How Content Marketing Drives Sales: 3 Examples!
If you are looking at where to spend your marketing budget, it is fair to wonder how content marketing drives sales. Being a business-to-business company doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for your content in the wave of creators.
More and more, companies are gaining sales and widening their net of opportunity by improving the quality and frequency of their content.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is every social media post, blog post, podcast episode, or video that your company uses to increase brand awareness, gain interest, and connect to potential buyers.
You’re likely already doing this… but are you properly investing in your content to make it worth the work?
Among the many reasons to strengthen your content marketing, increasing your profit margin is top of the list. You might be curious how content marketing drives sales when it is not always making a direct ask.
There are a myriad of ways in which this can happen but here are our 3 top examples: staying top of mind, proving expertise, and increasing search engine optimization.
There is a direct correlation between improving content marketing and closing deals. Here are in-depth explanations of each of these examples of how content marketing drives sales.
How Content Marketing Drives Sales 1: Staying Top of Mind
The biggest challenge facing companies is in getting and maintaining people’s attention.
A recent poll revealed 77% of people will choose a brand over a competitor after a positive experience with a brand on social media. It is clear content marketing is not just an additional asset to your business, but an inevitable and reliable means of securing leads.
Using content in your marketing can help your company maintain a consistent and succinct relationship with potential buyers. Being a presence in your social network adds pre-planned face-time with decision makers and improves your odds of reaching new people by being favored by social media algorithms.
Content marketing drives sales by profiting off of a resource that never runs out - people’s attention.
How Content Marketing Drives Sales 2: Proving You Are An Expert In Your Industry
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”
― Simon Sinek, Start With Why
With access to a plethora of companies at ones fingertips, it’s essential to set your business above the competition by proving yourself to be competent and trustworthy. Two simple and effective ways to do this are by being people-focused and problem solvers.
Being people-focused is a strategy that is exclusive to content marketing that helps drive sales. With so much business and bustle of operations in your company, content marketing is a means to showcase your people and appeal to the people. Seeing the people behind your business, having a sense of humor, and engaging with the culture of the internet can make your business feel more human and leave an impression.
Even as a B2B company, there are people in decision-making positions who are engaging with your content. When those people feel they have a relationship with you, they’re more likely to share your content with others, re-visit your pages, and purchase your products and services for their companies.
The other way to prove your expertise is by being problem-solvers. By accurately depicting a problem you can solve in your content, you’re elevating your company as an expert in the field; people ahead of the game, in on the issues, and ready with solutions. In many instances, decision-makers are considering their budget and working to improve current conditions, not add additional expenses.
However, content marketing can show them there are gaps in their understanding of their business - gaps that you can close with your business’s products and services.
Proving your trustworthiness in a sea of companies vying for business is integral in building your client base. You are the experts. You are the ones that they can trust. By using content marketing to drive sales, you can show people better than you can tell them.
How Content Marketing Drives Sales 3: Increase Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing the traffic to your company’s website by ensuring it is high on the list of results given by a search engine. This placement is determined by an array of factors with one major one being the quality and consistency of an organization’s content.
Using keywords, having a database of up-to-date content, and having that content easily accessible all contribute to your pages’ success. More content = more keyword usage! More keyword usage = more traffic to your site! All of this contributes to the search engine’s favoring of your site, raising your rank and making it easier for those to find you.
Content marketing drives sales, then, by improving your S.E.O. and optimizing your visibility.
In closing, if you’re looking to elevate your business and align your marketing with your sales goals, content marketing is the way to do it. As we head into 2023, consider how content marketing drives sales as you plan for your next quarter.
Sinek, Simon. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Penguin Books Ltd, 2011.
“The Future of Social Media: New Data for 2021 & Beyond.” Sprout Social, 23 June 2021, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/harris-insights-report/.