Do you feel as though your sales have been in a constant state of decline? Many businesses are are fearful to look at sales estimates or projections, because they are all too aware of the trend.
The truth is consumers have changed greatly over the years.
They can skip past commercials, block telemarketers, even block out ads on the internet. In order to make sales, companies have had to think outside of the box with regard to their advertising strategies.
Consumers are simply more educated now than they have ever been in regards to making purchases.
Almost 92% of all consumers will do some form of online research prior to buying product or service. This may include reading reviews, watching video tutorials, or searching out comparable models.
FREE TRAINING COURSE: Interactive Content Marketing Lead Generation
What Does This Mean For You As A Business?
First it means you need to stop marketing and advertising in the traditional sense! This is a good thing as you may actually save money compared to print and radio ads.
Once you have said goodbye to your old ways you need to embrace content marketing as the new way to connect with your costumers.
Content marketing (definition) has removed the pushy salesperson from the equation and has slowly brought the consumer ready to buy to your doorstep.
If you are unsure how you can use content marketing for your business in 2016, I have included six reasons why content marketing is going to skyrocket your sales!
1) Educates Your Customers
Consumers of the 21st century want to make sure they are getting the best value for their money. As I previously stated they research their products well before making a decision.
Content marketing allows you to become the answer to many peoples questions.
In the past searches were limited to a phrase or two. However, with the introduction of smartphones searches have taken on a more complex manner.
All one needs to do is simply speak a question and find the answer.
If you can be the one to answer that question for the consumer, you are more than likely going to get the sale. In addition, people do not want to get their answers from a corporation, they want to get it from a person they can trust, which leads to our next point.
2) Builds Trust
What happens when you are constantly being sold to by someone? Whether it is online or off? They lose their credibility and trust with the public.
Content marketing allows you to help and give answers without asking for a sale or anything in return. When you create these helpful posts, you begin to build trust with an audience.
If you are abe to build enough of these helpful posts, the search engines will take notice as well. They will begin to index your posts faster and rank them higher.
You can funnel your audience through those helpful posts into your sales pages.
3) Changes Untargeted Traffic Into Customers
Just as you may have window shoppers and tire kickers in a real world mall, they coexist in the online world as well. In a mall, even your best salesmen may not be able to get the average Joe to buy a big screen television.
The big reason is because he knows that is what the salesman wants, and the customer is going to refuse to break down and buy.
However, with content marketing you can slowly build a customer up with helpful information and guides that make him want to buy that very same television.
Not only will they be happy with their purchase, but it was a well informed and non-pressured sale.
In fact, good content marketing should never feel like a sale at all. It is designed to help a customer make the right choice for their needs.
4) Builds Awareness
Content marketing can easily establish you or your site as the authority within your niche. This can be done by posting helpful content in social media channels.
As well as commenting on customer’s questions and comments. As you continue to post this type of content, your reputation will begin to build.
With a higher reputation comes an inherited sense of trust and a much easier platform for selling products and services.
Once again by using the content marketing strategy, no one will feel as though they are being sold to.
5) More Content Equals More Clicks
By creating more content for your website or blog you are adding more of your own content into the search engines.
If this content has been properly optimized it has the ability to drive much more traffic to your website and to your products.
In short by creating high-quality content that is helpful to your targeted audience you will be bringing in free traffic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on autopilot.
6) Creates New Avenues Of Traffic and Sales
Many businesses are solely focused on the Holy Grail of free traffic and that is from the search engines.
Yet they are missing the mark completely with social media traffic. Social media is begging for the right type of content marketing.
They are tired of click-bait articles and scams and just want something that will make a difference.
By creating quality content that is laser targeted to a focused audience on Facebook or Twitter, it becomes a win-win situation. You now have an increase in traffic from a source you might not have been utilizing correctly.
This can open up new avenues for your blog and website as this audience clicks thru to read all the content on your site.
While social media audiences may not be in the buying mode they are always in the sharing mode, which helps further promote your site.
These reasons should hopefully have you drawing out a content marketing plan or talking to your SEO agency to help you create one.
If you are still unsure about jumping into the content marketing pool, let me toss one statistic at you.
Businesses that blog and offer helpful content to their audiences generate an outstanding 67% more leads than the businesses that do not offer content marketing!
Now are you ready to create some helpful content?
Prepare your social media strategy to push your content:
FREE: Download the free Social Media Performance Handbook that will show you how to set up your social media campaigns in 7 simple steps. Includes 2 bonus strategies not found in this post.Jon Rognerud and Chaosmap work with Fortune 500 companies, small business and entrepreneurs to create digital traffic strategies that scale up customers, leads and sales with profitable returns. Mr. Rognerud wrote a best-selling book (Buy On Amazon), “The Ultimate Guide To Optimizing Your Website” (Entrepreneur). Connect directly here.