Bigger Profits With Content Marketing

How to boost your brand, gain more customers and blow away your revenue projections…

If you’ve ever wanted to build your brand and increase your business revenue with a growing list of steady customers, then you’re reading the right article.

That’s because you’re about to discover why so many small business owners are finally getting amazing results from internet marketing. And the good news is that this method works even if you’re a brand new business with a little start up capital.

Read on…

Why I'm Impressed with Content Marketing

I found that many people still don’t understand the concept of content marketing. Many business owners don’t realize the benefits of it. Among business owners, there’s great skepticism about internet marketing disciplines.

Crafts are one of my wife’s favorite hobbies. She is an expert at them. For years, my wife and I have watched YouTube shows about our respective hobbies. Whenever my aquarium went green (it’s not supposed to), I searched my library for a book I’ve been using for years as a resource for aquarium maintenance.

Taking a look through some of her old manuals, she sat on the floor in the middle of the room. I joined her with my books to troubleshoot my aquarium settings.  My books revealed that the type of fish required different maintenance. I needed to make some changes. So, I went to Amazon and started searching for the solution in the book.

Sure enough, I found a great resource written by the same guy who wrote the one in my hand. I purchased the book in both print and ebook form immediately.

I used the ebook to help me with my aquarium issue. I had developed a trust over the years with my “fish guy” after watching his videos. I had about everything he published about aquariums and specialty fishes at this point.

I looked up at my wife, who was smiling at me. She pointed out how I just proved the power of marketing. The process that I’ve been teaching and preaching about for years was illustrated in just a few brief minutes. I started laughing at this because I pointed to her stack of books around her to show her she was making the same point.

I made the purchase without a second thought because of my total trust in the brand. There was no “comparison shopping”. Cheaper options were irrelevant to me. This book’s author was familiar to me, and I knew I could achieve the results he talked about.

Content marketing at its most effective.

How does it work? Marketing your business through content is content marketing. You create content, such as videos, infographics, posts, downloadable PDFs, etc., that users interact with.

Content helps people get to know your business without being intrusive; they consume it, trust you, and are more likely to do business with you. Isn’t that easy, right?

Here’s the big problem with content marketing from the business owner’s perspective. It’s a slow-growth investment. There’s nothing sexy and dynamic about the process. It’s hard to convince an entrepreneur that she’s got a lot of mileage out of taking a year to develop the trust and loyalty of prospects.

Over the years, I’m sure that I’ve spent several hundred dollars on books and products that my fish guy recommended. I’m sure that the author spent a bit more than that on his content marketing campaigns. However, what most small business operators overlook when the budget for content marketing comes up is the CLV factor.

Content Marketing is the Best Business Investment for the Money

Businesses are so used to measuring results of advertising that they neglect a very important aspect of marketing; customer lifetime value. If I’m worth $100 a year to a business owner and she spends $100 to get me to be a committed fan, did she lose money?

If you judged her investment by a limited time of her expense, she at least broke even. That’s how advertising works. It gets you in the door. But what if she could make that $100 investment gain my trust and loyalty through building a relationship with me over the course of a year?

Establish Your Average Customer Lifetime Value

Business schools and marketing classes talk about customer lifetime value. There are a few online calculators for finding your CLV. If your products and services are complex, just do your best.

Here's The Simple CLV Formula

Calculate CLV by adding the revenue from the customer (annual revenue multiplied by the average customer lifespan) minus the cost of customer acquisition.

Let’s suppose:

An annual profit of $1,000 is generated by the customer.

Over the course of five years of being a customer of the brand.

$2,000 is the cost to gain the customer.

This customer would have a lifetime value of:

(Annual customer profit of $1,000) X

The customer has been a customer for less than 5 years.

$2000 (acquisition cost) = $3000 (customer lifetime value).

$1,000 X 5 – $2,000 = $3,000

How to Crush it With Content Marketing

Your content should focus on all the questions your customers ask before they buy your product and the problems they are facing. After all, it is they who you are attempting to help develop quality content.

I encourage business owners to take charge of their content creation even if they don’t create it themselves. Consider the reason why you started the company. Take a brainstorming session to clarify your essential message. Hire a consultant if you need to.

Write down all the difficulties your products solve. Catalogue the many benefits. List all the pain points your customers may have that might motivate them to use your product or service.

As the subject matter expert, be involved in the content strategy. Let your customers hear from you. Your content speaks for your brand. You don’t have to create all your content.

Develop a plan of action. Use a calendar to plot out your publication strategy. List the types of media you intend to use to get your messages out there.

You don’t have to use them all, but consider this list of options:

• Blogging.

• Checklists.

• Courses.

• Ebooks.

• Email.

• Free apps.

• Infographics.

• Lead magnets.

• Podcasting.

• Quizzes/tools.

• Slide decks.

• Slideshare presentations.

• Social media posts.

• Video.

• Visual content.

• Webinars.

• Whitepapers.

Now it’s time to promote your content. That’s right. You’re going to have to promote your content in order to get the most mileage from your efforts. Facebook and Google ads are suitable examples. Use social media and search advertising to promote your content at the beginning. Your blog and YouTube channel will get more traffic as a result.

This traffic can be leveraged to get people to sign up for your email list or to read more valuable content. You can rely less on advertising to grow your brand when you have lots of email subscribers and social media followers.

How Does Content Marketing Work So Well?

Blogs, e-books, and social media posts created by your company work for you long after they are created. Advertising cannot compare to building relationships with prospects. Content marketing may take longer to gain traction, but in the long run, it is much more affordable than traditional advertising. 

Those are my biggest tips for leveraging content marketing to grow your business. Let’s sum it up. What is content marketing all about? It’s the act of marketing your business through relevant information to a specific audience. Some basic goals include building brand loyalty, increasing sales, creating advocates, and improving CLV.

You can get started using content marketing by first determining your brand story. Develop quality content that is geared to a specific market segment. Add value at every stage of your presentation. Make sure that people see your content to learn more about the value of your service.

Now that you know how to get started with content marketing, there’s just one thing left for you to do: take action. So get to it, and soon you’ll be seeing profits from your pins!

For more information on digital marketing, stop by http://contentmarketingmagic.co/blog

Tags: content marketing, small business marketing tips, content marketing strategy