68% of Businesses Plan to Use Content Marketing Methods

Content Marketing is the top priority for growing business-to-business marketers for increasing their digital footprint (on the internet) according to research from Forrester/DMN.

Over 68% of BtoB marketers are counting on relative content to convince clients to do more business with them. And why not. Content marketing makes sense for any business for a good many reasons.

1- Since search engine results are driven by keywords, the more content on your website the better results you should experience via search engine queries

2- It’s one thing to make bold headline statements on your website about how good the company or products are, but it’s an entirely different and better idea to prove it with case histories, white papers, theories that illustrate your expertise.

3- Giving potential clients a little free information can be a catalyst for conversations and business deals.

4- Creating articles that invite comments allows a company to get a different point of view on their products, services and ideas which can allow managers to avoid costly decisions in the future.

Content marketing experts abound in many business categories. There is even a national meeting that covers the topic in more depth than you can imagine.

typewriter...sentiment One of the keys to getting better results from your content marketing efforts is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes as you write. Creating an article about a new employee addition is not all that relevant to potential clients, but including detail on how this employees is going to save customer’s money or the expertise the employee will bring to customers turns a mundane announcement into a sales pitch.

Creating an article that shows how your company is solving a legitimate problem is an ideal way to introduce content into your website. Chances are the client has many challenges and problems to solve so you may be able to write multiple articles with this type of direction.

Including relevant graphics is a smart way to ensure you keep readers engaged in your article. Simply slapping in some stock photography isn’t going to cut it, but if you take some live images that show people working on a product or spend the time to create an infographic that shows data visually you will surely maximize your readership and comprehension.

Other insider tips include using SEO software to highlight keywords that users might search to find such a topic or article. Writing separate meta descriptions ( the short summary that appears within search engines under the title) that are interesting to read and will compel the searcher to click on your content article over the others they see on the page.

Your articles can be short or long as long as they are factual. No sense in adding a lot of filler or advertising to the article as you will lose the interest of your reader and they may never come back. On the other hand if you deliver useful information in a concise way you may accomplish a variety of marketing and sales tasks.

1) improve your search engine ranking,

2) deliver more visits to your website

3) more leads and

4) more sales.

It’s no wonder that 68% of business to business marketing managers say they are spending more money on content marketing initiatives.