Why Content Marketing is Perfect for Selling Services and Informational Products
Content marketing is a form/component of digital marketing that involves writing gripping content that will deliver real value for the readers and that will bring people back to your site regularly. From a “search engine optimization” standpoint this is very useful because it allows you to add lots of content to your site that will ultimately increase your chances of getting hits for ‘long-tail’ key words and phrases that people are searching for.
But more importantly, content marketing allows you to develop a relationship with your readers, to establish trust and to position yourself as an authority in your industry. This is important for any website or business, but if you sell a service or an informational product, this becomes absolutely critical.
How People Think Content Marketing Works
People have the unfortunate misconception that content marketing is useful for bringing short-term results. Their hope is that they will be able to create a great article or blog post, share it on their website and then see traffic swarm in as a result. Then they hope people will share their content around the web and that a good portion of their traffic will be converted into paying customers. They write their content, they press ‘submit’ and then they go to bed… hoping to wake up to thousands of new sales.
How Content Marketing Really Works
But that is not how content marketing really works. Instead, you're likely to get just a few people reading your content to begin with. Of those people, a few will make it to the end and hopefully they think that was good
They’ll then forget about you completely and not think to look for you again…
Until that is, they stumble upon one of your articles again on Google or on Facebook and they recognize your branding. That’s two good articles they’ve read on your site now. But again they’ll leave, being impressed but not particularly moved.
Once this happens a few times though they might realize that you’re writing about the things that matter to them in a way they respond to and they might bookmark your page. Or better yet, they may subscribe to your YouTube channel/start following you on Twitter.
And then eventually there may come a time when they need someone to redesign their website/help them get into shape/provide them with online marketing… or whatever else it may be. And now they know they like and trust you, they will likely turn to you to provide the sale.
That’s why content marketing is perfect for skill-based or informational-based sales. But for it to work you need to really keep at it!
