Four Ways Content Marketing Grows Business and How to Get Started

People want to connect online with other people and brands. Your business can connect with them by producing quality content. You just have to come up with a great strategy to keep up your momentum. While some industries feel it’s difficult because they have to constantly run content past compliance rules or feel like they have nothing interesting to write about, there is great value in content marketing. Here’s why it’s worthwhile for your business.

What content marketing can do for your business

1. Build brand awareness

The general rule of marketing is that people have to see your message or brand seven times before contacting you. If you offer B2B services, Hubspot states 47 percent of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before interacting with a salesperson. In other words, you’ll likely need your message viewed more than once to attract customers. By developing a strategy that has your business consistently pushing out quality content and promoting it correctly, you give yourself the opportunity to build strong brand awareness and get out in front of potential clients. Once you have posted this content on your website, you can share it on social media and create search and display ads around it to increase the chances of your brand and content being viewed.

2. Identify your business as a reputable voice in your industry

Content marketing allows you to make a lasting relationship with viewers by showing them your business is the source with all the answers.

Do this by taking each piece of content you create and thinking, “Can I make a spinoff blog/video/infographic from this piece?” Once you take this “rabbit hole” approach to your content, you’ll find you’re not only answering one of the consumer’s questions, but many of them.

For example, let’s say a hospital has the goal of highlighting its diabetes management program online. Instead of writing one blog post focused on the program, the hospital starts by explaining the differences between the two types of diabetes in a single blog post. Then, it creates two more in-depth posts, one for each type of diabetes, and includes information about its diabetes management programs in them. Next, it posts patients’ stories showcasing how the diabetes management program helped them. To follow up, there’s another post with a video interviewing the program leader. The list can go on and on. By creating content this way, you’re enticing readers with articles that answer more of their questions and keep them on your site for longer.

Pay attention to the feedback you receive as you create content. This feedback will determine if your content has value to your viewers, and oftentimes, their feedback will give you ideas for new pieces of content.

3. Convert website visitors into customers

Once you’ve hooked readers with content, your focus will be how to convert them into actual customers. Conversions can be tracked when someone downloads a whitepaper, fills out a survey, signs up for a newsletter, makes a purchase on your website, etc. Decide which conversions matter the most to your business and track them to monitor the success of your content.

4. Turn customers into promoters

Your content has brought you customers, and you don’t want to dismiss their loyalty. You want to keep them dazzled with your content. Better yet, you want them to become promoters of your content, so they can help in your brand awareness campaign. Target your customers with specific content or specials that reward their loyalty and keep them engaged with you. If there’s a reward they can get out of sharing your content, they might do it and help attract other potential customers by showing off your brand.

As you can see, you can’t ignore the benefits content marketing has for your business. Next, we’ll give you quick tips on how to get started.

A quick guide to getting started

Identify your buyer persona

Who is your ideal customer? What is their age? Occupation? What problems do they face in everyday life? Why would they need your products or services? Answer these questions and you’re on the road to defining your buyer persona, which can help you decide which type of content you need to create to target your customer during each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Make a content calendar

Once you’ve decided who you’re writing for, get your company leaders and key members of the marketing and sales teams together to have a brainstorming session. Here’s where you’ll decide what your content will be about and which format it will be in, whether that’s a blog, video or something else. Try to get enough ideas to fill content for a quarter of the year and revisit before the next quarter begins for another brainstorming session and to go over how well your content performed.

Use multiple types of content and repurpose content

Content is more than just the written word. Take your content from boring to compelling by using videos, podcasts, infographics and more to spread your messages. You can also make whitepapers, case studies and ebooks instead of just blogs. Once you’ve created a great piece of content, jot down ways you can repurpose the same message. Maybe you add a short video clip to that blog post. This gives you something else to share when it comes to promoting your content.

Promote your content

You’ve worked hard to create your content and now it’s time to share it with the world. Obviously, social media is a place where you can share your content, whether you drive traffic organically or back content with money, in hopes of getting more eyes on it. If you’ve repurposed content, maybe you want to share the blog version of it on social media Monday and the video of it on Wednesday. Use repurposing to your advantage.

How Team SI can help you

At Team SI, we have marketing professionals with years of experience in the healthcare industry who are already familiar with compliance rules. Even more, we understand your customers and know how to tailor content to fit both of your needs. Get in touch with us to let us know how we can help your business best.