Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience in order to drive profitable customer action. For a business, content marketing serves the dual purpose of acquiring new customers by increasing awareness and visibility, as well as nurturing relationships with existing customers by delivering information and entertainment that builds loyalty.
When it comes to driving traffic, leads, and sales for your website, having a rock-solid content marketing strategy is absolutely essential. The content you create and promote serves as "bait" to capture your target audience's attention and encourage engagement. The better and more useful your content, the more it will appeal to your ideal customers and prompt them to take action, whether that's subscribing to your email list, requesting a demo, or making a purchase.
There are many types of content formats and topics that can be leveraged for website promotion. Let's take a deep dive into some of the most effective options.
Educational Blog Posts
Informational blog content should form the foundation of your content marketing efforts. Regularly publishing new blog posts on your website provides fresh, search engine-optimized content that humanizes your brand and establishes you as an authoritative industry voice.
Aim to publish at least 2-3 meaty blog posts per week. Topics should focus on providing solutions to common customer pain points, challenges, and questions. For example, a CRM software company could publish posts on improving customer retention rates, boosting sales team productivity, or scaling customer service channels.
Blog headlines should use targeted keywords that your audience is actively searching for so your content has the best chance of ranking high in search engines. Include stats, expert perspectives, actionable tips, and multimedia elements like images, infographics, and videos to increase substantive value and visual appeal. Promote blog posts through email newsletters, social media, and internal site links.
Comprehensive Guides and eBooks
Lengthier content formats like ebooks, guides, handbooks, and whitepapers allow you to really take a deep dive into an industry, product area, or topic while showcasing your company's thought leadership. These lead magnet-style assets are typically offered in exchange for a visitor's contact information, enabling you to grow your email subscriber list.
For example, a CRM software company could create a comprehensive 50+ page guide called "The Complete Handbook to Successful CRM Implementation" to attract their target audience of business owners, managers, and tech leaders. Or a financial services provider might publish an in-depth ebook titled "The Retirement Planning Playbook: 10 Expert Strategies for Older Investors."
Promotional giveaway content should walk the fine line of providing enormous value through truly useful information while also subtly highlighting your brand's specialized expertise and resources. Gate these gated assets behind opt-in forms to generate quality leads. Include demos or limited trials to provide a taste of your offerings.
Convincing Case Studies and Testimonials
Client success stories are incredibly effective social proof tools that help convert skeptical prospects. Detailing how real customers overcame specific challenges and achieved tangible results using your products or services gives site visitors confidence that your company can deliver results.
Create in-depth case studies to showcase exactly how you solved critical issues for customers similar to your ideal target audience. For example, a marketing agency could detail how their proprietary framework helped a client achieve a 500% increase in leads in just 6 months.
Gather convincing testimonials quoting clients on their extremely positive experiences and impressive results working with your company. For example, "Company XYZ helped us cut our production costs by 35% in less than a year!" Use vivid language and actual metrics to convey authentic impact.
You can either link to dedicated case study and testimonial pages from your website's menu, or publish this highly persuasive content in blog post form intermixed with other topics. Just make sure they are very easily discoverable for site visitors interested in evidence of your capabilities.
Visually Engaging Infographics
Infographics condense complex information into an easily digestible visual format. Combining data points, statistics, charts, and graphics allows you to present research reports, topical data, or product capabilities in a way that is interesting and easy for viewers to quickly grasp key information.
For example, a real estate agency could create infographics on topics like "The Cost of Home Ownership in 15 Major U.S. Cities" or "10 Simple Feng Shui Tips for Selling Your Home Faster." A fashion retailer might design infographics showcasing current clothing and accessory trends endorsed by influencers and celebrities.
Infographics are extremely versatile content assets that can be reused across your website, social media channels, email newsletters, and even print marketing materials. The graphic-forward visual nature of infographics makes them highly sharable, which can expand your reach. Always include links back to related in-depth content on your site so infographic viewers are driven deeper into your sales funnel.
Engaging Explainer Videos
Both live-action and animated videos bring your brand to life in a vivid, dynamic format that resonates with modern audiences. Viewers retain more information from watching a short, catchy video compared to reading blocks of text. Videos also boost engagement across social media, where they generate more likes, shares, and comments.
Explainer and how-to videos that teach viewers about your offering are excellent educational content assets. For example, a software company could create a series of short video tutorials on how to use key features of their application. A startup could produce videos explaining the problem their new product solves.
You can also leverage video for company updates, product announcements, interviews with team members, event recaps, customer testimonials, and more. Keep videos short and focused - most should be 1-3 minutes max. Avoid long talking head videos - make sure to incorporate text overlays, graphics, b-roll footage, and other engaging visual elements.
Promote your videos across website landing pages, blog posts, email newsletters, and social media. Track video metrics to see which perform best. Consider investing in video SEO optimization and distribution through a platform like Wistia to expand viewership.
Interactive Webinars and Webcasts
Webinars and webcasts let you deliver valuable information to prospects in an interactive, real-time format while showcasing your authority on a topic. This content format works extremely well for demonstrating products, walking through case studies, providing training or tutorials, and establishing thought leadership.
Promote upcoming webinars across your website, email newsletters, and social channels. Craft an enticing overview of the topic, key takeaways, and presenters/speakers. Offer special resources or discounts for registrants to generate more signups. Record webcasts to repurpose into smaller video clips, blog summaries, and other derivative content.
For example, a marketing agency could host a monthly educational webinar series on topics highly relevant to their target audience of small business owners, like "The 5 Biggest Financial Mistakes SMBs Make & How to Fix Them" or "How to Create Viral-Worthy Social Media Content on a Shoestring Budget."
Valuable Newsletter Content
Email subscribers signify an audience that is actively engaged with your brand. Send super helpful, relevant content through regular email newsletters and campaigns to continue nurturing these relationships. Offer subscribers-only perks, discounts, and giveaways to incentivize newsletter sign-ups.
Newsletter content possibilities include summaries of recent blog articles with links driving traffic back to your site, special announcements, new case study or product highlight teasers, upcoming event notices, new feature or product reveals, time-sensitive promotional sales, and contests or giveaways.
Avoid overly sales-y pitches in favor of useful insider tips, actionable advice, or entertaining stories. Send a monthly or weekly email newsletter so subscribers regularly receive value without feeling spammed. Personalize and segment newsletters when possible to serve the most relevant content to each subscriber.
Focused Landing Pages
Landing pages are where your website traffic arrives after clicking links, ads, or search results. They have a singular conversion focus, strategically guiding visitors to take one specific action like downloading an offer, signing up for a free trial, or making a purchase.
Keep copy succinct with utmost emphasis on your offer's benefits, value, and urgency. Include trust-building elements like customer logos, testimonials, security badges, guarantees, and a prominent call-to-action. Remove main site navigation links to minimize distractions from your conversion goal.
For example, an ebook on digital marketing tips would send visitors to a landing page exclusively focused on selling the value of the ebook, with details on the content, a lead gen registration form, supporting testimonials, and relevant images or graphics to encourage opt-ins.
A webinar registration would go to a dedicated landing page with webinar overview info, speaker bios, customer endorsements, and a prominent signup CTA. Contained landing pages aligned to specific offers outperform sending traffic to generic website pages every time.
There are many possibilities for creating relevant, engaging content across formats and topics that attracts your ideal audience and effectively promotes your website. Focus on consistently providing enormous value rather than an obvious sales pitch. Offer a strategic mix of content types, lengths, and formats to accommodate different preferences. Repurpose content across platforms for maximum ROI. Continuously review analytics to see which content resonates best and double down on what converts.