Tag Archives: Content Marketing

How to build a big business out of a small business with content marketing

Grow your business with content marketing

Here is a nice article in the Forbes magazine that explains how as small business, especially as a start-up, you can use content marketing to grow a big business.

Even if you don’t believe in the various studies available on the Internet that prove that advertising no longer remains as effective as it used to be (it was never effective, there was no other alternative), use your personal experience.

How much attention do you pay to advertisements on the net, or even on TV? Given a chance, don’t you fast forward advertisements especially when you are watching your favorite program? Don’t you switch to the premium version of your mobile app so that you can get rid of the advertisements? I do.

On the Internet people devise various ways to avoid coming across ads. Millions of people have installed browser add-ons that let them block ads.

To be fair, advertising is a big business. Google has made billions selling ads through its search engine. Facebook is selling ads. Twitter is trying to sell ads. LinkedIn is constantly encouraging you to advertise on their platform. Ads are being sold on Instagram.

So, if advertising is so great, why you are being constantly told that you should embrace content marketing instead of conventional marketing and advertising?

The big difference is, advertising is about selling, content marketing is about building relationships.

Through advertising, people may come across your promotional message, buy from you or not, and then move on.

With content marketing, you are constantly in touch with your prospective customers and clients through providing them valuable content.

Advertising isn’t cheap, especially when you have many competitors who are doing well and are ready to spend more than you can.

Even if you want to promote your business using Google AdWords, you will need to bid on individual clicks based on how much your competitors are bidding.

Your business name and your brand are in front of your prospective customers and clients only till you advertise.

In advertising, “out of sight out of mind” prevails in its truest sense simply because there are scores of other businesses that are constantly vying for the attention of your customers and clients.

Content marketing on the other hand, leaves an imprint in the minds of your prospects. This is because instead of telling them to buy from you, you are giving them useful information that helps them work better, or sleep better, or entertain themselves better, or do something else better. You are enriching their lives.

When you enrich their lives, they remember you.

The author of the above Forbes article rightly says that content marketing is not about explicitly selling products or services, but getting everyone interested in what is being offered.

People these days want to make their own decisions, and this is why in-your-face marketing doesn’t work.

Building a big business out of a small business with content marketing

The biggest upside of content marketing is that it easily scales according to the size of your business. If you are a small business, you can use content marketing at a lower scale and as the size of your business increases, you can also raise the scale of your content marketing.

In simple terms, the purpose of your content marketing should be:

Reaching out to people who may need the product or service you can offer
Keeping them aware that you offer that particular product or service
Keeping them interested in your product or service
Constantly telling them the benefits of using your product or service
Educating them so that it becomes very easy for them to use your product or service
Constantly keeping them engaged even when they have purchased your product or service for further word-of-mouth marketing and customer loyalty

This can be achieved even by publishing a simple blog and sharing your knowledge through it.

Here are a few reasons why content marketing can work wonders with your small business and then help it grow into big business

Starting a blog is very easy
You can either start your blog on your own or you can pay someone a small amount to set it up for you
Once your blog is set up, if you are already hosting your domain, there is no extra cost for running your blog
Getting quality content for your blog is easy
You can either create content for your blog on your own or you can hire someone, like a content writer, to do the job
You can start building a mailing list
Almost all the email marketing services on the web allow you to set up your initial campaigns for free
Whenever you publish content on your blog, you can broadcast it to your mailing list
Use social networking platforms like LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter to further promote your content
You can also repurpose your existing content and create slides, images and small animations and then again promote the repurposed content

Suppose, you are spending $100 every day on advertising. A decent content writing service can deliver you two good quality articles or blog posts in the same amount. Even if you want a lengthier blog post or article, it can be easily prepared for $100-150.

Even if you publish two blog posts every business day by the end of the month you are going to have 40 odd blog posts covering your major keywords and search terms.

In three months you are going to have 120 blog posts.

These 120 blog posts are going to get you traffic from search engines and other sources continuously as long as you maintain your momentum.

Whether you are getting 10 people from search engines, 100 people, 1000 people or 10,000 people, you are not paying extra.

Unlike advertising, the growth with content marketing is not linear.

Assuming you are spending $100 every day on advertising, you will go on spending $3000 every month for a long period, and as soon as you stop spending these $3000, your business comes to a halt.

In content marketing, once you have gained traction, you can reduce your content marketing budget. Once your brand is known through quality content, you can come down to one blog post every day instead of two. You can even publish 2-3 good quality blog posts every week instead of posting one post every day.

Remember that Marcus Sheridan example I referred to in my blog post 6 indisputable benefits of content marketing?

Before content marketing his fibreglass swimming pools company was spending $250,000 per year on conventional advertising and marketing. After two years of content marketing, the company was spending $40,000 per year on content marketing and it had become the biggest fiberglass swimming pool company in North America.

How do you create a space for your small business with content marketing?

Doing business with big brands has its own charm, but people prefer to do business with companies and agencies they can relate to, trust, and rely on.

Normally, if you’re a small business and you don’t have the budget to hire an expert content marketing team, you are pretty much clueless about where to start.

Even when you know that content marketing can pay big dividends, you don’t know exactly what to do.

Start exploring other blogs and websites in your niche. What are the publishing? How does their audience respond? What are the topics that they talk about?

Most important: is there a gap you can fill?

Can you write or publish content the others are not publishing? Is there a demand for such content? Are there some topics that would be useful to your audience, but they cannot be easily found on the web?

This, is where you can start.

Start covering topics that are not being covered by the others. This way you will quickly start drawing attention from people who really want content on these topics, but they are not getting.

You will also get higher rankings on search engines for phrases that are not easy to find.

You can create a space for your small business with content marketing by covering less-competitive topics and then, as your rankings improve and as people begin to recognize you as an authority, you can gauge up your topic competitiveness and aim for more competitive topics.

How to double or triple your traffic by using long tail keywords in content writing?

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Do you know what are long tail keywords? How can you use them, incorporate them, into your content writing? What are the benefits of using long tail keywords when writing content for your website or blog?

In terms of improving your SEO, the concept of long tail keywords isn’t something new. It has been around for many years, but you come to know of it only when you do some careful reading, some persistent reading.

What are long tail keywords?

The phrase “long tail keywords” originates from the dragon-like long tail the traffic graph of long tail keywords generates.

Long tail keywords are those keywords that are low competition, that is, not many people are searching for them, but if some people are searching for them, and if you have optimized your web page or blog post for those long tail keywords, your link can be found by them easily.

To understand better, look at the image given below:

As you can understand, it would be very difficult for me to rank for the phrase “content marketing”. Aside from the fact that it makes no sense to optimize for this particular phrase for me right now simply because no intent can be attributed to the phrase “content marketing”, since thousands of people are already ranking above me, it wouldn’t be worth it for me to spend so much effort trying to rank higher for it.

Although this keyword or phrase is very competitive and may generate lots of traffic for websites ranking high for this keyword, in terms of competition and conversion, it has no value for me.

“Content marketing for my website” on the other hand is a clearly-defined phrase that I would like to rank higher for. A person who wants to use content marketing to promote his or her website should be able to find my website.

But again, it is a highly competitive phrase, though, it can be termed as, by definition, a long tail keyword because it contains more than three words.

Still, thousands of businesses might be looking for “content marketing for my website” because, well, one, almost every business these days has a website, and two, almost every business wants to promote itself some way or the other, and among these businesses, who are aware of the concept, would like to use content marketing to promote themselves.

Now we come to “content marketing for my web design website”. It’s an out and out long tail keyword because fewer people (compared to the two phrases described above) are searching for it and hence, it is not as competitive as the keywords mentioned above.

So, it is easier to rank higher for this phrase and since it is easier to rank higher, even if fewer people are searching for it, it can generate decent traffic.

This example can be applied to any business.

Suppose you sell “handwoven socks” from your website. Although it is a very attractive keyword or key phrase, thousands of people might be searching for “handwoven socks”. On the other hand, if you try to rank for “handwoven socks for babies” or “blue handwoven socks with white pattern” it will be easier to rank higher and get very specific traffic with greater conversion rate.

Such keywords or phrases are called long tail keywords; they are normally 3-4-5 words long and are very specific.

Why you can ill afford to ignore long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are also important because most of your traffic is already coming, or is going to come, from mobile devices. On mobile devices, since search is supported by voice, people tend to use phrases or common sentences to search for information.

There is a greater possibility of someone searching for “content writing service for my boutique website” then “content writing service”.

So, it is better to optimize for search terms and keywords your prospective customers and clients are actually using.

Another big reason is, the more specific the search is, the greater is the chance of the person buying from you.

This is where “intent” comes in.

If someone is searching for “content marketing” you never know what she is looking for.

Does she want to learn about content marketing? Does she want to find websites on content marketing? Is she a journalist writing an article? Maybe she is looking for books, articles and blog posts on content marketing? You can never be sure.

Even if someone is searching for “content marketing for my business” you cannot be sure whether she is looking to hire someone, or she wants to do it on her own.

“Content marketing service for my business” is more targeted and it means someone is looking for a content marketing service for her business.

“Content marketing service for my interior design website” is even more targeted. You know precisely what she is looking for.

Targeting for long tail keywords gives you an edge because it sends you highly targeted traffic that in turn, improves your conversion rate.

How to improve your SEO and double, or even triple your traffic with long tail keywords

As I have already explained above, since long tail keywords are less competitive in terms of SEO and may attract even less traffic, since they are more targeted, they enjoy better conversion rate and easy, higher search engine rankings.

You can either use common sense to create a list of long tail keywords pertaining to your business, industry or profession, or you can use something like LongtailPro (disclaimer: affiliate link) to find the long tail keywords in your niche.

With LongtailPro, you can enter a “seed” keyword and based on that, the app will suggest all the combinations that you can optimize your content for.

A good thing about LongtailPro is that along with giving you all the possible suggestions, it also shows you how competitive a particular phrase is for your website, specifically, and how many queries are done using the phrase for the long tail keyword.

If you don’t want to use LongtailPro, you can also use the Google AdWords tool. Just be wary, since Google would like you to bid on maximum number of keywords and phrases, it throws at you all sorts of keyword combinations that may confuse you. It is better to use the tool to get the ideas but eventually, create your own list, manually.

Remember that the amount of search engine traffic that you get is not important, what is important is, how many people do business with you. For that, you need to target very specific keywords and search terms.

Once you have created the list, start creating content around those long tail keywords.

The best thing to do is, create a web page or blog post with the title having your long tail keyword. For example, I can have something like “How to use long tail keywords for content marketing?” or “how my content writing service can help your restaurant website?”

If you have a TV shop in Lajpat Nagar it doesn’t make any sense trying to optimize for “Sony TV”.

On the other hand, you should optimize for “TV shop in Lajpat Nagar” or better, “Sony TV shop in Lajpat Nagar”, or even better, “Leco Sony TV Lajpat Nagar”, because this is how people search when they really want to buy.

Below I’m summing up how and why optimizing for long tail keywords can improve your search engine rankings as well as conversion rate:

Long tail keywords are less competitive in terms of SEO and hence, you can easily rank higher for them
Since you can easily rank higher for them, even if fewer people are searching for them, they will come to your website
Since search terms for long tail keywords are very specific, the traffic generated through these keywords have a clearly-defined intent and this is why, they enjoy a greater conversion rate

In fact, while writing content for my clients, I have experienced that writing content for long tail keywords is a lot easier than writing content for generic, high competition keywords because, since long tail keywords use logical phrases, it is easier to write conversational, engaging content for them.

When to use curated content for content marketing?

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Although I would suggest that you don’t base your entire content marketing on curated content, it is a nice way of keeping the channels of content smoothly flowing when you are not getting some great content writing and content publishing ideas.

Curated content, in case you don’t know what it is, is the content that you gather from other sources and then republish it on your own blog or website, or share it under your social media profile like Facebook or Twitter.

This blog post nicely explains how to differentiate between original content and curated content (of course curated content is also original, but not from your angle).

Original image source

The author of the blog post says that the original content is like the original artwork, but when you curate content it is like creating an art gallery where you showcase all the pieces of art that you have been able to gather.

Is content curation like using someone else’s content?

In content curation, although you are using someone else’s content, you’re not using it as it is. You either use the link, or you use the link to explain something else.

Take for example this present blog post. I’m linking to another blog post that talks about how you can use content curation for content marketing for your start-up when you don’t have a budget to create high-value original content.

There is no doubt about the fact that you need quality content for meaningful content marketing.

If you are constantly publishing lousy content it is going to cause irreparable damage to not just your SEO, but also your brand.

You rather not publish content at all.

So, for businesses that cannot right now invest in good quality content, it is better to start with content curation because when you curate high-quality content in some ways you are also creating high-quality content for your own website or blog.

In fact, sometimes curated content can fare far better than the original content, provided you use the right topic.

Suppose I want to write a blog post on “Content Marketing Trends of 2018”. I have already written some blog posts on the topic, but I have linked to other sources. For example,

What if I don’t write my own, original blog post, but create a list of 40 blog posts that talk about the 2018 content marketing trends?

Will people like to read my thoughts on the topic or from 40 experts?

I don’t mean to undermine my views on the 2018 content marketing trends, but I’m pretty sure, given a choice, people would rather read those 40 content marketing experts.

After publishing the post, I can also send a quick email to these 40 individuals notifying them of my latest blog post and even if five among them share the link either on their blog or on twitter/facebook, it would be more beneficial for my blog than me writing my own thoughts on the topic.

Many people curate such blog posts specifically for this reason and this is a good content marketing tactic. You don’t just create lots of quality content you also get to network with other people to whom you link and whose content you appreciate enough to curate.

Is curated content better for your SEO?

For SEO you need high quality original content. You must be wondering if you are curating lots of content that is published elsewhere, isn’t it going to harm your SEO?

Even when you are curating content, in some sense, at least for the search engines, you are publishing original content. Remember that whenever you link to other sources, you must include your own outlook, your own opinion.

For example, even if I am linking to blog posts and articles that talk about the 2018 content marketing trends, I’m writing about these posts in my own language, in my own style and sometimes I even add my own points.

Even when you are curating content like this (creating individual blog posts) never fail to add value. If people want to just read the original content, they will go to the original link. You must give people some reason to stay on your website and read your take on the subject than going to the original link.

Google likes it when you link to authoritative websites and blogs. This Moz blog post by Rand Fishkin shows that linking to other websites and blogs actually does good to your website in terms of increasing its authority as well as improving its SEO.

The best way to curate content is to choose a theme and then gather as many links as you can find that give very valuable information about that theme.

Don’t create a random collection of links just because they talk about a particular subject or topic. Create a context. Weave a story around those links. They should become an integral part of the narrative that you are expressing in that particular web page or blog post.

Curating content can be cheaper than writing original content

Unless you are planning on creating a portal of curated content, curating content for content marketing is obviously cheaper than writing original content, because all you are doing is, linking to other sources.

But finding and keeping track of high-value content can be a time-consuming activity especially when your niche is very narrow. Maybe for your niche it might be very difficult to curate good content. You may have to hire a researcher that may charge you a lot.

If that is not the case, content curation is always a cheaper alternative to writing original content.

Why curated content shouldn’t be your long-term content marketing strategy

You can fill up the gaps with curated content but eventually, you need original content for your long-term content marketing strategy.

Just as you are linking to high-quality content from other websites, wouldn’t you like the others to link to your high-quality content?

If all you do is link to other authority websites and blogs, you never get to share your own expertise. You are always living in their shadow. People will be finding their links on your website and then they will be doing business with them because they are the original creators of that high-quality content.

Remember that if you want to get business on the Internet based on your authority, then original content is a must.

Why your business needs content marketing

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In the contemporary world there are two ways you can promote your business: through conventional advertising or through content marketing.

If you plan to use a mix of conventional advertising and content marketing, then there are three ways of promoting your business.

Most content marketers claim, and perhaps rightly, that content marketing is far better than conventional advertising because through content marketing you build relationships and through conventional advertising you simply push your marketing messages in front of people whether they want to see those messages or not.

Due to the Internet and the waning popularity of TV channels, most of the advertising is shifting to the Internet.

This is good and bad for advertisers.

Good, because advertising can now be more scientific and data-oriented. Targeting is better on the Internet due to technology. You can create various versions of your advertisement to target very narrow audiences without incurring much cost.

Massive amounts of data are available to advertisers for better targeting. Social networking platforms like Facebook and Google know practically everything about you and they share this data with companies and businesses that want to advertise on Facebook and Google. This brings down their costs and improves conversion.

The bad thing is, if I don’t like your advertisement, I can block it. I can use an ad-blocker plug-in for my browser and refuse to see any advertisements. There are many alternate browsers available that block all sort of advertising.

Image credit: Search Engine Land

Since most of the people are consuming digital content they can easily skip advertisements.

Online video streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are a hit mainly because you cannot only control what you want to watch you also don’t have to see the commercials.

This also tells us one more thing: people don’t want to see advertisements and given a chance, they take measures to avoid them.

This is why businesses need content marketing.

Content marketing is nonintrusive. It is non-invasive. It doesn’t annoy you. Ideally, it doesn’t hard sell.

Why content marketing is better than conventional advertising

Content marketing allows you to build relationships with your current and prospective customers and clients.

In case you haven’t explored other sections of my website and blog where I have repeatedly explained what content marketing is, in simple terms, it means giving very useful content to people so that they are grateful for your help and appreciate the knowledge, the information, and the wisdom that you regularly share with them.

High-quality content allows you to keep in touch with your prospects without annoying them.

Everybody appreciates timely help. I will give you a small example.

Recently I subscribed to LongtailPro (disclaimer: it is my affiliate link). As the name suggests, it is a long tail keyword analysis tool that tells you which keywords to target for, to improve your search engine rankings.

Whether you opt for their trial version or buy the premium version, from day one they start emailing you tips and tutorials on how you can optimally use LongtailPro to improve your search engine rankings.

Just imagine, you have purchased the subscription hoping that in the coming days you are going to improve your search engine rankings and consequently, generate more business from your website, but you are unaware of most of the features of the app. Many people find using the app quite overwhelming.

It helps you greatly if you continuously receive tips and tutorials in your inbox.

Not just in the inbox, even on their website they have lots of videos and blog posts explaining how to do keyword research and how to obtain more suggestions for your content marketing campaigns.

People who really want to work hard and using the app, want to improve their search engine rankings, really appreciate this useful content and don’t mind if they continuously get the updates by email.

What’s the benefit for LongtailPro?

With the help of the useful content if you can use the app more productively, you will have a greater satisfaction level.

Having greater satisfaction level means you will be actually using the app to improve your search engine rankings.

You will not unsubscribe in a couple of months, totally disappointed.

If you are disappointed because no help was available, you will think that the app is lousy and you will tell the same to the others.

But if you are happy you will not only remain subscribed (it’s a monthly subscription), you will also recommend LongtailPro to the others.

So, it is of immense importance to the promoters of LongtailPro that you are able to use the app optimally.

This can be applicable to any business. If your business depends on people being constantly interested in your brand, then your useful content can help you greatly.

It gives people a reason to visit your website or blog regularly. Your brand becomes familiar to them. They enjoy getting updates from you. They even recommend your business to their family and friends.

Advertising on the other hand is totally opportunistic and emotionless. If people come across just your advertisements, they don’t give a damn whether you exist or not. But if you send them useful content regularly, it’s in their best interest that your business sustains.

The biggest benefits of content marketing for your business

Improve your search engine rankings: Content marketing, done properly, makes you publish high-quality content. When you publish content regularly you tend to cover all the topics concerning your profession. Also, continuously covering different topics increases your overall keyword density. It also gives people a reason to link to your website and promote your content on you social media websites.
Increase referral traffic: A big benefit of publishing high-quality content on an ongoing basis is that other websites have a reason to link to your website. This increases referral traffic. Referral traffic is the traffic that comes straightaway from non-search-engine sources.
People have a reason to visit your website: Do you needlessly visit a website unless it is your own website? No, you don’t. But then, there are many websites that you regularly visit because they have great content, or they have some interesting activity you like to participate in. The point is, continuously publishing and marketing content brings repeat traffic to your website. When people repeatedly come to your website they are more inclined towards doing business with you.
Due to your educational content people are able to make better use of your product or service: As you have seen the above LongtailPro example, they make sure that you are able to use the app properly through multiple videos and blog posts. This can be done with every product or service. Suppose you sell mobile phones online. You can publish lots of tutorials on how to take care of your mobile phone, how to solve various problems and how to make sure your data is safe. There can be hundreds of topics related to having a good experience with one’s mobile phone. Similarly, if you are selling a subscription-based service people will stick to you if they constantly hear from you and if you are always there with helpful information that they can implement fruitfully.
Expand your brand presence on the web: The Internet is constantly buzzing with activity. New content is constantly being published. People are addicted to social networking websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They are constantly being bombarded with all sorts of messages. In so much noise, how do you make sure that people are able to notice your brand? By expanding your presence on the web through quality content.
Increase brand loyalty: Have you ever seen Open Forum? It is an online publication catering to business owners, business managers and entrepreneurs. Lots of business-related tips and suggestions. Open Forum is published by American Express, a financial services company. All the people making use of their information would rather do business with them than with another financial services company that simply asks for their business without giving them good advice or without being there to help.
Lower advertising and marketing costs: Why do you need to spend money on advertising and marketing? Because you need to maintain your visibility. You want people to remember your brand. If they want to buy a washing machine, they should remember that you sell washing machines. Conventional advertising is unscientific, unreliable, haphazard and very expensive. Also the cost involved in content marketing is not as exorbitant as advertising and every piece of high-quality content builds up lasting relationships for you.
Every business can use content marketing: A great thing about content marketing is that it can be easily scaled. Whether you are a large corporation employing thousands of professionals or a one-man-woman show being run from a basement or a balcony, you can use content marketing according to your size and budget. The key is, use it in the right way. Don’t indulge in copycat tactics.

How to do basic level content marketing for your business?

There is one important thing that you need to understand: content marketing is not a one-time affair. It is an ongoing process. Just like you have to take care of your business, you need to take care of content marketing.

But don’t worry, once it begins to pay you, you will enjoy doing content marketing for your business. You may indulge in the following activities to content marketing for your business:

Publish a regularly-updated blog covering your niche topics
Post useful content on social networking websites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
Build your own mailing list and send regular updates to your subscribers
Publish informative articles and web pages on your website
Offer to write for other websites and blogs
Write an e-book and offer it for free
Publish case studies on your website
Make your existing content available in different formats such as YouTube videos, PowerPoint slides and infographics

These are all quite doable steps. You can either hire a small agency like Credible Content or you can do content marketing on your own at this scale.

The benefits of writing content for existing customers

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Normally when we talk of content writing we mostly have new customers and new leads in mind.

Although lots of content is published to cater to existing customers in the form of FAQs and support pages, active content writing isn’t normally directed towards existing customers.

You may be surprised to know that 61% small and medium-sized businesses admit that half of their revenue comes from existing customers (source).

According to this Econsultancy report, 82% companies agree that retaining existing customers is a lot cheaper than acquiring new customers.

This infographic says that loyal customers are worth 10x as much as new customers.

Content writing for existing customers shouldn’t be a one-time affair. It should be a continuous exercise for multiple reasons.

Content writing for existing customers isn’t just useful in terms of selling to them more, they also help you expand your brand especially when everybody’s pretty much connected to everybody else.

Listed below are some reasons why you should pay more attention to writing content for existing customers.

Cross selling and upselling

Since these are the most alluring reasons for a marketer or a business person, I’m listing them in the beginning itself.

If you haven’t given him or her any reason to dislike you, an existing customer is more likely to do business with you than a new customer because you are familiar to him or her, the customer has already paid you, and he or she has had a positive experience with you.

If you are routinely introducing new products or new updates you would obviously like your existing customers to try them out.

You may also have related products or services that may help your existing customers draw more out of the product or service they have already purchased.

Zoho, for example, has many products that can be better used when combined with each other. You can combine invoicing with CRM. Since you are using their email and collaboration services you might as well try their sales and marketing tools too.

Giving my own example, if your business experiences better search engine rankings through my content writing services, you might as well try out my SEO content writing services to expand your organic reach or my social media content marketing services.

Familiarity and trust are highly coveted attributes on the Internet. Never let them go waste.

If a customer has done business with you, give him or her your best, and then regularly provide quality content to him or her to give him or her a reason to engage with you consistently.

Promoting your content

You never know which of your customers may turn into a celebrity of sorts. Even if not a celebrity, on an average every person these days has 200-300 contacts on various social networking platforms.

Content marketing is an integral part of marketing these days. You need to promote your content.

Your customers are more likely to follow you on Facebook and Twitter. They have already given you their email ID and they expect you to send them email updates related to products or services they have purchased.

You can use these contact channels to encourage them to promote your content among their own friends.

Of course they should deem your content as useful and relevant so by default you should consistently publish high-quality content.

Without building your own network no matter how much high-quality content you publish, it is very difficult to promote it.

Your existing customers are your ready-made network. If they like your product or service, they will eagerly promote your content among their own contacts.

Getting SEO benefits

Search engines like Google give lots of importance to the sort of buzz your content creates. Your search engine rankings improve if more people access your content through social networking websites and through other blogs.

Many of your existing customers may be bloggers or social media influencers. If they are happy with your product or service, they won’t have any problem sharing one of your links on their own timelines or on their own blogs.

This will improve your search engine rankings.

Being there when they need you

When people buy something from you they get into a partnership. If you are a serious entrepreneur you will agree that this might be a long-term or even a lifelong partnership.

If your product or service has many uses (MS Office products, for example) your existing customers may regularly turn to you when they need to know something about the features they cannot use or cannot find.

This is a conventional form of content writing and many businesses already do it in the form of, as already mentioned above, support sections and FAQs.

Many businesses encourage online forums – Google has one – where customers provide help to each other.

If nurturing an online forum isn’t an option, you should publish answers to as many questions and queries as possible on your website.

This will increase and strengthen your customer loyalty. They will know that when they seek answers, you will provide them. They will know that when they have a problem related to your product or service, you will be there to help them.

Encouraging them to stick with you

This might be greatly relevant to subscription-based businesses.

No matter how great a set of features you provide to your subscribers there is a great chance that they are going to leave your service either for another service or they simply lose interest.

Sometimes they just forget that they have to renew their service.

Sometimes they lose track of why they subscribed in the first place.

You can keep them interested in your service or product by continuously providing quality content. Your constant communication keeps them hooked onto your product or service for a long time.

Email marketing

It takes a very long time for businesses to build a verified mailing list.

Your existing customers, since they have already purchased from you, have not just given you their email ids, they have also permitted you to send them regular updates.

Email marketing is an integral part of content marketing.

In fact, your content marketing is incomplete if you are not distributing your content using a mailing list that you have ideally created through your website or blog.

If you are sending just promotional messages to your existing customers they will sooner or later get fed up and unsubscribe from your updates and that will be the end of everything.

Email content writing for existing customers means sending them useful information – information that is relevant to them and would prompt them to stay with you and respond to your messages.

Even if you don’t want to use your major content marketing and content writing resources on existing customers, occasionally targeting them should be an integral part of your marketing.