How to Make Your Team Believe in Content Marketing

‘Tis the season to believe in the holiday spirit AND the power of content marketing.

If you’re new here, content marketing is a business opportunity to reach and convert new customers. It drives measurable results through powerful story-telling that’ll hit home with your customers.

Chances are, you believe in content marketing. You’re ready to hop on the Content Marketing Express.

But is your team?

This is a recurring issue that we solve time and time again for new clients. You need to make your colleagues and executives believe in content marketing, and fast. Time is of the essence and everyone is sick of dead-ends. 

Where do you even start?

Quick Takeaways:

• Content marketing is more than publishing articles. 
• SEO tools prove that consistency and relevancy are crucial parts of the equation.
• Consider the mass amounts of content out there. You should know who you’re up against.

Involve Your Team in the Conversation

Sometimes, the best way to involve your team is to describe content marketing through relatable consumer behavior.

Being the number one rank in search results isn’t the primary goal anymore. The next time you’re on the prowl for a how-to or a home remedy for a cold, you might notice the components of search engines like Google. 

The top placements are usually bought out with enormous amounts of paid search budgets. Before the paid placements will come featured snippets, enabling you to find exactly what you need without another click or tap.

How nice of you, Google, to want visitors to stay on your site and your site only.

It’s not all about the featured snippet, though. The real celebration comes in the form of monthly, weekly, and daily tracking of a company’s upward climb. 

One goal of content marketing strategy is to research and surpass these tricky algorithms. And when we get it just right, we do a little jig to celebrate our clients’ success stories.

Show your team the tangible benefits that content marketing could provide, then get into the nitty-gritty once you’ve raised their attention.

Understand What Content Marketing Really Is

Content marketing, per our definition, delivers the content your audience is seeking in all the places they are searching for it.

Two measurable tricks to this approach are consistency and relevance, both of which prove ROI almost immediately.

You’ll need to consider a publishing cadence that works for your team’s bandwidth. Some companies have dedicated teams for content building, copyrighting and site optimizing; many do not. That’s where a content marketing program could come in handy. The benefits can be broken down:

1. Cost-effective content creation
2. Resources to cope with high-demand projects
3. A broad content spectrum
4. Ability to stay on top of content marketing trends

Don’t just hire anyone who claims they “do” content marketing without knowing the type of quality you might receive. In order to stay competitive, your content marketing plan cannot be superficial.

Winning the Content Competition Race

When it comes to content and visibility on online platforms, you have two kinds of competitors: direct and indirect.

You know your direct competitors. These are the guys who offer the same product or service and compete for the same market. Whether you’re currently in last place or on the top of the leaderboard in one or more channels, there’s likely room to drive more organic traffic.

One of the tools that we use for our clients is SEMrush, an all-in-one marketing tool for improving online visibility and uncovering marketing insights. We identify the top competitors of your company, their top content, focus keywords, and more. 

Knowledge around your competition is power and is the framework for keeping your company in the game.

Some tools might be worth investing in and exploring to give your team the background needed to make a well-informed strategic decision.

Also don’t overlook the impact of sneaky indirect competitors. These ones offer different products or services but are competing to satisfy the same customer need.

If you’re in the CRM market, other CRM tools are easily identifiable. If you’re in the cloud software industry, your direct competitors are those with similar platforms and services as yours. 

Your potential customers are searching for buzzwords to find the right solution. In organic search, you could be competing with companies that you’ve never thought twice about if you have similar keywords, audiences, or content in general. 

One relatable example for the average fellow is house painters. Those services compete directly with other house painting companies, but indirectly with home improvement companies like Home Depot or Lowe’s. 

Actively Choose Empathy

Our natural instinct as businesspeople is to put our best face forward, showing off what we do and what we sell. However, all branded content is an opportunity to show your audience that you truly care about THEM.

If you’re not doing so already, you should be focused on delivering content that your audience is actively seeking.

You know that your product or service is great. If you’re constantly bragging about it, your audience is going to file you with the rest of the money hungry marketers.

The simplest way to choose empathy is to remind yourself that your customers are people just like you. No one wants to be bombarded with ads or gimmicks. You don’t buy into cold selling, so why would your customers?

Get Ready for 2021

Now is the time to start planning your 2021 marketing strategy if you haven’t already. Make sure you start the New Year with a clear plan of your goals and how you’re going to achieve them.

While marketing trends come and go, the basics of success remain the same: understand the needs of your audience and communicate with them clearly and consistently. That’s why customer-focused content has always been the best way to establish solid relationships with your audience. It goes without saying that content marketing will continue to dominate the digital marketing landscape for some time to come. Most of these trends rely on content in some way. To have success in them you’ll need to have a solid base of quality content across all your marketing channels.

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content that’s consistently published, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.