An effective content marketing is 126% more effective in getting leads than no content marketing.

Content marketing is a type of marketing that involves creating and sharing of content material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote your business.  However, it is intended to stimulate interest in your niche or industry with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer actions.

Ultimately, you’ll get more sales, have more loyal customers, and save money on advertising.

Think of Effective Content Marketing as an educational toolbox that establishes you as an expert.  Content Marketing builds your brand, creates assets for sales material, influences your entire website design, and strengthens your ability to rank higher in search engine results.

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

In order to have Effective Content Marketing, you need to document the process.

These 5 areas need to be defined:

1. Define Your Niche – we hear this all of the time, but you need a niche to help you focus your content.  You cannot write for everyone.
2. Next, make a list of general topics your niche is interested in which relate to your product or service.  If you are reading this article, then my targeting Content Marketing for small business is working.
3. Then, for each general topic, make a list of more specific questions your customer might ask about this area.
4. Once you have done this, look through your books and outside websites for ideas on content.  You probably know enough about the topic to write a 300-500 word Blog.  The key is, you need to reference some of the information, especially the data points.  This provides validity for your Blog.
5. Finally, write the Blog.

I highly recommend the Yoast plug in to help you score the effectiveness of the Blog for SEO and Readability.

2 final points – Effective Content Marketing educates your potential customers.  Remember, 95% of customers are not ready to buy yet.  The more you educate your customers, the more they know and trust you. Thus, the more they will buy from you.

Second, it helps define you as the expert.

You can profit from Effective Content Marketing.  It is a long play and you will need help with key words for your topics.  More on that in the next blog.

To learn more about how to write and develop effective blogs, see the GUIDED TOUR for additional resources.

You can also ASK THE EXPERT by asking me any question about Effective Content Marketing.