Content marketing showcases product benefits through online content such as blogs, articles and websites. This can help companies enhance customer engagement and control what customers associate with their brand, improving brand recognition, driving website traffic and creating customers.

Even products that are everyday, ordinary or seemingly boring can be marketed successfully through creative, interesting content. This article explores the food, travel and finance industries as examples.

The food industry

Whether you sell tomatoes or truffle oil, every food company can benefit from content marketing which focuses on selling the benefits of their products.

Case in point: sugar.

Sugar is an everyday purchase, something that we all have in our pantries and all know how to use, but sugar’s reputation has taken a battering in recent years and isn’t the most fashionable foodstuff in the world. So, how do you build a website for something that isn’t very good for you and that everyone already knows how to use?

Sugar company CSR’s content marketing strategy embodies the ‘sell benefits not features’ maxim. Check out CSR’s website and you’ll be bombarded with recipes and baking tutorials for scrumptious cakes, delicious biscuits and yummy jams – all the things that wouldn’t be possible without sugar.

CSR takes a single ingredient and turns it into thousands of possibilities. If cake recipes can sell sugar they can surely sell flour and milk too. In fact, all food producers can take a leaf out of CSR’s book: who else but an egg-farmer would you ask for a lesson on how to poach the perfect egg? And who better to school us in smashed avo than an avocado farmer?

The travel industry

All facets of the travel industry can sell benefits online, everyone from hoteliers to travel agencies to transport companies can grow their businesses through engaging content. While travel is certainly not a boring subject, it’s important to focus on the right aspects of travel in order to create interesting content.

Life may be all about the journey, but travel is all about the destination. Travel-based content should get customers excited about the possibilities of their holidays — all the exciting activities, excellent restaurants and brilliant attractions they will experience.

Mixing in helpful content about administrative aspects of travel (things like budgeting, visas and vaccinations works well too), as long as the content remains engaging and accessible.

The finance industry

Finance can be a very dry topic. Savings accounts, loan repayments and mortgages are not sexy subjects. Effective financial content focuses on the ends, not the means. Instead of getting bogged down in the details of APRs and loan repayments, good financial content shows customers what they stand to gain: a new home, a family holiday, a new car or whatever exciting thing they’re saving for.

Content should get customers thinking about possibilities. This could be done by talking about up-and-coming suburbs in the local area, new cars coming into the Australian market or awesome holiday destinations – anything to inflame customers’ imaginations.

By creating content which encourages people to consider the opportunities a loan or mortgage could bring them, you’re controlling how your business is perceived: when customers think of your financial institution they won’t think of bills and repayments, they’ll think of holidays, cars and family homes. If even one customer comes in to ask about a mortgage after seeing your content think how great your ROI would be.

And while a blog post may be about strengthening your brand or improving your search results, really it’s about selling dreams and benefits to a bigger pool of potential customers.

Because inbound links are so valuable, it didn’t take long for unscrupulous internet entrepreneurs to commodotise them. For a price, businesses would spam forums, social media and blog comments with as many links back to your site as you paid them to.

That is, until Google released its Penguin update in April 2012, which destroyed this backlinking business model and generally made search results a lot more useful for everyone.

In the post-Penguin world, links have to be earned, not bought. Like everything else in your content marketing, the links pointing to your site should offer value to the people clicking them. That means putting links in places where you’ll reach people who are actually interested in you, and presenting them in ways that aren’t annoying.

Why is link building important?

If you don’t promote your website and your marketing content, it’s not going to reach the kind of audience you want. Even if your content is optimised for SEO, having valuable links to your pages and blogs is one of the factors that improves SEO.

As well as helping you to rank higher on search engines, good quality links help you:

• improve traffic
• generate leads
• develop relationships
• strengthen your brand.

If you’ve earned a good reputation in your field, people are going to link to your pages all the time. For everyone else, ethical link building can help you get there. Just as long as you keep Google happy when you’re doing it.

How to avoid unethical links

Don’t pay an agency to create links to your content.

Don’t spam forums and comment sections or be overly promotional on social media.

Don’t always use the same type of links with the same wording.

Don’t create a huge number of links in a suspiciously short period of time.

How to build ethical links

Do request inbound links from good sources in your circle (other blogs, trade associations, non-profits, directories).

Do provide outbound links to reputable sites in return (don’t use the nofollow attribute).

Do write guest posts on other blogs to get your name (and links) out there. Make sure you include a link in all your social profiles.

Do vary the type of links you use (alternate keyword links, branded links and http links).

Do vary the wording and avoid keyword stuffing your links.

Do build links on a regular basis over an extended period of time.

If you can get an exclusive interview with a thought leader or other industry personality for your blog, this is a sure-fire way to draw traffic and build your reputation as well as those links.

You can find out which sites and platforms are linking to your competitors’ sites using tools such as Open Site Explorer by Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic SEO. This will show you the types of areas you should be focussing on in your own link building.

Social sharing: The new link building

If you produce interesting marketing content, people will want to share it. Every fresh pair of eyes on your blog post, infographic or video is another visit to your site and a potential lead. However, social shares alone don’t count as much as links when it comes to SEO.

The big exception is Google+ shares, which Google’s search engine follows. This means that every time someone shares your Google+ post, their profile will include links to your site – as long as you remembered to include links in the post.

Integrating Google+ into your social media strategy is a great way to build links ethically and to reach more people in your industry. Read more about how to promote your blog on social media.

In this three-part guide to business blogging for dummies, you’ll find out how to get your blog off the ground, how to write a great business blog and how to share your blog with the world to build a loyal following and convert leads.

To start you off, here are the key questions you need to ask yourself when making a business blog part of your content marketing strategy.

Why are you writing a business blog?

Like any other undertaking, the ultimate purpose of your blog will be to boost your business. Focussing on the specific aims you want your business blog to achieve will help you achieve success.

Your blog might be an introduction to your business, a content marketing tool, an information resource for your customers, a hub of thought leadership, or all of the above.

Think about what you want your readers to do, not what you want to do. Don’t focus on driving traffic to your website, increasing subscriptions or making sales, but on creating engaging content that will encourage your readers to share, to subscribe and (eventually) to make a purchase.

Who are you writing for?

Your blog is a conversation between you and your readers, so first you need to know who they are.

Carry out research into your target audience and develop a suitable tone of voice to make sure the content you create and the language you use are the right match for those demographics.

What will you write about?

Your blog should cover topics that your target audience is interested in and answers their questions, even before they have them.

You can find out what people are currently searching for using tools such as Google Keyword Planner or by analysing your own site’s search history.

By focussing on a small range of topics that you are an expert in, you can work on establishing yourself as an authority in your industry.

What blogging platform will you use?

The most important practical decision to make when getting started with a business blog is choosing where your blog will live.

If you don’t host your own website, the best free platform to use is WordPress. It’s easy to use, it offers everything a small business needs and it’s easy to customise to match your brand and the rest of your site.

In fact, almost a quarter of all websites make use of WordPress services in some form according to W3Techs.

What will your blog be called?

If you don’t give enough thought to your blog’s title at the onset, you’ll probably regret it later. Simply using your brand name is fine, as long as the title gives readers an idea what to expect.

If you are hosting the blog on your own website, the URL should be straightforward: yourname.com.au/blog or blog.yourname.com.

If your blog will be an independent entity, it’s important that you register your own domain name rather than using the free URL provided by your hosting platform. Not only does a default domain name look unprofessional, but you also won’t have as much control or access to support in the event that something goes wrong.

Who will write your blog?

You don’t have to write all your blog content yourself, unless you prefer it that way. Your business blog can have a single author or multiple writers, who can all write anonymously under your brand or use their own identities to keep your content varied and personal.

If you don’t have the resources to write your own blog in-house, you can hire a professional blogging service to keep your blog updated with fresh content on a regular basis. As you become more established, you can invite other bloggers in your industry to write guest posts in exchange for exposure.

What type of content will you create?

Blogs don’t have to be all about words. If you want to discuss a topic that would be more suitable as a slideshow, video or podcast, these can also be published to your blog.

How often will you publish?

Starting a business blog is one thing – keeping it going is another.

The more often you can update your business blog, the more you will be rewarded. However, as a small business you may not have the resources to update your blog every day, not to mention the risks of burnout and running out of fresh topics.

We recommend publishing a new blog post at least once a week.

Now that you’ve got your business blog up and running, next time we’ll look at how to write your first blog post.

Using tools such as Google Analytics and features offered by your Content Management System (CMS) and social media, you can get a clear picture of how content marketing helps SEO, generates leads and drives sales.

Why are these insights important?

Analysing the impact of all the marketing content you put out, from blogs to videos and podcasts, will reveal what type of content is working for you and what isn’t.

Don’t forget that content marketing is all about helping you achieve your business goals. Finding out which content is most successful enables you to focus your marketing strategy on what works, producing more valuable content and avoiding wasting time and money on less successful content.

If you’re not already using Google Analytics, that’s the best place to start to gain insights about how content marketing is working for you. But it shouldn’t be the only tool you use.

What are the most important metrics?

Analytical tools let you measure your content’s success from so many different angles, it can be overwhelming at first. Not all of these metrics are equally important however, and narrowing your focus to what is important will give you a clearer picture of how your content is performing where it matters.

These essential metrics can be broken down into four categories, answering the questions:

• who is consuming your content?
• who is sharing your content?
• how does content marketing generate leads?
• how does content marketing drive sales?

1. Consumption metrics

These are the simplest metrics to measure, because it usually comes down to a number – how many people clicked on your blog post, watched your video or downloaded your file.

If you are publishing content to your own site, your CMS will inform you how many people viewed each piece of content. Many popular CMS platforms like WordPress also provide a more detailed breakdown of your audience, such as their location and the search terms that brought them to your site.

If you are publishing content to other sites, these often provide tools that can give you similarly detailed information on who is consuming your content, like YouTube Analytics for videos and Slideshare and Scribd for documents.

2. Sharing metrics

Measuring the success of content marketing doesn’t end at counting page views. You also need to know if people are sharing your content, as this will help it to reach a much wider audience and bring more traffic to your site.

Google Analytics is still the best tool for monitoring how your content is performing in the wider world, but you can gain more specific insights into the behaviour of your users by signing up to the social media sites where they are most likely to share your content.

If you’re not sure where your content is being shared, you can track inbound links through your CMS to find out how people are arriving at your site. If you’re new to social media, see our guide to Australia’s most popular social media sites for ideas where to focus your attention.

All the major social media platforms have tools that allow you to see how many times your content has been Liked, Retweeted, Pinned or +1’d, and you can encourage users to share your content by adding these social buttons wherever it’s published.

Of course, when it comes to encouraging people to share your content, the most important thing is to make sure you’re producing quality content that people will actually want to share.

3. Lead generation metrics

Content marketing isn’t a popularity contest, and it doesn’t matter how often your content is being shared and consumed if it doesn’t produce leads for your business.

Your CMS should include lead generation metrics that let you see how many people took further action after consuming your content, such as completing a web form, signing up to your newsletter, downloading an eBook, leaving a comment, subscribing to updates and other trackable activities. Google Analytics can provide further insights into less obvious ways your users’ behaviour can lead to conversion.

Comparing the conversion rates of your content marketing to your overall conversion rate will make it clear which types of content are the most successful and which are not performing.

4. Sales metrics

Finally, metrics can also tell you how content marketing is driving sales and making you money. Your ecommerce platform should make it simple to track the origin of online sales, and your CMS could also reveal what content users consumed before completing offline sales.

An effective way to trace sales back to individual content pieces is to include a unique Call to Action (CTA) and URL for each piece you publish. If you want to know whether more of your sales come from new or existing customers, you can offer your existing customer base exclusive or first access to content and monitor how it performs compared to public content.

Is content marketing helping you achieve your business goals?

Success is relative, and even if you are seeing leads and sales as a result of content marketing, you can evaluate whether this strategy is achieving the level of success you need by measuring its ROI.

This will tell you whether the investment you’re making to produce regular content is delivering as you hoped, or if your content marketing strategy needs an overhaul to help you reach a wider audience and convert more customers.

Read our crash course in content marketing to find out how to write winning content that will benefit your bottom line.

What is inbound marketing?

To understand inbound marketing it’s important to understand what it’s not.

Its opposite is outbound marketing which is made up of a lot of traditional techniques. These are methods where the marketer reaches out to the consumer and can often be interruptive — these includes adverts, cold calls and letterbox drops. Depending on your market these can still be effective, but people are becoming more savvy and better at tuning out or ignoring these influences.

Inbound marketing is about getting people to come to you. It’s about making a useful video rather than creating an ad, about keeping an up-to-date blog full of informative or inspirational posts, creating ebooks, educating through tutorials, optimising for SEO or hosting webinars. Whatever medium you choose, it’s about providing something of worth for people who discover it.

With outbound marketing you push out to potential customers, with inbound you draw them in.

Why use inbound marketing?

No matter what kind of product or service someone uses, there’s a very high chance that they’re going to research it online.

Whether they’re looking at pictures of products to buy, for information on how to solve a problem or details on how certain products compare, you want to be there to help them out. By providing answers to people’s problems, you can get your name out there, build your brand and increase buyer confidence in your business.

How do you get started?

One of the easiest and most cost effective ways to begin with inbound marketing is to consider content marketing, specifically starting a company blog.

No matter what industry you’re in you’ll be able to publish something of worth to clients and potential customers: articles that tell them how to achieve something, stats that show them how valuable a product or service is, reviews or comparisons of popular items, explanations of new or complex matters and answers to common questions can all be highly valuable.

How do you get your content found?

There are three main ways people will discover your content: through search engines, through social media or through your own site. Knowing about the type of content to produce for different Google searches can help put you a step ahead, being active on sites like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube can help build a relationship between you and potential customers and having your own newsletter can develop it further.

Which one is most effective varies from industry to industry and website to website, but it’s good to try to cover all bases if you can.

Like with many aspects of marketing, inbound marketing is something that’s most effective if it’s sustained over a long period of time. While a blog post can keep attracting traffic for as long as it’s on your site, by continuing to post useful content you widen your funnel for attracting new visitors and new customers.

Many business owners are still wary of the internet and prefer to stick to traditional – or outbound – marketing techniques. Combining the two methods, however, can have even better results for a business.

What is outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is the traditional way of doing things, and can generally be seen as an interruptive practise. It reaches out to potential customers (whether that’s through mailbox drops, cold calls or advertising) and hopes that they become customers.

These methods generally interrupt what someone is doing (whether that’s a phone call while they’re busy or an ad during a TV show they’re watching) and it’s becoming easier for people to avoid. Caller ID lets people screen calls, TV viewers can record shows and skip the ads (or sign up for something like Netflix to avoid them completely) and ad blockers let people browse online without seeing any advertisements.

While outbound marketing may be becoming less effective, it can still be a great way to get your name out there and to let people know about a new product or an upcoming sale.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing – sometimes referred to as inbound marketing – works by having potential customers come to you (generally through search engines, social media sites or because they’ve heard about you elsewhere) rather than you going out to them.

You do this by creating content for your site that people want to read, watch or interact with. While entertaining content can be a huge draw, generally the most successful campaigns provide helpful information for customers (and potential customers).

You can do this by creating tutorials, writing reviews, maintaining a blog, making videos or anything you can think of as a way to give information to visitors. As well as helping keep people on your site, great content can also help you rank better in search engines.

Why is content marketing important?

Firstly, with so many ads prominently displaying a website address, it makes sense to engage in content marketing. Otherwise, what are people going to find once they get to your site? They may be able to book an appointment or buy a product, but often people want more.

Almost everyone researches a product or service online these days, so the more information you can provide them, and the more reasons you can give them to come back to your site or to share a link with someone they know, the more likely you are to increase your sales.

Every business in every industry can benefit from content marketing.

Take a cinema for example. As a rule, people will go to a cinema’s website when they want to buy tickets or to check what films are showing at the moment. By adding a blog – with movie reviews, interviews with directors, opinion pieces etc – you’ll give people a reason to go to the site more often. Once they’re there they might see a film that catches their eye, learn about something they might not have thought about going to see or share an article with a friend.

A hardware store might want to go a different route. Instead of entertaining pieces about the industry, it would be more likely to focus on handyman tips – how tos, tutorials and guides. Written well, these will have people coming back to you every time they have a job on and when they don’t realise they have the right tools, it’s likely you’ll stick in their mind for that too.

Not only does inbound marketing let you help someone (and shape their opinion of you positively), it also helps you position yourself as an expert in the field.

How do you get started?

Before every content marketing campaign comes the content strategy. Just creating content can be effective, but it can often miss the mark without you knowing why.

To make your campaign more successful, you need to do a bit of research. Do this by working out who your target market is and what problems they might be having.

There are plenty of ways to do this. Think about the questions you get asked most often (if you have a customer service team, they’re often a gold mine of information), ask customers what problems they have or have a look online to see what people are asking about.

Your content should cover every step of the buyer’s journey – from making someone aware of a product or service and comparing their options to solving their problems and making sure everything goes smoothly in the future.

As you start creating content you’ll be able to see what’s most popular with your audience. Use this to work out what you need to write more about – and use social media discussions, blog comments and your analytics data to round out the picture – and you’ll soon notice an increase in traffic and, hopefully, sales.

Image: “Math teacher” by Blondinrikard Fröberg is licensed under CC BY 2.0