how content marketing helps business

By now, I'm sure you've heard all about content marketing and how it's a fantastic free marketing channel. But you may find yourself wondering how content marketing helps businesses make money and connect with customers. What is it, and how does it work to grow your business? Free marketing channels are great, but only if they truly help you make money.

How content marketing works

When you have a good content strategy in place and create content that answers your ideal customers' questions and provides value for them, you can become a resource for them.

You create content (website pages, blog posts, social media posts, videos, etc.) that answers the questions your Ideal Customer has or helps point them in the right direction for a solution to their problems.

Content Marketing Sales Example 

Let's pretend that you teach a calligraphy course, and your Ideal Customer wants to learn how to use calligraphy to create beautiful wedding invitations.

• You might create a blog post or a video highlighting wedding invitations done in calligraphy or wedding trends for 2022 that include calligraphy place cards and invitations.
• Your Ideal Customer watches the video or reads the blog post and is inspired and wants to be able to do this for their wedding but doesn't know how to start.
• You offer an opt-in or calligraphy starter's guide on your blog post to help them learn how to get started. Your content (blog post or video) brought in a lead when they requested that opt-in.
• Now, let's take it a step further and pretend you have a course on Wedding Invitation Calligraphy; at this point, all you need to do is let your new Ideal Customer know that's an option.
• They've watched your video or read your blog post; they like what they see, and you're becoming an expert in their eyes.
• They've requested your Calligraphy starter guide opt-in and have learned how to make a few letters or gotten a guide that tells them the best tools to use for Calligraphy, and at this point, they're ready. They want to learn more.
• They're excited, and because you've helped them this much, they're more likely to decide to take your course instead of someone else's course.

Your content brought your Ideal Customer into your world because it provided value for them, taught them something, and helped them. Your opt-in got them onto your email list so that you could nurture them and help turn them into a lead, and then ultimately, your course solved their issue of wanting to learn how to create beautiful Calligraphy wedding invitations.

Content Marketing works by serving, not pressuring your audience

When you focus on content marketing, you serve your audience rather than applying high-pressure sales tactics. Most people don't want to deal with high-pressure sales, nor do most want to sell that way.

Content Marketing allows you to grow your business by focusing on helping your Ideal Customer, guiding them, and giving them the chance to get to know you and your products or services over time.

They choose to come back because they know you, like you, and trust you. When it's time for you to offer them a product or service that solves their problem, they're more likely to buy from you because of the previous interaction. You don't have to push them for a sale but rather let them know that you can help solve their problem.

Do you want even better results from your content?

The absolute best way to use content marketing to grow your business is to pair your content with SEO or search engine optimization.

SEO is your opportunity to tell Google what your content is about and who it can help.

You want to use SEO as the outer layers of your content.

• SEO - Start with SEO keyword research to help determine what content you'll create. You want to look for keywords your Ideal Customer is searching for that your blog or website can rank for; I teach exactly how to do this in my SEO classes. You want to start with a keyword that you can rank for and create a great website page, video, or blog post using that keyword as the main topic.
• Content - Your content is written 100% for your Ideal Customer, not the search engine. As we discussed earlier, you want to provide value, answer questions, and be helpful.
• SEO - Then, you want to do your SEO work on your website page, blog post, or video. You want to use your keyword in your Title Tag, Meta Description, photo or video name, copy, header tags, and URL so that Google understands that your page, post, or video is about that keyword.

In time, your website will start to rank for the keyword, and as it moves higher in the search results and gets to Page 1, you'll begin to get traffic for your keyword. In time, you'll be able to reach more potential students who want to learn about Wedding Calligraphy or how to create beautiful Wedding Invitations, and that will help you enroll more students.

Pairing SEO and Content Marketing is the best way to grow your business for free. Get started with my free SEO Quick Start Guide today if you want to learn more about using SEO and Content together.