By Melody McKinnon
The value of content marketing for both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) companies has been proven to a point of universal acceptance, yet it is still underutilized. Leveraging content to its fullest potential and developing a working strategy are even more rare. The holiday season offers plenty of opportunities for businesses and bloggers to fully embrace content marketing and put it to work for them.
10 Reasons to Use Content Marketing
- Increase brand awareness and reputation.
- Establish expertise, foster trust, and instill confidence.
- Lead generation & sales conversions.
- Search engine optimization (SEO), especially in this age of online pre-purchase research. Keyword research will help you optimize your content and generate new ideas.
- Bring in new customers who are researching products and keep them on your website until they purchase from you.
- Bring in local shoppers by referring to your location.
- Content marketing increases customer engagement and loyalty, which is virtually priceless. Double the impact by sharing your excellent content on social media networks.
- You can use content proactively to solve a customer’s problem or overcome sales objections.
- Content metrics offer tons of insights into customer shopping habits, wants, and needs, which you can apply to your paid marketing campaigns to ensure their success.
- You can gain a serious competitive advantage over other retailers who are still behind in quality content creation. Visit your top competitors’ websites to see what they’re doing and how you can do it better.
Use Content Marketing to Increase Leads & Holiday Sales
Content designed to increase leads and sales is often done incorrectly, and the results reflect that. The most common mistake is producing content that sounds more like sales copy. The key to content that converts is value.
Following are a few content ideas that have worked very well for us in our holiday promotions:
• Launch a helpful info-product like a whitepaper or ebook. Double the impact by offering it as a free download when people sign up for your mailing list.
• Gift guides offer the opportunity to really show off your products. If possible, make it easy for shoppers to create a wish list too.
• Check search data & use your own data to tailor content. Reader behaviour will tell you what they want.
• Don’t limit testimonial content to a page of its own. They can be distributed around your site to convince buyers to make a purchase.
• Product reviews & comparisons are especially effective in ecommerce this time of year. For one thing, gift shoppers are often looking for the best item in a category they’re not familiar with. For the same reason, include keywords that describe what a product does. For example, a guy shopping for a special lady could search for “a curling iron that does long swirly curls,” but has no clue that it’s called a “waver” or “wave curling iron”.
• Holiday news releases, notices and policies, such as the final ordering date for guaranteed delivery before Christmas.
• News related to your products, be it your own news or media coverage.
• A blog makes it easy to organize and share content. Fill it with original, in-depth content and the search engines will be all over it. It also provides fresh links to share on your social media accounts and in your newsletter.
• Solve problems that many people have this time of year. Articles might include “Holiday Meals on a Budget” or “12 Stocking Stuffers Every Teen Wants (for under $12)” and so on.
• Share research that’s related to your products.
• Offer holiday checklists and include a few strategically-placed links.
• Quizzes and other interactive content engages visitors, plus you can learn more about them.
• Festive infographics and memes are highly shareable. Infographics can also be used for tips, instructions or data.
• Video content can bring in a huge number of new visitors and repeat buyers, be it on your website or social media channels.
• Put a holiday twist on guest posts and get them onto influential sites and popular blogs.
TIPS: Optimizing your aging content is also very effective. In retail, that can include product descriptions, older blog posts, images, and anything else that has gone stale. You should also be cross-linking your content, such as adding a link to a “How to…” video on the featured product page.
‘Tis the Season of Giving
I can’t emphasize enough the importance of producing content that is truly valuable to consumers. The age of pushy sales is over. You must offer your visitors something unique, interesting and useful. Leave the sales pitches out entirely. The marketing angle should be so subtle it feels like an afterthought.
It’s critically important to invest the time required to create solid content. If you can’t do it yourself, you have a world full of options at your fingertips. There is no need to bring someone into the office and invest in equipment or try to find space for them. This is a perfect job for remote hiring or freelancers. The important thing is to seek out and retain experts who will produce excellent content specifically for your niche, backed by market expertise if applicable.
Author Bio:
Melody McKinnon is a Canadian digital entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in a wide range of online business models, backed by a formal business education and enhanced by training and mentorship. She owns CA Digital Media Group and is the author of 7 Recession Proof Online Businesses to Start From Home. Melody covers online business and digital marketing on CanadiansInternet.com. Subscribe to Melody’s International Online Entrepreneurs newsletter for weekly online business & marketing tips, news and resources.
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A previous version of this article was published by Melody McKinnon on Online Business Canada. Republishing permitted as is, with byline, author bio, and this notation (including links). Image provided by Deposit Photos for editorial use only.
