You may have heard the mantra, “Content is King,” In the world of online marketing, this simply means that in terms of discovering your business, your most effective way of drawing attention to your site is through the various content offers you have for potential customers.
But writing targeted content is tough! It takes a savvy combination of creativity and analytics-informed writing, both of which are hard enough to create independently. It’s no wonder that many companies look for a little help by hiring a marketing agency to build content for them.
In this blog, we’ll review the various content offers you can create and the content marketing packages you can build to attract potential customers to your website.
There are two types of content offers you’ll need to put on your website: gated and un-gated content.
All your content can be either gated or un-gated, depending on whether you’re trying to attract new customers, engage new leads, or delight your current customers.
Gated: No
Lead Status: Any
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to build content for your website. Blogs can take the form of short one-off blurbs to long educational pillar pages. Blog content can contain anything from broad overviews to specific insights on a particular topic. They can be purely for entertainment or be used to break industry news. At this point in online marketing, having a blog is non-negotiable. It’s a simple way to increase content on your website, experiment with new ideas to drive traffic, and educate your customers on your products and services so your sales team doesn’t have to.
Related Article: Increase B2B Sales by Generating Leads with Content Targeting
Gated: Almost always
Lead Status: Engage
Publishing eBooks gives your business the chance to go in-depth and flex your professional muscles. Those seeking to download an eBook are usually further down the sales funnel and further through the buyer’s journey. Remember that eBooks can be repurposed versions of your longer blogs (aka pillar pages) or something entirely different. Often after reading an eBook, visitors to your website feel like they are even closer to making the purchase they need to solve their current problem or capitalize on their opportunity.
Gated: Sometimes
Lead Status: Engage
Website visitors who access your case studies likely didn’t do so through an organic search (something that would pop up on Google). Rather, as they jumped around on various pages, they came to the point where they wanted to see proof to back up the claims your products and/or services make. Case studies allow potential customers to see what sort of replicable results you can provide them and how or why you’re different from a competing solution.
Gated: Sometimes
Lead Status: Any
Livestreams and webinars are a type of video content offering a timely reveal. Being “live” means viewers can feel more invested and a part of the content offering, with the bonus that your stream can be turned into other content offers later, like blogs, website videos, and even webinars.
Gated: No
Lead Status: Any
Videos are the most engaging piece of content your business can produce as they require the least effort on behalf of the consumer. They can be used to showcase products/services, entertain, and educate website visitors.
Gated: Sometimes
Lead Status: Any
Interactive media can be a great way to invite and entice visitors to your website. While the time and effort your content production team will need to put into its development is intense, the payoff can be huge in terms of traffic and lead generation. What these offerings do is create an experience that is more likely to be shared than anything else you produce. These can be specialized calculators, games, augmentations, etc. The possibilities are endless.
Now that you know what sort of content offers are out there, you can begin determining what works best for your business. Not all content marketing packages are the same and you may decide on something different depending on your budget and at what stage you’re in for building content for your website.
For example, at Open Path Digital, we advise clients who haven’t developed any content for their website to develop an overall content strategy, which includes a roadmap for understanding what topics, medium, and strategy you need to be competitive.
Other clients, who have more content developed on their website, simply don’t need as many blogs. For them, we might recommend some new content development but mostly look over their existing content to see how it can be further optimized. At this stage, your company’s best efforts will be spent on 2-4 high-quality pieces of content (such as a highly optimized blog) per month.
As time goes by, you’ll want to run analytics on your previous content to see how you can improve them. This entails optimizing them for SEO and updating the content to reflect changes since it was published.
It's still a best practice to review your blog performance every 90 days and discover opportunities to improve their SEO optimization, and update keywords, links, and calls to action. Plus, as soon as you "republish" the blog, that's an opportunity for search engines to re-crawl the page and look for new content. Savvy SEO managers will often manually request search engines crawl a website after page updates, giving them the best chance possible to move up in the rankings.
But what if you’re launching a brand-new product or service? In that case, an ABM package is an excellent way to supplement your advertising efforts.
Content can help you improve your sales by giving you a suite of resources for your prospects or target accounts to browse as they are evaluating taking the next step in your sales pipeline. The digital age has trained people to want to do their own research - often before they seriously engage with a salesperson. Offers, blogs, videos, and all mediums of content on your website can help your prospective customers scratch their itch for more knowledge - without tying up vital time on the phone. Done well, your website's content can educate and qualify your leads instead of your sales team. It's a win-win. Your sales team closes a higher percentage of the leads they engage with, and your market has access to learn about your solutions and begin to build trust with you on their own terms.
How much will digital marketing packages impact your content strategy cost? The price will depend on a few factors:
For example, If you purchased a package of 100 blogs at a cheap price, but the blogs weren’t written well, nor were they search engine optimized (SEO), would that really be worth it?
Rather than focusing on price, then, the better question is two-fold: What is my budget and how high of a return on investment (ROI) can I expect?
As an ROI-driven marketing agency, we know the point of your marketing efforts—including your content strategy—is to boost your bottom line. Your inbound marketing strategy means nothing if the ROI isn’t substantial.
When we build content marketing packages for our clients, we have an ROI-driven growth approach in mind. We don’t seek to sell you the biggest package. We work with you to prepare a marketing package that will be the best one for your budget and will provide a substantial return on your investment as it fits into your overall marketing strategy.
So, let’s talk about which content marketing efforts are best for your website. Schedule a call with a Growth Strategist, and we’ll be happy to see what approach works best for your business.
Nancy Kirchoff: April 15, 2021
The idea of a ChatGPT website builder is undoubtedly intriguing. You know that having a well-designed website is crucial for the success of any B2B...
Open Path: April 15, 2021
We find ourselves in the midst of the digital age, where marketing plays a crucial role. In this era,...
David Hardwick: April 15, 2021
It may sound simple, but to create an effective marketing plan, businesses must first understand their potential customers and how to engage with...
Open Path: April 15, 2021
When acquiring or transforming a business for market leadership, your decisions require valuable input. Effective delegation is vital to your success...
Luke Donahue
