Website content with the best ROI
AS PUBLISHED ON THE STUFF WEBSITE.
To get the best ROI from your content, publish ideas and insights that are useful and useable for your ideal clients at different stages of their customer journey.
You get the best return on your investment when you reach prospects with relevant and helpful information at the right stage of their customer journey.
The right people need to know that you exist, and have the product, service and support they are looking for. By engaging them through blogs, articles, case studies or white papers, you can demonstrate your knowledge, expertise, and value to them: which will build awareness and trust in your brand.
The rule of thumb is to have eight hours of content for a prospective client to engage with. This doesn’t mean prospects will spend eight hours on your site, but they’ll be able to see the depth of your expertise, and are more likely to find something that speaks to their needs.
By the time you speak with them, they’ll have a good understanding of what you do and how you do it. Your site will be delivering well-qualified prospects.
In the digital age, content plays a crucial role at every step of the customer journey. Your website and outreach channels work seven days a week to convince prospective and existing clients the value you create.
Step one: Understand your customer
It all starts with your customer. What questions do they have? What are their goals? What problems do they need solving?
Then you need to be able to answer them, showing how your business uniquely solves their problems.
Some of the most successful business websites focus on answering common customer questions.
They survey their existing clients, do keyword research, collect FAQs via email and social media, and then answer them with blogs, articles, white papers, case studies videos and social media posts.
Successful businesses distribute their keyword-optimised content so that their audience find it and consume it.
By answering burning questions, you will demonstrate your expertise and show how you can solve their problems, realise their desires and dreams. When you earn someone’s trust, they are more likely to engage, subscribe or contact you.
This is why for so many businesses today, digital content marketing has become their key lead generation and customer retention strategy.
With 60–90 per cent of purchase decisions made online (depending on your industry), your digital content marketing efforts will be well rewarded. You will naturally attract qualified leads who like your approach, requiring very little ‘sales’ effort from you.
Step two: Define the customer journey and map it to the right content
The customer journey is mapped out according to the engagement stage a potential client is at and is a natural progression from stranger to customer: Exploration – Research – Evaluation – Conversion – Support.
There are subtleties and customisations to this model, and every company will have a unique content map according to its own audience profiles, business goals, and niche.
FREE CHECKLIST
Answer your customer’s questions at the right stage on the buyer journey with our content map.
Step three: Amplify your content
To be found, you will need to spend (at least) as much effort promoting your content as you did creating it.
Distribute your content across earned, owned and paid media channels as part of a consistent publishing schedule. Email, social media, search engine marketing and search engine optimisation are the key digital strategies to distribute your content.
Step four: Review, revise, repeat
Content marketing strategies are unique to each business–client combination. The more you publish, the more you will learn about what type of content works, and what doesn’t, with your audience.
A rule of thumb is to allow six to 12 months to find the sweet spot with your audience and to find an optimal return on investment.
Measure and track engagement across all the channels through analytics – look at bounce rates, time on page, popular pages, social media engagement, and where new leads come from.
Smaller businesses usually do this manually. Larger businesses will need to use marketing software to do this at scale.
Which content touchpoints do you use?
Here is a list of the most common content touchpoints businesses employ: Articles, blogs, brochures, case studies, category pages, company profiles, eBooks, email subscriptions, feedback forms, guides, images, infographics, newsletters, press releases, reports on trends and data, ‘request a demo’ forms, search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, social media, testimonials, videos, webinars, and/or white papers.
Which of these would suit your customers’ journey?
Start doing some of your own content mapping to see where the gaps are.