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Content marketing involves sharing relevant and high-quality blog posts with your target audience to build credibility and draw potential customers into your sales funnel.
But, to keep up with marketing trends in 2022, you may need to make some adjustments to ensure you have a content marketing strategy that sells. This means turning to some tried and true solutions to ensure customers find value in what you’re publishing.
Let’s look at five expert content marketing techniques that every company needs to be using in 2022 to attract new customers, engage existing ones, and drive sales that will take your business to the next level.
1. Focus on answering questions you know your customers have
Your customers will have questions no matter what industry you serve. By anticipating these and answering them on your website, you can demonstrate that you understand the needs of your target audience.
Additionally, it’s a great way to improve your SEO and reach people currently researching topics or solutions they need related to your area of work. As a result, you’ll drive more qualified traffic to your website and should see an increase in sales.
You can reach out to your customers through a survey to ask them what questions they have about the industry you’re in and your products or services. You can also look through industry forums to identify questions that people commonly ask. This can help you produce educational content that your ideal customers genuinely want.
Write blog posts with titles and headings that mirror the questions you came across in your research to ensure the right people find your content. You could also design infographics that offer visual answers to their questions, with facts and statistics to help drive home a point.
Let’s look at some companies that answer frequently asked questions in their content to strengthen their content marketing approach.
Tipalti Approve is a software company that offers solutions to make enterprise procurement easier for its customers. Since many people may need a clear procurement definition to understand what they do, they generate content that clarifies what the term means.
This is a great way to answer common questions for their target audience and demonstrate that they are experts in their field. The guide about what procurement is provides in-depth information to readers about various aspects of procurement, like what the term actually means and the different types. This information establishes Tipalti Approve as a leader in the industry that potential customers can trust, which is likely to drive more sales.
You can create blog posts and guides that dive into and answer specific questions that your customers have about your industry to help you rank for valuable keywords and reach your target audience. Like Tipalti Approve, one way you can use this strategy on your website is by generating content that defines and clarifies complex terms and processes in your field to help generate more traffic and genuinely help your audience.
Another company that answers customers’ FAQs with their content is Verblio, a content creation marketplace. They offer blog writing services to their customers and their guide on how long a blog post should be aims to educate their visitors about different aspects of creating a good blog post.
This article answers common questions like how long a blog post should be, how long a paragraph needs to be, and what the benefits of long-form content are. This type of educational content helps inform potential customers about what they should look for when ordering a blog post and, since the article answers common questions that people looking to publish their own content will want the answers to, Verblio can rank in relevant search engine results, reach the right people, and drive qualified traffic to their website.
You can also answer specific questions that your customers have about your area of expertise to educate them, win their trust, and possibly convince them to invest in your services.
Finally, Feedbeater is another website that uses its content to answer common audience questions. For example, they have a blog post on the best crypto trading robot that gives readers advice on which AI tool is going to be the most beneficial for their crypto trading efforts by examining various factors like how much people need to invest to get started and how to set up an account.
You can use this approach on your website by providing in-depth answers to questions that your customers commonly ask to demonstrate that you fully understand your niche. This can help educate potential customers before they buy from you and this will lead to happier customers and fewer returns in the future.
2. Create helpful tools your audience will appreciate
Freebies offer a great way to take your content marketing strategy to the next level. Offering free tools that your audience will enjoy is an excellent way to get them on your website, earn their trust, and convince them to pay for your services once they are ready.
This is an incredibly effective tactic for driving qualified traffic to your website, because it will allow you to reach people who are already looking for help in the areas you specialize in. Plus, if you get this right, visitors will return again and again to access your helpful tools and even share them with their colleagues and friends.
Let’s look at a business that offers free tools to its audience to drive traffic and increase conversions.
Bankruptcy Canada is a company that aims to educate its audience on the bankruptcy process and offer them tools that will help them make educated decisions about their finances.
They have a debt repayment calculator that allows users to visualize how long it will take them to repay their unsecured debt. When customers enter the amount they currently owe, the calculator offers five different payment options and what they would cost per month to help customers plan a repayment schedule that works for them. This helps their customers see the value in their services and how they can benefit their lives.
This calculator provides valuable information to customers and helps build trust with them as they look to understand how to repay their debts. You can use this strategy on your website by creating a free tool that offers value to your customers and keeps them returning to access it. This will drive traffic and earn you some credibility by showing that you care about more than just their purchases.
3. Demonstrate your expertise to win the trust of customers and search engines
No matter what types of content you create, you should always aim to earn your customers’ trust with it. This can also help to improve your SEO because it demonstrates your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T), which Google uses to determine how to position your website within its search results.
To produce and publish content that demonstrates your expertise, you should:
- Cite reputable sources when possible to show your readers and Google that you have done your research.
- Frequently audit and update your content to ensure all the information is relevant and up-to-date. This helps Google trust your content and rank you higher than your competitors.
- Answer questions that your customers are asking online to help Google understand that you are an industry expert.
For inspiration, let’s look at some companies that use their content to demonstrate their expertise and build trust with customers and search engines.
Felix Health is a business that helps its customers obtain lifestyle medications to improve their quality of life. And, their blog contains articles that demonstrate their expertise on various health-related topics based on the needs of their target audience.
Publishing in-depth information about skincare, hair care, mental health issues, and more helps Felix Health to establish itself as an industry expert and an authority in the market. This is because the content is incredibly relevant to the company’s area of expertise, and reflects what the brand’s customers will come to it for.
You can use the same approach by writing in-depth articles about common issues or answering questions that your customers have. Once you understand who your target audience is and what they need using surveys and your outreach efforts, you can drive more qualified traffic to your site to drive more sales.
Another company that proves its expertise through its content is AdWords Nerds. This online marketing agency caters exclusively to real estate investors, and frequently publishes content about relevant topics to draw the right people in.
For instance, the brand has an ultimate guide to PPC for real estate investors, which provides their expert insights into how to target motivated sellers, how to pick the right keywords, and how to run a successful campaign overall. This is an excellent resource for real estate professionals looking to understand marketing their own businesses and provides lots of relevant information to show the company’s target audience that they are experts in the industry, which is sure to lead to more sales.
You can build in-depth guides with updated information and stats to show readers and Google that you are an expert in your field, with the ability to publish authoritative content. This can help you rank higher than your competitors in relevant search engine results and help you reach your target audience.
4. Find gaps in your competitors’ content strategies (then fill them)
To ensure your content marketing strategy is operating at its full potential, you should research what your competition is up to.
It’s a good idea to look at what content your competitors are publishing to see if there are any gaps you could fill. You can do this with a competitor keyword analysis tool likeAhrefs, or you could manually investigate whether there are any relevant topics companies in your niche aren’t discussing yet.
You should always aim to fill these gaps with your content because it will demonstrate to your audience that you have your finger on the pulse of your industry and are working to give them the most up-to-date information. This can lead to higher rankings in relevant search engine results and drive more qualified leads to your website.
5. Make your content work harder by repurposing it
Different people like to consume content in different ways. So, it’s worth presenting the same information in multiple formats to meet the needs of all your audience members. Repurposing content can help you reach a wider audience without too much effort, since you’ll be using what you already have and presenting it in new ways.
You can effectively repurpose your content by:
- Turning blog posts into podcasts to expand on specific ideas. This is a great way to reach an audience who prefers to listen to information instead of reading text.
- Filming videos that summarize your longer blog posts. This can provide the opportunity to present information through visual graphics to help drive home a point.
- Repurposing facts and figures from your case studies to create engaging and eye-catching infographics your audience will love.
Repurposing content is a great way to increase the reach of it without having to invest a lot of time or resources into the creation process all over again.
Summary
Your content marketing strategy needs to attract the right people to your website and demonstrate that you know your niche inside and out.
With the correct approach, your videos, blog posts, and other types of content can work overtime to attract visitors to your website and establish you as an expert in your field.
Use these five techniques to enhance your existing content marketing strategy. Before long, you’ll see an increase in web traffic and a spike in conversions as your content attracts your target audience and offers them value that inspires them to purchase from your website.
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Author bio & headshot:
Aaron Haynes is an entrepreneur and digital marketing enthusiast. With more than a decade of experience in business development, Aaron helps businesses and agencies develop and grow data-driven yet nimble approaches to search engine control. You can find more from him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
