Make Content Marketing Work for Your Site in 2013

Content marketing might be a term you’ve heard tossed about lately, yet still may not know exactly what it means for your small business. Simply put, content marketing is the practice of creating, collecting, and making available fresh content for your readers…This may come in various forms, such as blog posts, articles, whitepapers, short reports, videos, podcasts, ebooks and more. We live in an age that treasures information, and the more content you offer your readers the greater authority you will carry in their eyes, which can often give you better rankings, increased traffic and sales!

Content marketing’s distinct advantages

74 percent of companies plan to do more content marketing in 2013. A mere 4 percent are choosing not to. These companies have found several of content marketing’s distinct advantages, some of which are cost-effectiveness, nearly instant results, and near complete control over the process. An article or blog post can be written, for example, and then posted not just on your own site, but additionally mentioned in your social networks, repurposed into a video or audio (or both!) and otherwise disseminated over the internet. This can easily multiply your reach significantly, and your entire content marketing campaign can bear fruit very fast.

A real-world example of how content marketing can rock your sales

The New York Times recently profiled a Northern Virginia company, River Pools and Spas, that had watched as their sales tanked because of the housing recession of 2008. Orders shrank from six per month ($50,000 a pop) to less than two. What had been a $250,000 yearly spend on radio, TV and pay per click advertising, was now impossible. Instead, owner Marcus Sheridan embarked on an ambitious content marketing campaign consisting of blog posts and videos, and in just a short time had not only recovered but exceeded pre-recession levels. In fact, Sheridan attributes nearly $2 million in sales to a SINGLE article he wrote on how much a fiberglass pool should cost!

There’s no doubt that content marketing can provide results, and that it really should have a place in your online marketing strategy for 2013.