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Why Content Marketing is a Long-Term Investment

We’re often asked how long it takes to see results with content marketing. Many businesses expect to see an increase in leads and sales immediately. But the truth is –no matter how great the content you put out – content marketing takes time and perseverance!

While it can be frustrating to not see the fruits of your labour straightaway, content marketing is a long-term game that allows you to deliver quality information to your customers. Seeing slow results in the first few months is nothing to worry about – here’s why.

It’s different to traditional advertising

Marketers are constantly debating how many times it takes for a consumer to see an advert before they change their behaviour. Some believe that the answer is 7, but for others the number can range anywhere from 3 to 20 times. Despite varying opinions, everyone can agree that advertising relies on showing products or services enough times in order to get a sale.

With content marketing, you need to come at it from a completely different angle. Unlike advertising, it is not meant to create immediate leads. Instead, the quality content that you put out serves to raise brand awareness – over time.

And runs on a different timeline

Often businesses start off strong with content marketing, but get tired and give up after a few months. With no immediate pay out, it’s easy to think that your efforts aren’t paying off. Because there is no instant gratification, and no guaranteed method of success, many give up on content marketing prematurely – before they are able to see improvements to their online visibility and customer interactions.

It takes a little experimentation

Learning how to write content that will rank well is a serious skill. It takes a while to understand where your audience likes to hang out online, and how they want to engage with your business. It also takes a bit of experimenting to find which type of content will work best for your business online – whether it’s blogs, articles, podcasts, videos or e-newsletters. Once you master the format, you have a way to target your audience uninterrupted, and teach them about your product or service in a way they find interesting and engaging.

And has different goals

Unlike advertising, the purpose of content marketing is all about building loyal customers and brand advocates. While an ad campaign can get you short-term sales, high-quality, engaging content has much more lasting power when it comes to gaining loyal consumers that trust your brand.

It’s complex!

SEO is changing all the time: Google changes it’s algorithm 500-600 times a year, and rarely lets everyone know of its updates. This means that there is no recipe for success with SEO. Rather, it’s a constant learning process of jumping through hoops, experimenting with content, and sticking with it!

While content marketing is a long-term game, it is something you should be investing in. Why? Because it works. Here at Cloud9, we can monitor and analyse your content marketing efforts to ensure you’re on the right track to producing great results for your business. To find out more, please get in contact.

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Identifying Your Online Target Audience

Can you identify your exact online target audience? If no immediate image or prototype pops into your head, you may need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy.

You could have the most visually appealing website to ever exist, but it will fail to make an impact if it’s not reaching the right audience. To make sure your hard work pays off, you’ll need to find out who your customers are and where they hang out online. By identifying your primary audience’s needs, you can increase your online conversations, optimize your social media marketing, and boost organic traffic.

Why identifying your target audience matters

If you know exactly what your customers want, you can optimize your site to maximise the likeliness of them coming across it in their online searches.

The same goes for what your customers don’t want- by understanding their state of mind you can structure and prioritise content on your site, and leave out what you know won’t interest them. Here are a few ways to identify your target audience.

Educated assumptions are a good place to start…

But they definitely wont deliver entirely effective results. If you have no paying customers yet, trust your instincts and make educated guesses. In an online world, location becomes irrelevant, so stick to making assumptions about your target audience’s lifestyle and needs.

The best way to identify your audience is to talk to them

While your own estimations are a good start, unfortunately you’re not psychic. Once you have a sketch of your target audience, put it to the test in the real world. Meet people and businesses that fit your customer profile, and converse and interact with them. Once you learn about the market you are operating in, it will be easy to tweak your previous assumptions and change course if necessary.

It’s also worth surveying some of your most recent customers on what they used your site for, and how your business has changed their life. Keep your questions short and neutral, but in-depth enough that you can gather some solid demographical data.

Do your online research

There are many web analytics services on the Internet, but Google Analytics is the biggest and the best. It tracks and reports website traffic to provide you with insightful data right at your fingertips. Use it to unearth near limitless data about your target audience’s demographic and psychographic profiles, and gain a better understanding of what they find important and interesting.

The custom reports it produces are also highly useful, allowing you to see which traffic sources convert the best so you can invest more time, money and effort into high performing traffic senders.

Target Audience on Google Analytics

Connect with your customers

Once you’ve identified your target audience, you need to make them stick around. Learn about them, understand them, and represent them on your site. You can try using social media listening tools, or manual monitoring, to learn your audience’s common dialect and understand their social media conversations.

Then, it’s time to take the plunge and dabble in your own online networking. Connecting with your target demographic and having a strong social media presence will help build trust and loyalty between your customers and your brand. Done right, your social media marketing will also provide proof that you are a well-connected, conscientious company that is worth following and supporting.

Blogging is also a great way to increase your following and maximise online conversations, as you’ll produce valuable optimized content that establishes your expertise to your audience.

If you need any help identifying and securing your target audience, here at Cloud9 we’d be more than happy to arrange a strategy consultancy. We focus our marketing plans around digital marketing strategies that are proven to gain customers. You can book an appointment here.

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Blog your way to the top & improve your SEO ranking

When fighting in the battle against established website giants to rank on Google’s first page, blogging for your company may fall at the bottom of your to do list. However, blogging can be one of the most effective (and cheapest) ways to master SEO and establish your website as truthful and reliable. It allows you to build upon your internet presence and increase interactions with other respected websites, and the everyday user, to get those all-important clicks. Below is a breakdown of how regular blogging can help your company triumph in SEO rankings and maximize your organic traffic.

 

#1: Blogging shows you’re relevant

First of all, maintaining and updating a blog shows search engines, and users, that your company is alive! The search engine spiders that crawl through the internet love fresh, updated content: similar to a singer with no new tracks, if you fail to keep a steady stream of new content, search engines could miss your site and assume it is losing its relevance. It’s all about elevating your internet presence, so don’t be afraid to include images and videos in your posts too, as these will give search engines even more ways of finding you.

 

#2: Blogging builds your reputation

Having a blog is the easiest way to demonstrate your in-depth knowledge of your field, and helps you to gain the trust of potential company followers. You can also associate your website with established and trusted sites through backlinking. By including related links in your writing, you not only give search engine algorithms big hints on what your page is about, but you also show users you really know your stuff. Guest blogging can also be a great way to boost your SEO, as working with writers who are experts in a similar field to you can really help your company’s repute.

 

#3: Blogging makes it easy to use SEO tricks of the trade

Keyword optimization is one of the most well known ways to drive traffic towards your site. But as everyone seems to know this already, it makes it impossible to compete with trusted mature websites using the same terms, right? While this may be true for obvious keywords, having a blog allows you to use long-tail keywords that can be tied back to your company. Here’s a great website that generates long-tail keywords suggestions for each search term.

 

#4: Blogging creates that all-important social media buzz

Though some companies still struggle to see the point of having a strong social media presence, Google actually returns social media search results. Connecting a blog to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will give broaden your online platform so both search engines and users can find you. What’s more, the great thing about blog posts is that they are easily shareable. People are far more likely to share an interesting blog post over a company’s service page, and blogs shared move up in search rankings, so spreading your company across social media will really help elevate it.

 

#5: Blogging increases your online **sprawl**

A new blog post can be one of the easiest ways to optimize your website. This is because, each blog posts counts as a new indexed page on your website, which are basically pages found by search crawlers that have been deemed to have enough quality for relevant search phrases. The more posts you write the wider your overall online presence will stretch, and the longer users will stay on your company’s site as they hopefully get drawn in by other posts.

 

#6: Blogging is free

That’s right, setting up a blog and reaping all those benefits can be completely free. Even if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, paying for help can be one of the cost effective and most rewarding ways to improve your SEO quality.

Here at Cloud 9 Marketing our team of writers specialize in producing interesting content that drives traffic and brings results. For help, contact us today.

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