of content writing when the sale has happened

Your job is not done as soon as the sale has taken place. Through high-value content writing you can always keep in touch with your existing customers. The chance of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% while the chance of selling to a new customer is 5-20% (source).

Many companies claim that 40% of their business comes from existing clients so, feeding high quality content to existing customers – customers who have already purchased from you – is as important as, and in many cases, even more important than, writing content for completely new customers.

How can your content writing help you keep in touch with your existing customers?

Provide answers to all their after-sale questions so that they don’t have to depend on your support team.
Create a comprehensive FAQs section and regularly update it.
Send email updates solely to your existing customers with new offers or complimentary offers or related offers (based on their past purchase decisions). Cross selling, for example, and up-selling.
Create an online community through your blog and bulletin board where your existing customers can interact with their fellow customers and interact with you and fellow customers.

The importance of content writing throughout your sales funnel needs to be well defined and recognized. Optimizing and publishing high-quality content throughout your sales funnel can help you create a tightly packed, high-performance sales-funnel that turns casual visitors into hot leads and hot leads into paying customers and paying customers into repeat customers, on an ongoing basis.