The importance of content marketing for your business cannot be overemphasized. It is a technique that can make your website more visible to search engines and position you as an authority in your field.
Content marketing also helps build trust with customers. Also, it allows you to catch people at different points of their customer journey.
It’s not as easy as just throwing any old content together and waiting for it to get seen, though. You need to choose the proper format, pick the best topics, and ensure your content is appropriately optimized.
Do you need help to get started so you can reap the rewards? I will take you through the different types of content you should be publishing on your website.
Interactive Content
Interactive content is becoming increasingly popular. Mainly because a lot of people are currently stuck at home and scrolling aimlessly on their phones.
Creating interactive content can help your business stand out for many reasons. One, because it is still quite unusual so it will attract attention. Plus, it will help you to build a stronger relationship with prospective customers.
There are many different types of interactive content you can create. Also, the right one will depend on the type of business you run. You could create interactive quizzes, surveys or polls, calculators, assessments. And basically, any interactive tool that will cause your customers to engage with your website.
Let’s take a look at a company that is already using interactive content effectively so that you can get some ideas for your own.
Brooklyn Bicycle Co is a company that sells different kinds of bicycles and accessories. To help prospective customers choose the perfect bike. However, they have created an interactive bike finder quiz that asks you all relevant questions. Things like, type of bike frame you’re looking for to the kind of terrain you’ll often travel through, as well as your height.
After answering these questions, they further show prospective customers the bike that seems the most suitable. For people who might not know what type of bike they want, this can be a handy tool to help them make the best decision. Also, this can provide them with an excellent shopping experience and help them discover the product that’s just right for them.
To replicate this for your brand, you can create an interactive tool or quiz that asks visitors different questions to reveal a product recommendation that will work the best for them. Not only will this be engaging, but it’s also sure to be incredibly helpful.
Free Tools That Solve a Problem for Your Customers
Free resources can be practical marketing tools for certain types of businesses. They allow you to show what you can do, also help build loyalty among your target customers. Further, we must mention that free sources are very shareable, which means they’re great for earning links back to your website.
To decide what kinds of free tools you should be creating for your business, it’s best to note three things. Your resources need to be helpful, engaging, and relevant to what you do.
Here are some examples of brands effectively using free tools and resources as part of their content marketing strategies. They should give you plenty of inspiration when it comes to creating yours.
One company that uses this tactic well is FreshBooks, an account software provider that aims to help freelancers and small business owners.
On their website, they have given customers the ability to access free invoice templates. People in various industries can use these templates to charge clients. Also, users can gain access to them without having to make any financial commitment to FreshBooks.
The company has also dedicated the remainder of the web page to explain one crucial fact. How people can use their invoice generator to download the free invoices. Because they operate in the accounting industry, this free tool is very relevant for them. Also, it will be of great help to their audience. Who might often struggle when it comes to creating their first few invoices for the work they’ve done.
And our following example is from Loganix, which has a domain authority checker tool. They are a digital marketing agency that offers content marketing, link-building, and other SEO-related services. So, it makes a lot of sense that they’ve created this tool to help people determine the strength of a website’s domain. Also, its ability to rank well on the search engine results from pages.
Furthermore, this tool allows you to input the URLs of up to 10 websites at once to get their different domain authorities. However, after adding the links, you have to type your email address into the dashboard. The team will contact you with the results.
People looking to promote their products and services online might be working on increasing their domain authority. They could be looking to build backlinks on authoritative sites to boost their SEO. Also, they might want to compare their domain metrics against those of their competitors. This tool is ideal for all of that and is sure to provide a lot of value to Loganix’s target market. Namely, business owners and marketers.
When creating and publishing free resources and tools on your website, always make sure you put together something incredibly relevant to what you do and sell. However, this will send the most qualified traffic to your site. Also, it will earn the trust of the right people and make more sales in the long run.
Ultimate guides
An ultimate guide is a piece of content created to answer all of the questions someone might have about a particular topic.
The right topic for an ultimate guide will entirely depend on what type of business you have. You’ll often be able to find worthwhile subjects through keyword research. Also, this allows you to see what your target audience is typing into search engines when looking for more information about your industry. Plus, the products or services that you provide. You can use many different keyword research tools to find the most relevant words and phrases you could target with an ultimate guide.
Now, let’s look at some companies with great examples of ultimate guides that they have created for their websites.
Ping Identity is an intelligent platform that provides companies with security solutions like multi-factor authentication, API security, and identity risk scoring.
On their blog, they have a guide to security assertion mark-up language (SAML), which is a topic that’s very relevant to their target audience and prospective customers. In this article, they answer all of the questions someone might have about the subject. Further, cover all of the benefits, and give examples of just some of the ways people use SAML. However, this is an ultimate guide on the topic, and it provides a great deal of value for the reader.
As a company in the information technology space, they understand that not everyone will be well-versed in this topic. So, they’ve gone to great lengths to create an incredibly comprehensive guide that explains all there is to know about SAML.
Suppose you want to take lessons from this example. Also, consider whether there’s something you’re an expert in that your target audience will like to learn more about. The create guide that anticipates and answers all of the questions you might get about the subject.
Also, MyPerfectWords is a professional essay writing service, and they have an ultimate guide to writing an essay as a student. It takes readers through the entire essay writing process. How to pick a topic and how to write a hook, thesis statement, and conclusion. They’ve also included examples of actual essays written by them.
If MyPerfectWords perform this service professionally, readers can be sure that this guide can truly help them write better essays. It can also work in favor of the company. Because people who don’t want to write their papers will be motivated to hire them after seeing that they have so much expertise in this area. When creating ultimate guides for your website, try to write them in a clear and structured manner. Further showing experience and authority in your niche.
Buyers’ Guides and Comparison Pieces
Buyers’ guides and comparison pieces are supposed to help prospective customers make a decision. They provide information about a product or service, its features, and specifications. Sometimes, they outline who your competitors are. Such loyal customers can see why they love shopping with you.
They help customers make the best decision when making a purchase. With fewer complaints, fewer returns, and less work for your customer service team.
To make sure that you produce a practical buying guide or comparison piece. Focus on being informative rather than overly promotional. Also, make sure the tone of your guide is neutral and unbiased. Your main aim is to help the buyer choose so, even if you prefer one product over the other. There’s no need to make it known to the buyer. Further, focus on giving truthful and unbiased information.
Here are some examples of companies that use buyer’s guides and comparison pieces well. You can take a leaf or two out of their book and start creating this kind of content for your website.
Our first example comes from Best Nursing Programs, and it’s their post on the best direct entry MSN programs for students. This piece of content outlines all of the different options. What the entry requirements are, and which schools provide these courses.
They mention more than 35 schools and rank them based on their tuition fee, admission, and graduation rate. And lastly, but not less important, is the school’s accreditation. Also, this is very useful for their audience of prospective students. It gives them a wide range of options to select from and will help them make the best decision on which school to go to.
However, to replicate this for your business, you can create an extensive list of options that will be valuable for your audience based on what type of business you own. It could be a post comparing different products or services, and you could even include your product in the mix.
On the other hand, Overstock is an e-commerce website that sells different furniture and house furnishings. They have a buyer’s guide for people who want to buy a new area rug for their home. This guide covers everything from the materials used to make the rugs to the available rug styles and patterns.
For anyone looking to buy a rug, this post offers a lot of information and even includes attractive images. So, customers can see how these rugs would look in their homes. Further, this is something you can replicate for your business by including high-quality images of products in your buyers’ guides. And that way help people make the best choice. Primarily if you work with physical products.
And then, we have an example from SocialPilot, a social media management and marketing tool that helps companies boost their presence on social media and track the results.
Their blog has a comparison piece that talks about the eight best LinkedIn marketing tools for 2021. However, this gives their customers the ability to look through these different tools’ features. Also, pros and cons and determine which one would be the best for their business. It’s a fantastic way of giving their customers all the options, so they don’t feel like missing out on a better product.
You can apply the same technique to your brand by doing the research. Further, you can discover other products or tools that can solve your customers’ pain points. Also, review the advantages and disadvantages of each. And present them to your audience so they know they’re making an informed choice.
Case Studies That Show What You’re Capable of
To boost your sales, you need to earn your prospective customers’ trust. And the best way to do this is by showing them what you’ve already done. Case studies are ideal for this.
By creating case studies, you can show the results you’ve achieved and share the thoughts of your previous customers. To do this successfully, make sure you detail how your company helped past clients achieve specific results.
You can start by outlining the problem that caused the client to seek out your company. Also, document the processes that went into helping this client. Round up the case study with the results that show big of a difference you made for them.
Here’s an example that will give you a clearer idea of how your company can use case studies to show off your expertise.
Drift is a company that provides AI solutions for businesses to have personalized conversations with their customers. And they do this with tools like a live chat software.
Their website has a case study that shows how they helped one of their clients, Gong, revolutionize their buying experience and improve their pipeline. They explain the entire process using three sections: the challenge, the solution, and the results. They outline how they helped put $9m worth of sales in their customers’ pipeline. And increase their meeting bookings by 44% over the last quarter.
The challenge could be anything from low sales to not being able to perform a specific task properly. Make sure you document the challenge, solutions proffered by your company, and the final results. You can learn from them by creating a case study highlighting your company’s journey with a previous client who needed to improve their business or life.
How-to Guides That Show Off Your Expertise
How-to guides are informative pieces of content that explain how you can perform a particular task. They can also help you target relevant keywords and address your customers’ pain points.
How-to guides are great for building trust with your target audience, and they will position you as an authority in your field. You could even create video tutorials alongside your written how-to guides to get even more eyes on your content.
Let’s look at an example of a fantastic how-to guide from Zety, an online resume builder.
Zety has a post on their blog that teaches job seekers how to write a professional resume for a job. They use a step-by-step guide to show their audience how to create an outline. Also, they offer the type of information to include, what not to add, and other various tips. They also have images of well-written resumes that show readers what their resumes are supposed to look like.
As they own a resume-making tool, this content is highly relevant for their website. Also, it can help your audience convert new prospects who will be encouraged to use their tool after reading through this guide.
You can learn from this and apply it to your business by creating a how-to guide for a task that can be done with your product. This way, you’ll educate your audience and stand to benefit should they use your product to perform that particular task you explained in your guide.
Infographics
An infographic is a visual representation of data or information, and it tends to be easier to understand than a block of text.
Many people like to use infographics because of their many benefits. They are eye-catching, very shareable, and easy to repurpose. To create compelling infographics, you should take note of the following tips:
- Do not make it overly-complicated
- Make sure you use attractive colors
- Use legible fonts
- If you include data or statistics, make sure they are accurate and you’ve cited your sources.
Here’s an example of a compelling infographic created by Zendesk. Let’s take a look and see what you can learn from it.
Zendesk is a company that provides cloud-based customer service software for its clients. Also, they created an infographic on the website to present data on how small- and medium-sized businesses were coping in 2020.
They surveyed to analyze trends in SMB sales and presented several statistics from the results of the survey. They made use of simple and catchy colors with legible fonts to make it easy to read. Also, they used whitespace to make sure the elements were balanced out and not cluttered. It’s the kind of infographic that their audience would appreciate. Because it offers a lot of helpful information at a glance and uses visually pleasing elements to keep them engaged.
Suppose you want to create an infographic that will catch the attention of prospective and current customers. Try to note all these practices, like making great use of whitespace and working with attractive and catchy elements. Also, making sure that the information you present is helpful to your audience.
Summary
It is not enough to create any old content for your website. You have to be sure that your content will attract and retain prospective customers.
That is why we have outlined the type of content that can help you achieve the best results. Interactive content, free tools, ultimate guides, buyers’ guides, and detailed case studies. These are examples of what you should be publishing on your site if you want to get the most out of your content marketing efforts.
Author Bio
Aaron Haynes is CEO and co-founder of Loganix. The company is an SEO fulfillment partner for digital marketing agencies and professionals, which provides the services businesses need to improve their online visibility and grow. If you liked this article, check out the Loganix blog, where you’ll find more SEO guides full of expert advice.
