8 Types of Content Marketing Guaranteed to Help You Sell More and Make More Money
Every business, brand, personality, or organization has to sell something in order to sustain themselves. Be it products, services, or the brand itself, selling and sales are the most crucial component of long-term success in any category of business.
In content marketing, we prioritize creating the best quality content possible. This means to write and release content that resonates with one’s target audience, and which contributes value. Content can come in many forms, some more effective than others.
If you want to make the most from your brand’s potential and any existing marketing campaign you may be running, know you can make more money and sell more product with content marketing as a focus.
For the purposes of stretching your dollar as far as it can go and to maximize your return on investment, here are the 8 most effective types of content marketing guaranteed to help your business reach more customers and drive revenues.
Long-form blog posts
The best way to enable sales is to, ironically, not sell. Long-form blog posts that are useful, informational, or of a high value resonate with prospective customers. Blog posts shouldn’t be written simply to promote. They should tell a story, have some emotional resonance to it, and ultimately communicate something meaningful.
Do you know your buyer personas well – if so, write direct to your audience. Play on their pain points, their needs, and speak to them directly from one human being speaking to another. The best content marketers and those who work at the most profitable businesses generate money simply by being human.
High quality infographics
Infographics utilize your graphic design skills and come in the form of a how-to guide or typically a list. In a long and detailed image, an infographic shares information in point form mixed with creative shapes, colors, and designs. On platforms where images matter most – Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and other social media – infographics resonate.
When it comes to creating the best infographic you can, you want to stick with some pretty general rules. First off, you want to ensure you have enough information and points to create an infographics from. Other than that, you want to keep it visually simple and focused, ensure it’s easily viewed, of a common size and length, and of course, aesthetically pleasing.
Video marketing
What’s the most effective form of content marketing – video. More Internet users want video, engaging with this type of content more than any other. For top notch content marketing, an investment in video will help your brand reach prospects, increase conversions, and generate awareness that a written blog simply cannot.
A lot of the same rules around long-form blog posts apply in how to make video marketing. You don’t want your video campaign to be purely promotional. Make it mean something! Create videos that tell a story. You can do so by using a customer’s story, capitalizing on your brand’s background, or simply telling those watching how a product or service makes life easier for customers.
Customer testimonials
Customer testimonials and online reviews – written, on social media, or in video form – can make or break a business almost overnight. If one believes digital marketing is about creating a conversation ideally leading towards a sale or a conversion of some kind, at some point the conversation is out of your hands. You’ve got to deliver the goods in customer service and the quality of your product or service. Otherwise, customers aren’t going to be leaving you the testimonials and reviews you want.
Customer testimonials fit under user-generated content which is content your customers will generate for you. Encourage your customers to leave reviews. Some brands even offer a promotional discount in favor of a review or testimonial. If someone who is unfamiliar with your brand comes to your website and sees positive review after positive review, they will be more confident in purchasing from you. Leverage the process of giving your customers a voice into something sales-driven.
Email marketing
Though some see email as an older form of content, for eCommerce brands, email marketing delivers $1,000,000s in sales every year. There’s a lot of potential here for anyone. Anyone using a smartphone has their email accounts tied to it, likely with push notifications on. This means sending out any content across email will instantly pop up on their phones and, if presented correctly, could help you generate sales almost instantly.
Email marketing content is going to be a little different from the other types on this list. Email focuses a lot on titles and teases. Headings should be strong, to the point, time-sensitive, and creative. Links should lead back to your website to longer-form content. Email marketing also heavily relies on images and sometimes videos to emphasize a point. In a sense, you want to preview offers in an email and get customers returning to your site.
Social media content marketing
Social media content marketing plans involve writing very short blurbs and incorporating other forms of content in preview. On social media, unless their interest has already been qualified, people don’t have time to read a 1,500 word article. They want a sentence or two at most, communicating your offer or information. Every word counts.
Like email, the content you develop for social media can lead back to your website. Lead cultivation is where social media succeeds. At popular times of year where customers go gift shopping, you can use social media to really generate a lot of positive attention and bring individuals back to your website to complete a sale.
eBooks
eBooks are used as guides into how to use a product, tips and tricks on something, and/or can provide additional value typically given for no charge to prospective leads. eBooks used to be incredibly popular. Though they still generate a strong return, they aren’t used as often today because it can be somewhat labour-intensive to develop one. Even so, you don’t need 100,000 words written on a subject to turn it into an eBook. Almost anything can be an eBook!
An eBook should be a way to introduce a customer into how to use a specific service or product. Consider the prospect you’re writing for – their pain points, background, needs, and the likely interest in your product. An eBook doesn’t have to sell anything. It’s used to inform. The hope is thereby that unique, high value information will create an impression to such a degree that a reader becomes a customer.
Interactive content
This category of content marketing is still growing, with AR and VR making it closer than ever to develop integrative, immersive content that brings the customer to a new brand-centric world designed by you.
Other forms of interactive content can be polls or online games. There’s a lot of ways to invite a customer or lead to interact with your brand in unique, unexpected ways. As web design and marketing continues to advance, as will the capabilities of the Internet, there’s no telling how interactive content will impact more traditional content types like email or social media as well. Needless to say, there are definitely opportunities today for brands to explore interactive marketing which can be very advantageous at getting noticed in a crowded market.
If you want to sell more and make more money for your business, you’ve got to give your customers, leads, and prospects something of value. What we’re talking about is high quality content, whether that’s in the form of an infographic, a long-form blog, video marketing, or a social media post. Content marketing is a focal point for any digital campaign as without your content, it’s hard to attract new buyers. For high quality content in a multi-channel digital marketing campaign guaranteed to give you results, check in with Unlimited Exposure today.
