To uncover the most effective content marketing strategies for driving traffic and increasing conversions, we sought the expertise of ten industry professionals. From high-value content that builds trust to mastering keyword research and promotion, these content managers, marketing specialists, and founders share their top insights on how businesses can leverage content marketing for success.
DEEPER DIVE: What businesses can do to counter the de-influencing trend
- Publish High-Value Content to Build Trust
- Leverage Analytics for Improvement
- Utilize Existing Resources Strategically
- Measure Content Performance Insightfully
- Optimize Images for Better SEO
- Engage the Audience with Podcasts
- Create Customer-Centric Content
- Tell Powerful Stories
- Harness Case Studies’ Potential
- Master Keyword Research and Promotion
Publish High-Value Content to Build Trust
As a growth strategy, effective content marketing allows brands to establish trust and authority in ways that traditional advertising cannot.
By publishing free, high-value content, brands earn public confidence, overcoming the limitations of intrusive display advertising. A skilled content writer helps drive traffic by addressing industry-specific questions and concerns your future customers can’t find elsewhere.
Ultimately, content marketing attracts and nurtures new audiences, transforming them into new customers.
Jeremy Edwards, Full-stack Writer, Freelance
Leverage Analytics for Improvement
Content analytics tell a powerful story about how your audience engages with your website.
Tools like Google Analytics reveal insights about top-performing content to answer key questions about why people visit your page and where they come from. Create tracked links with UTM codes for each piece of content to understand what campaigns work and how to optimize your channels.
Think about what you want to measure and keep values consistent as you test different copy, images, sources, and more. High organic traffic on a landing page may indicate successful SEO strategies, or you can focus on an inactive social media platform still bringing users to your site.
By looking at the customer journey shown in the data, you can improve strategies to focus on your audience, increasing traffic and conversions.
Liann Zimmer, Marketing Content Specialist, Universal Avionics
Utilize Existing Resources Strategically
Businesses can drive traffic and increase conversions through content marketing by leveraging their existing sales team, chatbots, and inboxes to create a content strategy. Instead of competing in the SEO game, which can take over a year to see results, businesses should utilize the abundance of content and data they already possess.
Start by asking your sales team, call center, and anyone directly contacting prospects and customers about the questions they frequently answer. What do they wish prospects already knew? A great starting point is to search their inboxes for emails they repeatedly send.
Next, turn the questions you gathered into content topics. Organize them by volume and subject, and look for patterns in context to outline your strategy.
Use this information to guide the creation of content that answers those questions before prospects even speak to a sales rep.
Jaclyn Freedman, Demand Generation, SmartRent
Measure Content Performance Insightfully
One of the most difficult challenges of my career as a content creator thus far has been to measure the true value of the impressions my content drives, which I call “impressions purgatory,” before a prospective customer becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead.
Without a robust marketing automation tool at this moment, to combat this challenge, I recently obtained current customer testimonials that we posted on social and used the same strategy that I use in influencer marketing campaigns to measure click-through rates. I utilized bit.ly links to gain more insight into the true value of this content.
So far, this has offered much more insight than just posting the raw video to social hoping the video view count will tell us that it was successful. We live in an era where content needs to be A/B tested, measurable, and adaptable so that companies stop spending unnecessary revenue developing content that is not driving sales or contributing to overarching company goals.
Lauren Stinson, Director of Marketing, RADIX
Optimize Images for Better SEO
While having great content is essential, optimizing your site for search is critical. And a big part of that is ensuring your images work for you—not against you.
Google is all about quality and relevance; your images play a significant role. But simply compressing your pictures won’t cut it. You need to optimize them for delivery so your site loads faster and your visitors stay longer.
Image compression plugins are great but can slow down your site if you’re not careful. That’s where an image CDN comes in. With an image CDN, you upload the highest-quality versions of your pictures. The CDN takes care of the rest, delivering the highest-performing versions of your images to each visitor based on their device and connectivity.
So, to boost your SEO and keep your visitors happy, optimize your website with an image CDN. Your page speed scores (and your bottom line) will thank you.
Brittany Lorincz, VP of Marketing, ImageEngine.io
Engage the Audience with Podcasts
If you’re looking to strengthen your brand identity, increase your online presence, and drive more traffic to your website, incorporating podcasts into your content marketing strategy is a great way to do it!
With podcasts, businesses can engage their target audience by providing valuable content that addresses their pain points. Moreover, including calls to action can guide listeners toward specific goals, such as visiting your company’s website or signing up for a free trial.
One of the most significant benefits of podcasts is how they can help businesses establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry. By providing informative and engaging content, businesses can build trust with their audience and become a go-to source of knowledge in their niche.
In addition to the benefits of engaging with your audience, podcasts can also help maximize engagement on social media, ultimately leading to better Google search results that will drive traffic to your website.
Shawn Nova, Partner, Index Studios
Create Customer-Centric Content
Listen to your customers—and I mean actually listen to them. By leveraging social listening, survey responses, retail or in-person feedback—you can gather a treasure trove of what really matters to your customers and build a content strategy that your customers will actually want to read and seek out.
When you help first and sell second—your customers will reward you with traffic visits and conversions—when THEY are ready! If you are creating content based on what you think your customers are searching for or needing, you are missing the point.
Ken Schneider, AVP, Channel Marketing, Desert Financial Credit Union
Tell Powerful Stories
When businesses invest in powerful storytelling that appeals to their constituents and distributes content effectively, they will ultimately increase traffic to their website, and in time, increase conversions.
Even if the organization’s ultimate goal is conversions—because let’s face it, that usually is—that shouldn’t be the primary focus when developing content. You want to create a value add for your audience and know that the content you’re developing supports your customers at various touchpoints in their journey.
An effective content marketing strategy will bring brands more traffic and engagement, and when the conversions happen, that’s just the icing on the cake.
Bridget Pfeiff, Content Manager, Phoenix Children’s Foundation
Harness Case Studies’ Potential
Case studies are incredibly powerful pieces of content that businesses can use in many ways to drive traffic and increase conversions. Many of our tech clients squeeze a lot of value from case studies, using them in targeted email marketing campaigns to reengage stale leads or in retargeting ad campaigns to help nurture existing prospects and push them closer to a purchase decision.
These types of hard-hitting narratives can be repurposed in organic and paid social posts, blog articles, white papers, video marketing, and more. Hard-hitting case studies that showcase data around customer results with compelling quotes from key company stakeholders are the type of evergreen marketing content that will continue to deliver value for years to come.
Katrina Oko-Odoi, Founder and Chief Content Strategist, ContentWorm
Master Keyword Research and Promotion
It is no surprise that content marketing is a powerful tool for driving traffic, but an important piece to specifically leverage is strategic keyword research so that you are aware of how you can be your target audience’s trusted resource.
The first step to garner organic traffic from searches would be to identify the relevant long-tail keywords related to your industry and have a lower amount of competition, but still resonate with your prospective audience.
Then, you will need to ensure you are creating high-quality, unique content your audience will find valuable rather than outwardly soliciting. Some tips for optimizing your content strategically include incorporating the keywords in headlines, subheadings, meta descriptions, and providing backlinks to your other articles.
Finally, do not forget about the power of promoting on social media platforms, email newsletters, and other marketing efforts as it will drive traffic and improve your search engine ranking overall.
Sarah Schild, Content Manager, Small Giants
