In the world of content marketing, there’s a lot you can do to give your audience the greatest value in order to provide greater returns for your business.
The content landscape continues to evolve along with the ways in which businesses grow their customers and increase revenue. Unfortunately, many businesses are making overlooked mistakes that keep them from meeting their goals.
Understanding the role your content plays within the entire sales process and avoiding three common (and costly) mistakes will ensure that the value you provide is profitable for your business.
Content Is Just One Piece of the Puzzle
Many businesses create and distribute content without considering their sales process.
Also referred to as a sales “funnel”, this is simply a series of steps by which you begin a relationship with prospects and guide them towards your offer.
Your content creates the context in which your customers begin to exchange value with you. But this process must begin with a dialogue.
Traditional marketing has always been attempted to interrupt audiences in an attempt to capture their attention.
But creating a dialogue first allows you to generate interest, which is much more valuable in building a business online.
Content Marketing Mistakes
1. Misplacing the Call to Action
Your call to action, no matter how carefully crafted, will be ineffective if it isn’t placed in the proper sequence within your content.
Beginning with your call to action fails to give users a reason to say “yes”. In most cases, the right information must be provided in order for the prospect to make an informed decision.
Therefore, content that is promotional in nature will be inferior to that which seeks to educate clients with information that is useful and relevant to their needs.
2. Not Making Your Content Vertical
Your sales process moves up in a vertical direction. Opting in to an email newsletter allows users to move up in the sales process.
But many users can get when the content hasn’t been designed with the entire process in mind.
If your business offers free content, it must ultimately lead to your long-term objectives while guiding users easily up through your sales funnel.
3. Asking for Something in Return
Content that’s valuable to your users is the biggest factor in building a long-term relationship with current and future customers.
Asking users to provide personal information or payment to access high-value content could be hurting your efforts.
Content builds trust, authority, and credibility. These factors must be established early in the sales process to maximize conversions once they reach your offer.
Avoiding Content Mistakes
The first step to avoiding these mistakes is to evaluate your content creation, distribution, and marketing strategies.
Gather all of your content assets and decide if each one has your business objectives in mind. Every piece of content must be created and distributed with the final goal (purchase) in mind.
Your content should be clear and easy for users to create a simplified series of steps that lead them to the final purchase.
Make sure your free content has high value. A registration wall can have a negative effect on building trust. You don’t need to save your best content for paying customers.
By providing value to your client before making the sale, you’re building a relationship and giving users a “why” for using and sharing your content with others.
Understanding the role your content plays in your business is essential to meeting your objectives. But your content must also be designed to move users up through your sales process.
If you’re struggling with your content creation and distribution, or if you recognize any of these issues in your own content marketing, let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear what steps you’re taking to optimize your content strategy.
