4 Content Marketing Tips to Take your Website From Good to Great

You can expand your brand's reach through engaging content. Here are some content marketing tips that we use on our blogs to increase readership and ultimately sales.

Many marketers assume that content marketing is expensive. But the reality is that it's often cheaper than traditional marketing.

In fact, studies show that content marketing costs 62 percent less than outbound marketing, while generating more than three times as many leads. Additionally, 8 out of 10 decision-makers prefer to learn about a company through articles rather than an advertisement.

If you're looking to build an authority in your niche circles to grow your sales and revenue, you need to invest in content marketing. Let's take a look at some content marketing tactics to grow your website audience.

UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE.     

While this might seem like a no-brainer, many marketers and bloggers assume they know their audience. They don't see a need to craft a document explaining user personas to get a better understanding of their audience. When you can't picture your ideal audience in terms of demographics (age, gender, location, job role, etc.), you often end up creating random content on your blog and other marketing channels without a purpose.

Creating user personas helps you get a clear idea of your audience so you can create content that revolves around them. You can start by looking at your existing readers and followers and conducting surveys to learn more about them. This way, you can ensure every piece of content you create is targeted to that persona. There are many user persona templates online, so you don't have to start from scratch.

You can also search question/answer forums like Quora to learn about the problems your audience is having. You can then build content around ways to solve those problems. Get to know your competitors as well so you can figure out a unique angle for your blog posts.

Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, you can start creating content that revolves around them.

CREATE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR.

Having an editorial calendar for your blog and your marketing channels is the best way to streamline your content efforts. If you are on WordPress, you may use the editorial calendar plugin, or you can simply use Google Calendar, Trello or a number of other calendars.

You can start by choosing the right posting frequency for your blog and brainstorming your content ideas. Write down every idea that comes to your mind.

Extend your ideas by looking at your competitors' websites. You can also look at niche forums and search Twitter to see what problems your audience faces.

Just like on your blog, you'll want to frequently update your social media profiles with fresh content. However, you don't want to only share your own content, because that can make your profile look spammy. Instead, add value to your users by publishing other engaging content on a regular basis.

REPURPOSE YOUR CONTENT.

You don't always have to publish new content to reach a new audience. Instead, you can repurpose your existing content with a fresh spin on other platforms, such as social networks and other marketing institutes.

These are a few benefits of content repurposing:

• Reach new readers who haven't found your blog. By repurposing, you can target them on different marketing channels and encourage them to visit your site.

• Make your content evergreen by updating your existing posts and republishing them.

• Grow your email subscribers by transforming your existing content into a lead magnet.

Now that you know the benefits of repurposing, let's take a brief look at two different ways to repurpose your existing content.

CREATE A LEAD MAGNET.

Find your most popular blog posts and republish them as a PDF e-book. Then entice your visitors to download it by entering their email addresses. If you want to grow your email list exponentially, you can make your lead magnet a content upgrade.

A content upgrade is a lead magnet you offer within your article to encourage your visitors to subscribe to your list. The content upgrade offer is usually highlighted text inside the content area of your blog.

PUBLISH ONLINE VIDEOS.

Adding videos is another great strategy to reach a new audience. Instead of creating a brand-new video, you can use your existing blog posts and generate a video using Google Slides or a tool like Lumen5.

MEASURE YOUR GOALS.

Want to know if your investment in content marketing is paying off? Then you need to measure your content marketing's return on investment (ROI).

Money is not the only indicator of how well your content marketing strategy is working. These are a few factors you should check to track the ROI:

• Exposure and authority. While these factors are hard to track, they enable your content to reach an even wider audience.

• Traffic. This is the foundation of content marketing. It is the number of visitors your website acquires through your content efforts.

• Lead quality. A qualified lead is a potential customer in your email list who matches your buyer persona in terms of needs, budget and other factors.

• Sales. Look at the number of sales you generated by converting your qualified leads into customers.

• Onsite and social media engagement. The more engaged your visitors are, the more likely they are to become your subscribers and customers.

Content marketing can be time-consuming. But with the right strategies, you can streamline your content marketing process and grow your business exponentially. These content marketing tips can help you take your website from good to great.