The Buying Funnel and Content Marketing for SEO

There are a lot of reasons to create online content. In this article I would like to discuss with you reasons why we create content and combine different approaches and tactics in using content for SEO & marketing strategies.

Traditional Marketing is Dying

Face it, because it is true. Consumers are experts at ignoring ads. Newspapers are dying. New technology lets users block ads. Online ads are also being ignored. Ads are widely considered as visual and mental garbage. The internet age has brought a new consciousness of self-educating consumers. Marketers have responded and the idea of Content Marketing, which has been around for some time now, has become prevalent with the world being driven by Social Media and Mobile Communications. Rejoice! -because Content Marketing is everyone’s friend! Unless your company’s product is so kick-ass it doesn’t need marketing, you have a large resource to dump on advertising, and you don’t want your business to grow.

Do you enjoy all those free mobile apps? 43% of B2C Marketers use mobile apps as a Content Marketing tactic. Content Marketing can (and I recommend that it should) work on all channels from blogging, Social Media, Mobile, Organic & Paid Search. What is the value of creating fantastically relevant, valuable, and engaging content if consumers can’t find it? One big mistake that I find small businesses doing is that they under value the importance of Inbound Marketing, or they think it is easy and can do it themselves.

The Buying Funnel

You want to reach your consumers on their buying cycles. PPC’ers have been using this marketing model for a while now. SEO experts also use it, or variations of it. The strategy is to align the right type of keywords in content marketing to the consumer’s buying cycle. The Buy Cycle, for instance, could use content that focuses keywords for local SEO, so that questions of where to buy is answered in a search. The word “value” is an interest and learning term and the word “cost” is a shopping and buying term; creating content around those parameters can set up alignments of rich and useful content for searchers on their buying cycles. The best practice of course is relevant, valuable, and engaging content. The biggest and often hardest trick is getting the chain of command to see the value in Content Marketing, because great content comes with a price. Companies that don’t fully understand the value of content marketing will often give up in less than three months. A successful content marketing campaign will usually need six months of commitment before any ROI shows up. Some agencies will even think about reusing content–why? Because it is expensive to create great content.

What are your experiences with Content Marketing from your various disciplines? Have you come into difficulties getting people on board with the topic? Success and failures? Please share!