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Copywriting Services: The Ultimate List of Content Tasks Every Marketer Should Be Delegating

January 22, 2019/18 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

The right words, whether in the form of copy or content, can make a huge difference for your marketing.

If you can speak to your audience in a way that moves them, inspires them, informs them, or clarifies complicated ideas for them, you’re far more likely to be successful.

Good writing serves as a foundation for any brand voice in the form of content, ads, web pages, promotions – you name it. Without that foundation in place, you’ll never move leads to become customers and customers to become brand evangelists.

The question is: Do you even have TIME to pull off that kind of writing consistently?

Most marketers don’t – and that’s okay. Instead, they rely on copywriting services and expert talent. They delegate and outsource to people who call it their life’s work to know and write for all types of audiences in all types of industries persuasively.

The right words, whether in the form of copy or content, can make a huge difference for your marketing. But do you have the time to write consistently? If not, check out what Express Writers offers. #copywriting Click To Tweet

Don’t put your hands in too many pots at once. Don’t forfeit writing quality in favor of other tasks. Your entire content marketing strategy WILL suffer.

So, what types of copywriting services can you outsource? What should you invest in for better results for yourself or your clients? We’ve compiled a complete guide, including pricing averages, right here. Want the cheat sheet to save for later as a PDF? Grab it here.

Copywriting Services: The Master List of Content Needs for Your Marketing

1. Social Media

Social Media Copy for Each Platform
Branded Images

2. Onsite Copywriting Services: Blogging

Keyword Research
Audience & Topic Research
Starter Blogs – Shorter Expert Pieces
Authority Blogs – Skyscraper Pieces

3. Onsite Copywriting Services: Web Pages

SEO Keywords for Your Web Pages
Key Landing Pages
Service-Specific SEO Landing Pages

4. Email Content

Email Sequences
Single Emails to Your List

5. Ad Copy/Sales Pages

Conversion Copywriting

6. Copywriting for Marketing Content

Ebooks & Lead Magnets
Whitepapers
PPT/SlideShare
Flyers/Brochures
Press Releases
Video Scripts
Product Descriptions

Download this guide as a PDF.

Your Total Content Needs List: Copywriting Services to Delegate and Invest In

Copywriting in social media, onsite blogging, onsite web pages, email copy, marketing copy, and ad copy can and should be on your list of marketing tasks to delegate.

Improve your marketing and focus on these copywriting services in each category, starting with social media.

Social Media

Social media content forms the base of any promotion plan. It’s a key part of a content strategy because it helps you connect, engage, and build relationships with your audience and followers.

While you can and should hand the social media copy reins to an expert, one aspect you should never outsource or automate is personal engagement with your audience.

When it comes time for interacting, building relationships, networking, and engaging, this should always be personal. Whether you’re responding to comments, taking part in a Twitter chat, or commenting on someone else’s post, your personal interaction is essential. Don’t rely on a copywriting service to do this for you.

The basic tasks of writing solid social posts, however, can and should be delegated. Here are the main types you need as a marketer:

1. Social Media Copy for Each Platform

Average price per post: $4 – $6+

For promoting content and building brand awareness, social media copy is essential. You not only need to post regularly on each platform you invest in, but also create social content that uses your brand voice and tone to connect with your target audience.

Of course, writing for each platform requires different standards, types of posts, and copy. All of this can be a headache and a half to juggle, which is why it’s a fantastic idea to invest in copywriting services.

Here are just a few basic, current standards for the top platforms:

On Facebook, short posts with cleaner copy (think: 0-1 hashtags and 0-1 emojis) are proven to work well, according to data from CoSchedule. Including an image or link with your posts is a given, and video content is huge for engagement. Too many overly promotional posts are a no-no.

On Instagram, you’d think the emphasis would be on the photo you post, but the caption actually matters a ton, too. The written copy here is a great place to tell stories, engage with your followers, and generally provide added value with your images.
- Example: Tagging other accounts related to your post, especially influencers/brands, as well as using relevant hashtags both encourages discovery and helps your followers find more content like yours. (A good copywriting service will know and use all the current best practices.)
On Twitter, your post copy should be engaging but strategic. Each post should include an image for 150% more engagement, according to data Buffer collected, not to mention a few well-chosen hashtags. When relevant, you should also tag partners, influencers, and related accounts.

On LinkedIn, a slightly more professional tone is needed, but posts can still retain your brand voice – just dialed back a little. Longer posts and articles about industry news, events, and developments are great fodder for engagement.
On Pinterest, much like Instagram, it isn’t necessarily all about the images. Captions will help users find your pins, not to mention give your pins more context. In particular, writing captions that will stay relevant for the life of a pin (which can be a long time!) helps encourage pinning and re-pinning, not to mention continued clicks to your content from that pin.

Express Writers offers copywriting services for ongoing social media posts on the platform(s) of your choice. Our social media writers are up-to-date with best practices for every type of post and know how to create engaging copy that wins.

Need copy that stands out? Learn more about how our team can help. #contentmarketing #copywriting Click To Tweet

2. Branded Images

As you may have noticed, images play a huge role in your social media posts. You need a corresponding image for posts on almost every platform, in most cases.

Here’s an example of a branded image from one of our own blogs:

Express Writers offers custom branded images along with our social media posts so you get the best of both worlds. Find this add-on option for social media copywriting services on our social media plans page.

Onsite Copywriting Services: Blogging

Blogging is the cornerstone of content marketing. A 2015 HubSpot study found that B2Bs that blogged at least 16x per month got 4.5x more leads than those that blogged less often. However, to see these types of results, your blogs need to be consistent, high-quality, and authoritative in tone to build trust and rankings.

Can you honestly say you have the time to devote to this kind of blogging? It can get pretty rigorous without help, and many marketers throw in the towel far too soon to see the type of ROI that can and will happen with consistency.

Bottom line: If you can’t commit to blogging with your heart and soul, you won’t see results – unless you outsource.

These are the major blogging tasks and copywriting services to invest in for stronger results.

1. Keyword Research

Average price for one keyword research report: $175 – $250

Reaching your SEO goals is a lot harder without strategic keyword research. The right keywords targeted in an expert, thought-leadership-style blog can mean the difference between content success (traffic, page views, engagement, backlinks) and content failure (cue crickets chirping).

Generally, keyword research for your brand (or your client’s brand) involves:

Searching for broad industry terms related to what you do/sell
Finding long-tail keyword variations of those broad terms that hit the right balance for three metrics:
- Keyword difficulty (KD, or the competitiveness of that keyword)
- Relevancy (to your brand, industry, products, or services)
- Search volume (high numbers are not necessarily better)

Keyword research requires some knowledge of your industry, an understanding of what high-ROI keywords look like, and an ability to analyze keyword data to find the richest opportunities for rankings.

Needless to say, keyword research is a valuable copywriting service, but lots of writers simply don’t offer it.

At Express Writers, that’s not the case. We offer done-for-you keyword research and strategy that includes comprehensive keyword and topic reports using top tools like SEMrush and BuzzSumo. We analyze the data for you and come up with the top keyword opportunities to use in your content.

2. Audience & Topic Research

For brand awareness and audience reach, you need the double-whammy of audience and topic research. These actions help solidify the direction of your onsite blogging, giving it the power it needs to reach your ideal buyer on a personal level.

Without these types of research, you’ll have no clear idea of who you’re writing for, not to mention what you should write about.

Audience research is a process that helps you figure out your main target audience as well as what moves them, their pain points, where they come from, where they want to go, and who they want to be.
Topic research is how you find blog and content topics your audience actually wants to read. Instead of pulling random ideas out of thin air, you start with what you know about your industry, your brand, and your audience. You work outward from there to find relevant topics that connect to your brand goals.

Writing content that uses both audience and topic research as a foundation ensures two things:

1. You’re always writing to the right people.

2. You’re always writing about topics that move you closer to your success benchmarks.

Luckily, I teach both skills in my course, The Content Strategy & Marketing Course.

3. Starter Blogs – Shorter Expert Pieces

Average price per word: $0.15 – $0.20

Average price for four 500-word blogs per month: $300 – $400

The blogs you publish, whether on your website or your clients’, are fundamental to content marketing. Onsite blogging is the #1 way to build authority, trust, and backlinks. Continuously and consistently publishing great content drives more traffic and brings in more leads.

In specialized industries, expert knowledge behind your content matters. To be high-quality and high-authority, written blogs and articles need the most cutting-edge, up-to-date knowledge behind them. That should include current strategies, statistics, and studies.

In short, industry expert blogs need writers who can:

Slip into different brand voices seamlessly
Speak on a personal level to different target audiences
Write with authority and accuracy about in-depth industry topics

Great expert blogs are readable, informative, useful, and speak to your readers’ most pressing pain points. The right copywriting service should cover all of that.

Express Writers offers industry expert blog packages for niches across the board including health & wellness, technology, finance, real estate, SaaS, SEO/digital marketing, and more. We also offer ongoing topic research as an add-on service so you’re never left scratching your head wondering what to publish next.

4. Authority Blogs – Skyscraper Pieces

Average price for a long-form, 2,000-word blog: $600 – $900

Authority behind your content matters more than ever in this age of information overload. People often don’t know who to trust or which sources are legit, just because there are so many scams, tricks, and fake news cycles out there.

In fact, according to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, public distrust in major institutions has declined across the board, which includes government, media, business, and nongovernment organizations.

Authority, skyscraper-style blogs are therefore essential trust-builders that help shape your online gravitas positively. These aren’t just blogs; they’re MEGA blogs:

Content is written by an authority in your industry
Content aligns with your brand voice, tone, and style
Content is backed up with compelling facts, studies, and current research
Content is written around a high-opportunity, long-tail keyword that will rocket you into the search engine rankings
Long-form content provides depth and breadth on a relevant industry topic

In short, authority blogs aren’t just content pieces – they’re content assets. These powerful blogs will work to draw in traffic and leads for months, maybe even YEARS, after they’re published. Even more importantly, they will help build trust and loyalty with your audience.

Express Writers offers authority content for entrepreneurs, marketers, and agencies who want to level up their content. You KNOW what authority blogs can do if you invest in this level of content creation.

I created this copywriting service after a year spent listening, watching, and studying content trends. I saw a winning formula emerge, and I wanted to offer that to our clients – the BEST content possible that will stand tall in a swamp of billions of blog posts.

Onsite Copywriting Services: Web Pages

Think of your onsite content – your web pages, about pages, service pages, landing pages, etc. – as bridges and roads.

Each of these pages has the potential to lead your audience to that ultimate destination, the conversion. Of course, if you build your roads and bridges with weak materials and shaky foundations, fewer people will want to cross them.

Here are the copywriting services you need to invest in to build the best web pages possible, ones that will serve to welcome your audience and guide them to action.

1. SEO Keywords for Your Web Pages

Average price for one keyword research report: $175 – $250

You don’t just need the right keywords in your blogs. You also need web pages optimized for industry terms and phrases that your ideal customers are typing into Google. This is how you get organic traffic and leads from search to land on your main site pages.

At Express Writers, we can find the best keywords for your web pages with our keyword strategy services.

2. Key Landing Pages

Average price per word: $0.07 – $0.23

Average price for one optimized, 800-word web page: $170 – $200

Web page content is one of those copywriting services most marketers can’t do without, as each page must be unique and persuasive to pass muster with Google AND users. Web pages can run the gamut from home pages to “about us” pages to service pages optimized for local SEO.

Much like blogs, industry expert web pages need to be consistent with brand voice and tone, convey authority, help your audience find the information they need, and use keywords strategically for high search engine rankings. The best copywriting services should deliver all of the above.

Whether you need unique, keyword-optimized web pages for your site or you have a lot of service pages that need local SEO and/or some fantastic copy, Express Writers can help with our custom industry expert web pages.

3. Service-Specific SEO Landing Pages

Average price for one 500-600-word page: $75 – $120

SEO landing pages are simply designated places where your visitors land after they click one of your links. Service-specific landing pages usually direct traffic to your site from local search. Here’s how that works:

A user opens Google and types in a keyword for a local service they want to find (i.e. “dentists in Austin”).
On the results page, your webpage pops up as an option because it’s optimized for that location-specific keyword.
The user clicks your link and is taken to your local service landing page, where they can learn more and potentially book an appointment/hire you. Here’s an example of a service landing page in action:

For best results with service landing pages, it’s essential to hire an expert writer who knows your industry. Express Writers hires specific field experts for this exact purpose from industries like legal, finance, marketing, and more. When you order copywriting services like web page copy, we match you up with one of these experts to write your pages.

Average just doesn’t cut it anymore when it comes to web content. Every single page on your site needs to be optimized for search and expertly written to stand out from the pack.

Need copy written by industry experts? Express Writers offers a whole host of copywriting services, from social media copy to product descriptions, from short-form blogs to long-form authority pieces. #copywriting Click To Tweet

Email Content

The power of email content is undeniable. According to Econsultancy, 66% of marketers who use email say it helps them achieve “excellent” or “good” ROI.

That’s not all. A Litmus survey of over 350 marketers revealed the ROI of email marketing is $38 for every dollar spent – Whoa.

However, these results only happen when your emails are targeted, well-written, persuasive, and valuable to your user base. To hit all of these bullseyes, these are the types of email copywriting services to delegate to the experts.

1. Email Sequences

Average price for an email sequence of 5 emails: $450 – $600

Launching new products? You need an email sequence. This is a series of targeted emails sent out at specific times over the course of a few days or a few weeks. Usually, the sequence is triggered by a customer action:

Signing up for your newsletter
Downloading a PDF
Abandoning a shopping cart
Browsing your site

An email sequence tells a continuing story. Each email builds upon the last email sent, culminating in a whammy-punch that ultimately moves the reader to follow your call-to-action (whether you want them to download an ebook, sign up for a webinar, or buy your new product).

This is an example of an email from a sequence I sent to my own list:

Only an expert writer who truly understands persuasive, conversion-focused copy has the chops to create a successful, conversion-driving email sequence.

Express Writers’ copywriting services include done-for-you email sequences. Our email experts will write your sequence to appeal to your readers and gear them up for that all-important CTA.

2. Single Emails to Your List

Average price for short single emails (200-400 words): $75 – $200 (The American Writers and Artists Inc. copywriting price guide also mentions average pricing for standalone sales emails, which can run as high as $2,000 – but that’s because they’re conversion-focused and expected to be high-performing.)

For email marketing, single emails can be just as effective as email sequences, but for different reasons.

Single emails are a fantastic way to build trust and rapport with your audience. Think of it as another way to connect with them and build a relationship. Additionally, single emails are perfect for sharing new content. Who better to appreciate your new blog post than your list?

Here is an example of a single email promoting a new blog post for the Write Blog:

EW’s writing staff includes email experts who can take care of this copywriting service for you. Whether you need on-brand single emails or irresistible email sequences, we have you covered.

Ad Copy/Sales Pages

To nab the sale or ace the conversion, not just any kind of copywriting will do. Instead, you need expert copy written by a pro who understands the sales process. Enter conversion copywriting.

Marketers: This is something you shouldn’t do yourself unless you’ve been schooled in writing direct response copy.

1. Conversion Copywriting

Average price for one conversion-oriented sales page: Industry experts rate this copywriting service as extremely high-value – $1 per word at minimum is the going rate.

Conversion copywriting is all about creating copy that engages a specific audience and pulls in the buyer’s interest. Conversion copy can be found on web pages, Facebook/social ad copy, and emails. Most of all, it has the potential to make you serious $$$.

With that in mind, not just anybody can write conversion copy that actually delivers. Only a serious copywriter will do, one who understands buyer awareness, the marketing lifecycle, and how to appeal to the decision-making process.

For a good example of conversion copy, take a look at Airstory’s homepage. Every sentence makes you want to add the tool to your browser:

Express Writers has conversion copywriting services available, but only by request. Contact us directly to get a custom quote.

Copywriting Services for Marketing Content

What types of marketing copy should you delegate, and which types can you write yourself?

In general, these are the copywriting services you can hand off for excellent ROI.

1. Ebooks & Lead Magnets

Average price for one designed ebook, 3-5 pages: $300 – $550

Lead magnets are high-value content pieces that you offer exclusively to your audience in exchange for a few personal details, such as their name and email address. Lead magnets are often created in the form of ebooks to pack in a lot of useful information – bonus points if they’re beautifully designed.

Much like blog content, ebooks and lead magnets build your authority and expertise in your industry, not to mention trust with your audience.

Watch me explain lead magnets and ideas for lead magnets in this video:

And check out one of our lead magnets at EW: The Easy ABC Content Strategy Checklist.

We offer both ebook copy and design at Express Writers. Let one of our industry expert writers whip up a high-value ebook for your brand that will help build your clout AND your email list.

2. Whitepapers

Average price per page: $90 – $200

Whitepapers are great content assets to have on hand for any brand. These in-depth reports provide thorough information about specific problems and step-by-step information about how you solved it.

The most common types of whitepapers showcase client testimonials. For example, a good whitepaper will present the client’s problem clearly and effectively, then show how your brand (or your client’s brand) solved that problem and went above and beyond for the customer. Most importantly, these types of whitepapers showcase client satisfaction and serve as powerful social proof for other potential buyers.

Another type of whitepaper that’s pretty common: thorough, well-researched guides to industry problems. HubSpot has a good example of this type:

Whitepapers can be incredible authority-builders for any brand. EW offers this copywriting service, whether you just want whitepaper copy or a fully designed product.

3. PPT/SlideShare

Average price for one slide: $30

Slides for PowerPoint or SlideShare can be surprisingly difficult to write and create. Which key points about your topic should you include? How do you make slides attention-grabbing yet easy to read and understand?

Include this type of content in your list of copywriting services to delegate and you’ll get high-quality, expertly written slides that accomplish all of these goals.

To drive home how effective slides can be, check out this example of a SlideShare created from one of our blogs here at EW:

The Marketing Lifecycle (2018) Copyright Express Writers & Julia McCoy from Julia McCoy

Need marketing copy for slides on PPT or SlideShare? EW does that, too.

4. Flyers/Brochures

Average price per 250 words: $50

If you’ll be advertising your brand locally (think tradeshows, events, etc.), flyers and brochures are a great print marketing asset. They are:

Relatively low-cost
Easy and fast to distribute
Effective for in-person marketing events

The most successful flyers and brochures will have copy that’s succinct, to the point, and impactful. They will clearly explain your products/services/offers in a way that appeals to your target audience.

If you want an expert creating your flyer/brochure copy, add that to the long list of copywriting services we have available at Express Writers.

5. Press Releases

Average price for one press release: $200 – $300

For announcing key news and happenings at your company, nothing does the job better than a professionally written press release.

Of course, when we say “professionally written,” we mean written by a professional journalist. With this kind of expertise behind your press releases, your news is more likely to be distributed through a network or picked up by a news outlet.

For expert, journalist-written press releases, check out this copywriting service from Express Writers.

6. Video Scripts

Video is huge these days online. According to the Aberdeen Group, marketers who use video get 66% more qualified leads annually.

The secret to producing successful, attention-grabbing videos? A clear message conveyed with confidence. How can you do that? With a well-written video script.

It’s true: Even though video is hot, hot, hot. You won’t get anywhere by pushing out low-quality videos with lots of awkward pauses and stammering. Your video production will be much smoother with a script.

Tip: If you don’t have time to create them, Express Writers can write your video scripts for you.

7. Product Descriptions

Average price for one 100-250-word product description: $20 – $25

Product descriptions are an essential copywriting service for ecommerce businesses selling their wares. These descriptions not only persuasively sell the online product, they also describe it in a way that answers customer questions and overcomes any objections to clicking “add to cart”.

A worthy product description is both visceral (i.e. you get a good feel of what it would be like to use/wear/try the product) and practical (including dimensions, settings, features, etc.). Ideally, it should also be optimized for search so buyers can find that product when searching on Google.

For a tried-and-true example of product descriptions that fit all of these criteria, look at ModCloth, the online women’s clothing store. This PD for a hooded yellow coat includes both fanciful details that will appeal directly to its young target audience, not to mention practical details about the coat material, fit, and sizing.

If you need product descriptions that both tell and sell, let our writing team at Express Writers take care of them for you with our copywriting service for product descriptions.

How to Work with Copywriting Services to Produce Content That Wins

A huge part of winning marketing has to include winning copy. To put it bluntly, there’s so much to write and so little time. As you can see, copywriting services can lift a lot of that pressure off your shoulders.

Whether you’re a time-crunched marketer, an entrepreneur striking out with a new product/business, or an agency strapped for good writers, getting help is always a good idea. It WILL 10x your marketing!

To wrap up, here are a few tips to make your copywriting services go the extra mile:

1. Invest in Quality

Expert, amazing writers charge more for their services because they’re good. Their work gets consistent results and ROI. Period. If you want those results, you need to invest in expertise.

2. Provide Instructions, Guidelines, Ideas, Etc.

For copywriting services, you can’t provide too many details. Give your writer the best starting point by giving them all the information you can about what you need. Examples, style guides, links to content you want to emulate – all of it will help your writer produce a better end product.

3. Communicate

While working on your content or copy, your writer might have questions pop up. They might need you to clarify an instruction or help them refine the voice and tone you want them to use, for example. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep communication lines open. Be responsive and work with your writer if you want the best from them.

Copywriting services can lighten your to-do list, but more importantly, they can improve your marketing by leaps and bounds. Have you made the investment in expert copywriting yet?

6 Major Content Marketing Trends from CMI’s 2019 B2C Content Marketing Research Report

December 28, 2018/14 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

Happy 2019, marketers! 🥂🥳

What better way to start out the year than to check out some major trends for our amazing industry of content marketing?

Good news.

Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs just released their 2019 B2C Content Marketing Report.

CMI’s 2019 B2C Content Marketing Report

The #1 major takeaway?

B2C content marketing is hotter than ever.

And more and more brands are getting with the times: realizing that they need a strategic approach in order to succeed.

As the research reveals, the stronger your commitment to content marketing, the better the outlook for your success.

Take a look at some of CMI’s impressive and intriguing findings around content marketing in 2019.

95% of B2Cs are committed to content marketing on some level.
96% of the most successful B2C content marketers say audiences view their company as a trusted resource.
Educational content is the #2 content marketing method for B2Cs in nurturing their audience (first is email marketing).
The highest area for spending in content marketing in 2019 is content creation (56%).
63% of marketers said their organizations were “very” or “extremely” committed to content. Of the most committed, 40% said their companies were “very” or “extremely” successful. (That’s in comparison with the least committed marketers. Only 8% reported any great success.)

Those are some powerful takeaways, right? With these promising indicators, smart marketers and agencies should definitely increase their focus and commitment to content marketing – IT WORKS.

That’s not all, though. The report is jam-packed with juicy information and insightful statistics. That’s why we’ve rounded up the top trends and takeaways from this important research so you don’t have to comb through the whole thing.

Ready? Dive in and take some notes!

According to the latest B2C survey from @CMIContent and @MarketingProfs, 96% of the most successful content marketers say audiences view their company as a trusted resource. More #b2c #contentmarketing trends in this recap by… Click To Tweet

6 Top Takeaways and Trends from CMI’s B2C Content Marketing Research Report

These are the key trends that caught our eye:

1. More B2Cs Than Ever Are Committed to Content

According to the report, the majority of B2Cs are committed to content marketing on some level (a whopping 95%).

The majority of B2Cs are committed to content marketing on some level (a whopping 95%). More on #contentmarketing trends via @JuliaEMcCoy's recap of @cmicontent and @marketingprofs 2019 report Click To Tweet

As we already mentioned, 63% of marketers fall on the end of the spectrum: They’re either extremely or very committed.

This should come as no surprise, but it’s still nice to hear. Content marketing is a proven strategy and can earn you or your clients major ROI if it’s done right.

2. Committed B2C Content Marketers Are More Likely to Hit Their Goals

The most committed content marketers are all-stars who reach their goals more often, according to CMI’s survey.

49% of the most committed say they get content marketing buy-in from top leaders in their organization.
Another 68% say they have successfully used content to build loyalty with their existing customers.
72% have successfully educated their audience over the last year.

Meanwhile, among the least committed to content marketing:

Only 16% get buy-in from top executives.
51% have built loyalty with customers.
53% have successfully educated their audiences.

From the statistics, it’s pretty clear that to reach your content goals, you need to dig in and commit, especially if you want buy-in from the higher-ups!

3. Investment in Content Marketing Is Growing

This next takeaway is in line with #1, above.

As more content marketers and agencies commit to content marketing, more of them see the worth of investing fully in this strategy.

As such, 57% of marketers foresee their content marketing budgets increasing in the immediate future. Of that number, 29% expect to increase their budgets by more than 9%.

This is great news, because the more you commit your time and budget to content, the better chance it will have to pay off.

More than half of #b2c marketers expect their #contentmarketing budget to increase in 2019, says @CMIContent and @MarketingProfs in their 2019 B2C Content Marketing Report. Click To Tweet

4. For Many Companies, Content Creation is #1

Content creation is one of the top investment categories, according to CMI’s report. Of those marketers who increased their budgets within the last year, 56% funneled those dollars toward content creation.

Other runner-up categories include paid content distribution, dedicated content marketing staff, technology for content marketing, and outsourcing content marketing.

This trend says a lot about what’s important to most marketers going forward.

It’s the audience.

Content creation investment means higher-quality content. Higher-quality means better writing, more audience research, more targeted topics, and a brand voice that always hits the mark.

And, don’t forget: Ongoing investment in high-quality content equals more consistency at every audience touchpoint. According to research from McKinsey & Company, that’s how you make customers happy across the entire buyer’s journey:

“…positive customer-experience emotions—encompassed in a feeling of trust—were the biggest drivers of satisfaction and loyalty in a majority of industries surveyed.”

In a nutshell, more investment in content creation = more high-quality, consistent content experiences for your audience = higher audience trust = more loyalty = more conversions/sales.

That adds up to a whole lot of awesomeness.

5. The Key for B2Cs in 2019? Loyalty

The next key point from the CMI research directly ties into the increased investment in content creation. More and more marketers (81%) are focusing on building loyalty with their existing audiences through their content.

Meanwhile, only 12% are not concerned with creating content that builds audience loyalty.

As a 2018 survey from Yotpo demonstrates, brand loyalty is a highly desirable outcome from content marketing.

When customers are loyal, they do a bunch of amazing things for you:

60% will recommend you to their friends and family
52.3% will join your loyalty program
Nearly 40% will spend more on your products versus opting for cheaper versions elsewhere

It’s no wonder smart B2C marketers and agencies are devoted to building their audience loyalty. That loyalty snowballs, building on itself without any pushing or prodding.

More and more marketers (81%) are focusing on building loyalty with their existing audiences through their content, says @CMIContent and @MarketingProfs. This and more #b2c #contentmarketing takeaways in this new post by @JuliaEMcCoy. Click To Tweet

6. The Longer B2Cs Use Content Marketing, the Higher They Fly to Success

Our final takeaway from CMI’s 2019 B2C research report is an interesting stat that shows how far a steady commitment to content can take you.

The longer an organization uses content marketing, the more likely they are to see success. Overall, 31% of B2Cs rate their marketing as mature and finding those positive gains. That’s compared to 27% of “adolescent” stage B2Cs and 26% of those at the “young” stage.

As the graph shows, the further your organization moves down the road toward content marketing maturity, the more likely it will perform better.

These statistics make perfect sense because they reflect common sense – in general, the longer you practice any activity, the better you become.

That means B2Cs and marketers who want to throw in the towel should stop short and ask themselves a huge question:

What is your marketing maturity level? Are you just starting out, or are you experiencing growing pains?

If you can answer “yes” to either, hang in there. Statistics show that your marketing game will improve with age.

Statistics show that your marketing game will improve with age. More on @cmicontent and @marketingprofs 2019 B2B content marketing benchmarks via @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

Cheers to 2019 with the Industry Headed Towards Better Content Marketing

This research is a gold mine for marketers and agencies who want to level up in content marketing.

As you can see, the trends point to better returns for those who commit themselves to content and stick with it for the long haul. Additionally, those who prioritize their audiences and building audience loyalty are more likely to come out ahead.

Here’s to a great 2019, marketers! 🥳

You should double down on content creation in particular because the quality of this activity will greatly influence audience loyalty. The better you speak to your people, the more you’ll build that community around your brand.

What do you think of these research findings? Is there anything that surprised you, or anything that will influence your own marketing going forward? Let us know in the comments!

Need great content? Register to start ordering custom-written content from our team.

How to Build Trust & Rankings Through SEO-Focused Content Marketing

December 11, 2018/73 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

If you can get smart with Google, rank organically, and hit page one, your online presence, leads, and traffic will experience a huge boost.

Why?

Because Google is still the #1 driver of all web traffic, hands down.

According to Net Market Share, as of October 2018, Google held 76.14% of the total search engine market share.

Also, search still outpaces social media in traffic.

Currently, search drives 34.8% of all site visits as opposed to social networks, which bring in 25.6% (Search Engine Land).

Not to mention how hot those inbound leads are. MarketingSherpa has said that the average conversion rate on organic traffic to leads across industries is 16%.
All of these things are great reasons to rank on Google.

Search still drives 34.8% of all site visits - social media brings in 25.6%. Google still reigns king as the #1 traffic driver on the web. Learn how to build trust through SEO-powered content marketing via @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

But, here’s the thing:

Successful marketing is not built on web visits alone.

You must nail the “win their trust” element of SEO content creation to actually get somewhere worthwhile (leads >> sales >> loyal customers).

If you can consistently build valuable content over time – content that meets your reader at their place of need – you’re absolutely going to build winning, valuable marketing.

At Express Writers, we are living proof of how powerful SEO-based content marketing can be. It powers the majority of our six-figure monthly income and is solely responsible for every high-quality client lead that comes our way. I wrote a case study not too long ago on this:

Read our SEO blogging case study.

Valuable, SEO-optimized content published on your site can help you build trust with readers, which boosts your rankings, which boosts their trust… ad infinitum.

How do you build trust and rankings through #contentmarketing? @JuliaEMcCoy discusses what high-value content can do for your business. #SEO Click To Tweet

In a nutshell, this is how to get into a circle of content marketing awesomeness. Read on!

4 Ways to Set Up High-ROI, Profitable SEO Content Marketing

1. Meet Them at the Right Keyword

Rule #1: You’re not looking for traffic to your website. You’re looking for the RIGHT traffic.

The most lead-worthy traffic comes from people who are searching for what you’ve got. Hone in on those keywords they’re searching. And you’ll not only pull them to your site, but you’ll also give them exactly what they need. That’s a HUGE trust-builder.

Example: A user googles “how to build a dog fence,” finds your blog, reads your expert advice, and finds a CTA for your product. Turns out, they NEED it because you met them at the right keyword with valuable content (cha-ching!).

This is called mapping keywords to the sales cycle (also called the buyer’s journey or sales funnel). For more information on how to do it, check out this guide from Neil Patel: The Keywords to Use for Each Stage of the Funnel.

Rule #1: You’re not looking for traffic to your website. You’re looking for the RIGHT traffic. 🔍 More on setting up #SEO #contentmarketing by @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

2. Focus on Owned Media Platforms and Organic SEO Content

Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute recently predicted the rise of the value of owned media. As he says, the content you create and publish on your own platform becomes higher-value the harder it is to earn your audience’s attention:

“…as ‘reaching audiences’ becomes more difficult, fragmented, and filtered, the ability to generate and hold attention from an audience with original content becomes increasingly more valuable to the business.”

Owned media (A.K.A. content marketing based on your brand domain) does a few tasks for you in this dog-eat-dog internet marketing atmosphere:

It gives you complete control over your content quality.
It builds YOUR credibility and associates your content with YOUR brand name and URL – not some random host site.
It gives you a brand platform home base off of which you can build vital backlinks.

Plus, an organic SEO content focus (think: content grown in your own domain soil) also provides value for people at the place where most of them are already searching for that value. Win-win.

3. Check Your Slime-o-Meter

Trust will be huge in 2019. It’s pretty much the core piece of today’s marketing that matters to customers.

That’s because, in general, people’s trust in institutions (government, business, the media, etc.) has fallen, according to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report.

In particular, in the U.S., trust has declined at the steepest rate ever recorded:

Yikes.

In the U.S., trust has declined at the steepest rate ever recorded. What does that mean for marketers? @JuliaEMcCoy shares her insights. #contentmarketing #seo Click To Tweet
The question to ask yourself: “Are we producing trustworthy, non-spammy/scammy/crappy/slimy marketing?”

In other words, how does your content rate on the slime-o-meter? Is it a solid “0” with no promotional language/offers to be found? Or is it creeping dangerously close to a “10,” with thin content that doesn’t bother to hide your pushy, self-aggrandizing sales pitch? (Back away, that one is too slimy to touch.)

Surprisingly, this isn’t the easiest question to answer. Your marketing blinders may prevent you from seeing your content the way your audience does. If this is the case, you need to clear your vision.

This means audience re-evaluation and research. (Read: TALK to them. Swim around in their brain waves. Understand them.)

Once you know them like your best friend, you can more accurately measure your content against that slime-o-meter. When all else fails, abandon any attempts at promotion and just aim for giving your readers the relevant help/entertainment/information they crave.

4. Don’t Ask for More Than Your Audience Is Ready to Give

One aspect of building trust in content is aligning your CTAs with the level of trust you currently hold with readers.

Hint: You don’t want to ask for more than they’re ready to give. That’s a turn-off.

Take a look at this trust pyramid from the Nielsen/Norman Group:

Each level of the pyramid corresponds to a trust level you must achieve with a user before you can climb up to the next one. To achieve a trust level, you must be able to overcome the user’s doubts about you.

For example, to hop into the baseline level of trust with a user, you need to help them answer these questions:

Can your site/content help them accomplish their goals?
Is your site/content credible, with dependable information?
Does it have their best interests at heart?

Sometimes marketers try to insert a CTA that doesn’t align with their readers’ current trust level. The CTA is meant to move the audience to level up, so to speak, but it won’t work if you ask too much of them too soon, according to HubSpot.

My Marketing Lifecycle also represents this journey.

That’s where SEO content comes in. It gives your readers value that’s relevant to them, which builds their trust to the required level needed for them to complete the CTA.

Are your CTAs asking for more than what readers are ready to give? Time to change that. Learn how in this new blog post by @JuliaEMcCoy. #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

Trust-builders in content include:

Well-written, user-focused copy
Organized, easy-to-understand formatting
Supporting research and hard data (case studies, testimonials, statistics, reports, etc.)
Useful links and resources
Thoughtful, usable, attractive website design

How Do You Know Which CTAs to Use in SEO Content?

It’s not difficult to know which CTAs to use with your SEO content – just look at the keywords in each piece and the type of users they target.

Are your main keywords broader in scope, meant to target people who have never interacted with your brand before, or who don’t know the industry?
- Use CTAs that don’t dig too deep. Offer a valuable freebie or download in exchange for an email address, at most.
Or are your main keywords narrower and more focused, targeting people who may know your name and product but haven’t yet purchased?
- Use CTAs that call for a stronger action and more personal information, like making a purchase or testing a free trial.

From Trust-Building to Search Engine Dominance

To dominate in Google, earning your readers’ trust must be your #1 priority.

From the keywords you use to the platform on which you publish, from the meat of your content to your CTAs, you can and should nurture that trust with SEO content.

First, meet them where they’re looking for value in search. Then, become the authority source that brings value for your readers relentlessly.

As Joe Pulizzi has said, that kind of marketing pays for itself – and that kind of marketing tops Google, too.

Need high-quality content? We can help.

Goodbye, Sales Funnel & Hello, Marketing Lifecycle: 5 Hot Content Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2019

December 4, 2018/43 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

As we approach the New Year, here’s a big question for you, content marketers:

Which way is the content marketing wind blowing? 🌬️

I have some ideas.

In 2019, content marketing will continue to grow, and more and more brands will see its potential through to concrete, measurable successes.

Today and tomorrow’s great, standout marketing is all about building trust with your audience, and consistently giving them creative, nurturing, and strategic content.

And in order to get there, some things have to change. It’s time for some old, anti-trust practices to die — and it’s time to introduce and start more conversations around new, better practices.

One of these new practices I’m introducing today is a big wake-up call to the industry. (Hint: Goodbye sales funnel, hello Marketing Lifecycle.)

Knowing the foundational techniques that will boost your online game overall just became a basic requirement. Learning how to build real, lasting industry trust for your brand? That’s for the successful few. And we’ll be discussing that today. Ready to jump into today’s deep end?

@JuliaEMcCoy predicts that a Marketing Lifecycle will replace a sales funnel. Read all it about here. #ContentMarketingTrends #2019 #MarketingLifecycle Click To Tweet

Introducing The Marketing Lifecycle & 4 Other Content Marketing Trends for 2019 That Will Win With a Human Audience

Here are some of the top trends that (I’m hoping) we’ll see proliferate in marketing in 2019, starting with the biggest industry prediction I’ve ever made. Let’s begin.

1. Marketing Funnel Begone: Welcome The Marketing Lifecycle

I’m going to predict that the overly salesy marketing “funnel” (also called a “sales funnel”) will become obsolete in the next 12-24 months. Yes, I said it.

Why? It’s high time a new, pro-consumer lifecycle replaced the cold, ugly sales funnel.

I discussed the sales funnel death and the lifecycle idea with the students in my Content Strategy & Marketing Course recently. My student John said it eloquently: “The sales funnel deserves the guillotine.”

Why is the “sales funnel” so unreliable?

It doesn’t describe the way marketing should work anymore.

John Hall, co-founder of Influence & Co., broaches this idea in his Forbes rundown of 2019 trends:

“Right now, the marketing funnel as we know it accepts just about anyone and everyone, filters them through qualification processes, then spits them out at the end without much of a parting word. Too many companies see customers as gatekeepers to wallets; meanwhile, customers feel ignored at best – and insulted at worst – when the journey ends.”

Have I mentioned that I hate the term “sales funnel?”

We are content marketers. We should never just “grab” the attention of people who aren’t in our audience, for numbers’ sake: and we should never only focus on “dumping people” at the end of a funnel. It’s time to quit looking at our customers as if they are numbers, a metric in our system, a “wallet.” Our customers are so much more than their wallets. They are our friends, the people we want to help the most if we’re truly in business to make a difference. So, let’s take a more nurturing stance that encourages people to stay in our circle: join our community of readers, buyers, and evangelists.

Funnel, begone. It’s time for a new marketing flowchart.

'Our customers are so much more than their wallets. They are our friends, the people we want to help the most if we're truly in business to make a difference. Funnel, begone: it's time for a new marketing flowchart.' - @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

Let’s Replace “Sales Funnel” with “Marketing Lifecycle”

Before I get into my original concept, the term “marketing lifecycle” itself isn’t new. Ardath Albee, an industry leader in content marketing, talked about a lifecycle on the Marketo blog not too long ago.

In the post, titled “B2B Tech Marketers Make the Shift From Funnels to Lifecycles,” she says: “…Marketers [must] shift their focus from buying journey funnels to full-on customer lifecycle management.”

The design that I’m about to reveal is 100% original and the collaborative effort of myself and my team. My designer and one of our lead copywriters worked on it with me, after I did some initial brain dumps.

Late one Sunday night in October, I brainstormed the first draft of my new lifecycle. Not kidding you: I picked up one of my kid’s markers and a piece of paper, and I drew it out. I’m going to show you my original brainchild in all its pure, messy, Crayola marker glory.

Now, to really show you what The Marketing Lifecycle I’ve designed is all about, study this generic Sales Funnel first. This is the typical model of Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. The concept is quite old: the AIDA concept was first proposed in Bond Salesmanship by William W. Townsend in 1924.

Typical sales funnel model

Not very pretty – was it ever?

Here’s what Townsend actually wrote in his book in 1924, which gave us our first usage of this “sales funnel” as associated today with the AIDA model:

“The salesman should visualize his whole problem of developing the sales steps as the forcing by compression of a broad and general concept of facts through a funnel which produces the specific and favorable consideration of one fact. The process is continually from the general to the specific, and the visualizing of the funnel has helped many salesmen to lead a customer from Attention to Interest, and beyond.”

Does that sound like a current marketing method that work today — at all?

“The salesman should…[develop] the sales steps as the forcing by compression of a broad and general concept of facts through a funnel.” Forcing your prospects? Does this really define the “sales” concept we should use in our marketing today? Jamie from 60secondmarketer.com says that the “sales funnel” simply doesn’t work with today’s smart consumer. I would agree. Here are a few more facts on why.

Today’s Customer Journey: A Big Reason to Embrace the Marketing Lifecycle

Today’s typical customer journey is far more unpredictable than the customer of the previous century.

1980’s and prior sales journey.

When the concept of the sales funnel came out (1924), the internet didn’t exist! But think about today for a second.

Over 40,000 searches happen on Google per second, 1.49 billion people log onto Facebook daily, 84% of buyers trust online reviews (BrightLocal), and 47% of B2B buyers read 3-5 blog posts or content pieces prior to talking with a salesperson (DemandGen). 45% of Americans use Twitter (Pew Research Center), and 77% of Twitter users (Twitter) feel more positive about a brand when their tweet has been replied to.

That means that a typical buyer’s journey could look a lot more like this, and there could be a lot longer of a time period between the first and the last stage than the funnel represents.

On the flip side, if the brand’s site is user-friendly, and the content is extremely good, and the prospect has a hot, burning need: the sale can still happen quickly! (The good news? If we allow for a journey and not a pushy “funnel,” we will get better results and happier customers all around.)

The sales funnel really gives companies, and executive teams, the wrong idea of who is buying from them. A human is buying from us. Not a percentage. Not a robot. Not a “conversion ratio.” A human, in the end. I think sometimes many of us forget that simple fact. What I wanted to portray was a path real humans that are interested in a brand’s offering are actually taking these days, with no closed walls, and fresh, up-to-date, more accurate “stages.” I’ve been studying the pathways of the inbound customers we have this year, as we approach our first $1.5 million gross annual sales. There are three things I’ve noticed that consistently happen around the sales journey that really does not match up to today’s sales funnel at all (see AIDA model, above).

First: we can’t truly and accurately predict where a lead is at. Ground-floor level, we don’t know what’s in a human buyer’s mind. Software can’t heat-map a lead’s “brain,” even though it’ll promise you that it can try. Your lead could be ready to buy, or they could be months away from buying. It’s their decision, not yours, on how and where they should spend their money. Patience with our human prospects, and realizing we aren’t mind-readers pays off. We allow them to make the decision, and if we’ve held up our end–our salespeople are strong, our products are strong, our quote was sent out on time, etc., we simply need to wait. We let them know it’s up to them. This is what today’s buyer wants from us as “sellers.”

Secondly: I consistently see one of the most important stages left off all sales funnels. Yet for us, this is when we see our biggest sales, trust, and ROI happen! This is the loyalty stage, which happens AFTER the interest, decision, and action stages. Their actions after that first big action (purchase, sale) denote their loyalty to your brand and subsequently more business for you, if you’ve served them well enough, and maintain that relationship in a way that encourages them to tell others about how much they love you.

Thirdly: The metrics and KPIs around the “stages of the sales funnel” are grossly off, if we want to reflect KPIs that influence potential sales and direct profit. For example, one of the biggest “metrics” for actual sales from content are the conversations you’re having with your leads. If our team isn’t having calls, live chats, email conversations with new leads that come in, then we revise and improve our inbound strategy. Conversations are by far the biggest metric that lead to a sale. Get that lead on a call, on live chat with you, reading your email and responding, and the chances of a sale are huge. Yet I never see “conversations” factored as a KPI in the sales funnel! Most of the time it’s “open” rates on emails, whitepaper downloads, subscriber growth — when none of that matters half as much as the conversations you’re actually having with your people.

So, those three factors were heavily considered in the new Marketing Lifecycle I’ve developed. Without further ado, here it is. Keep scrolling past the images for a little bit more about the story of this Lifecycle.

Spread the word! Save, download and re-share: grab the PDF here, and correctly cite if you use by linking back to this post

The story around my new concept is that there are four true stages to an authentic, customer-centric Marketing Lifecycle journey.

Want to save and read the full description of all four stages later? Download as a PDF here.

1. Awareness

Lead is: In Awareness

Brands need to focus on: Authority building in the industry, via high-quality content on a key site “house,” in a variety of formats. Consistency, velocity are key.

This is the traffic and awareness stage when someone first hears about you and has a potential need for what you might offer. Your content and work here should be value-focused, first and foremost. Don’t be promotional or you risk turning leads off. Comprehensive, high-quality blogs are huge winners to build on your site for attracting more leads in the awareness stage.

What brands should create or do to encourage customer activity at this stage:

High-quality, comprehensive, SEO optimized blogs for inbound site traffic (I’ve trained my best writers on a service we offer called authority content for this reason)
Focus on building a community around your brand – create intimacy with your niche through content
Round-ups or original research studies (can publish as blogs)
Brand awareness blogs, creative stories (executive, employee or client stories–must be real-life, and not stiff or testimonial-style)
Web pages & site guides (example: our What Is a Strategist? site guide for my course)
Social media content, videos & copy
Maintain relationships at the fourth stage for more word-of-mouth referrals
Published books by executive team/CEOs (see mine for an example)
Lead magnets and ebooks & building list size and leads to nurture with opt-ins
Ad campaigns (cold audience)

2. Interest & Intent

Lead is: Interested & Has Potential Intent to Buy

Brands need to focus on: Conversational marketing, assigning live calls with prospects to strongest team members, offering client-specific or seasonal coupons

In the sales funnel, this is usually broken up into two stages: Interest and Desire. However, the pattern with smart buyers today, especially those buying online (digital and physical services), is that a lead can go from interest to desire very quickly. Brands need to anticipate that more. For example, I see too many brands write off their leads — we’ll call him Joe — just because Joe hasn’t emailed back in over a year. Never, ever do that. This does NOT mean to pressure your leads. Just don’t write them off. Send them your occasional coupons and specials. We’ve seen clients come back out of the blue time and time again.

And guess what the #1 factor is in moving someone from interest to a decision? A real, live human conversation. After 7 years and $4+ million in sales, all conducted not in person and over the “internet” virtually with clients using our website, we consistently see conversations as the #1 factor in moving someone from interest and intent to decision. 41.2% of salespeople said their phone is the most effective sales tool at their disposal, says Hubspot. Since our leads at Express Writers are 100% inbound and already warm, getting them on a call is easy – and once they have a conversation with one of our capable staff members, 60-80% of the time, they buy. Allowing the lead to choose phone, chat or email, and then being quick to take initiative, pick up the phone and call our inbound prospect when there’s any hesitation, is the #1 component of all of our sales. (We’ve never used a single webinar to sell our services at Express Writers.)

Also, our top salesperson is not a salesperson. We stopped doing commissioned sales back in 2015! Instead, our top salesperson was first an editor and project manager who naturally progressed up our ladder and is now our Content Director. We’ve found there is no one better than the person who oversees our writers to also have the key conversations that move to a lead to decide on purchasing. Live chat is another way to facilitate these conversations. There’s a reason 150,000 businesses including some of the world’s top brands are using the same live chat we are, Drift. Messenger bots are another great way to hold more live chats with your prospects.

I can’t recommend this enough: Have more conversations with your leads. Talk about the conversations you’ve had in your boardroom with executives and team members.

Another powerful factor in moving a client through this stage is by using coupons and offering them more. This is another opportunity I think a ton of brands miss out on! Coupons with an expiration really give a lead a reason to move from interest and intent forward to the next stage. We’ve had many sales happen because specific leads who asked for a deal, and qualified for that deal by buying volume, were given an account-specific coupon. Never underestimate the power of offering a good deal. Don’t cheapen out, but don’t be afraid to offer your best price.

Remember your email marketing efforts here too. Emailing your content marketing pieces generates a 38x return for every 1$ spent (CampaignMonitor).

What brands should create or do to encourage customer activity at this stage:

Conversational marketing (live chat, phone appointments with leads & best company representatives)
Messenger bots & live chat apps
Have your best (human!) representatives at the end of the app & booking live calls with leads
An easy-to-navigate site with CTAs and contact forms
Lead magnets around your core message
Ebooks to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise
Whitepapers and case studies showing off client success stories
Email marketing and list building efforts (write and send great emails consistently)
Webinars (not necessary unless it fits your specific offering and/or niche)
Ad campaigns (retargeting)

3. Decision

Lead is: Ready to Buy

Brands need to focus on: Having samples, previous happy client reviews, and quotes ready to go: booking sales calls

This is the action stage. The main action here is sales. If the other stages are done correctly, and your content has built a great presence, you offer a solid service and products, and you or your team has answered every question, the prospect should buy.

What brands should create or do to encourage customer activity at this stage:

Conversational marketing (live chat, calls, prompt follow-ups with clients to answer every question)
Have a team that acts fast on sales quotes. The recommended time to get back to someone who contacts you online now is 0 minutes – 4 hours, max.
Have work samples ready to show at request for new clients making a decision
Testimonials and reviews from prior happy clients help new clients buy with confidence
Optional, based on specific company time: Demos (a complex SaaS, for example, could benefit from offering demos)

4. Loyalty

Lead is: Delighted & Willing to Send Referrals

Brands need to focus on: Great service, delivering a great product, following up and checking on client happiness levels, fixing or repairing any reason for dissatisfaction

This is where you connect with and delight your customers on a regular basis. They become advocates for your brand at this point. This is one of the most important parts to building a long-term presence and profitability as a business, yet it is so often left off of the sales funnel! Your customers’ loyalty reflects the strength of your brand. You should be reaching out and making sure your customers are happy, checking in with them, and sending them occasional gifts or thank-yous to maintain that relationship and loyalty. It’s up to you as the brand to make sure the customer is delighted. If at any point they’ve been dissatisfied, it’s also imperative to find out why and repair whatever could be broken.

What brands should create or do to encourage customer activity at this stage:

Followups and seasonal check-ins: build relationships with customers without being pushy
Send gifts and thank-yous
Email marketing: nurture buyers’ loyalty by sending them your new guides, blogs and customer stories/team stories
New products, books, etc. can also build loyalty and reoccurring interest
Good service and strong products are #1: revise and maintain your offerings and team to ensure strength in the market

Some Notes About the Marketing Lifecycle

In the Marketing Lifecycle, notice that there is no wall: a human can walk right over into “decision” if they want to, by going through the middle. This is important. It is time we predicted our prospects’ intentions more as a journey and a lifecycle with pathways, instead of a funnel. And this was an important part of the lifecycle. There are no walls or pushy funnel tactics here. Customers aren’t treated like a “metric” or a “number.” We give them a path, and expect a journey, in which our role is to add value to their journey and guide them, without being annoying or pushy. Also, the beautiful part of this new story is that it all connects. Marketing done right should do just that. It should encourage the building of a community: that community should be inspired to tell others about you, which means that increased loyalty to your brand will grow your awareness, reach and traffic, which will continue to fuel growth continually.

The trend in the lifecycle going forward, I think, is that more brands will realize the need for live conversations with their prospects and use innovative apps like live on-site chat, messenger bots, and more. There will need to be a human at the other end serving the lead with the final call or conversation–a bot can’t fully replace a human. Gartner has said that by 2020, conversational marketing will be a recognized channel of B2B and B2C customer engagement and revenue, displacing a large combination of marketing, sales, and service activities.

This kind of marketing is not simple or easy, it is definitely advanced: but it is customer-centric. The types of brands that will win in tomorrow’s Marketing Lifecycle are those who invest in quality and take time and care to serve well at each stage. If your website, email marketing, authority-building blogging, Facebook ad retargeting, whitepapers, lead magnets, customer testimonials, serves your leads well and is set up well in a high-quality, congruent, value-focused manner, you’ll see results. Remember, your offers must be strong, and your CTAs present but unobtrusive. Your team members must serve your clients well, and your products must be amazing. Invest without hesitation to build strength at each stage of the lifecycle. Your leads will feel better served and you’ll get far better results than trying to half-ass your way through these stages.

A customer-centric lifecycle is recommended by @ardath421 via @marketo. Learn more about how a Marketing Lifecycle will replace the traditional #sales funnel on @JuliaEMcCoy's blog Click To Tweet The Marketing Lifecycle concept gives brands a way to look at leads as something other than a 'lead.' Here's the thing: our leads are humans. But the typical sales funnel doesn't remind us of that. @JuliaEMcCoy #ContentMarketingTrends Click To Tweet The 4 stages of the Marketing Lifecycle: 1. Awareness 2. Interest & Intent 3. Decision 4. Loyalty One of the biggest factors @JuliaEMcCoy recommends for moving leads from intent -> decision is: conversations. Click To Tweet Have more conversations with your leads. Talk about the conversations you've had in your boardroom with executives and team members. @JuliaEMcCoy on #MarketingLifecycle Click To Tweet

Download the three stages as a PDF – no email required.

2. Content That Wins Love and Trust

Now that we got that big whammy out of the way, here’s my second most important content marketing prediction.

Trust-based content is going to be the Content Leader (King, Queen, you-name-it) in 2019.

Authenticity, the founder’s real backstory (from failures to successes), transparency in the executive team, and real-life anecdotes on company blogs – those will win buyer trust in the content calendar for 2019.

In other words, be real. Be realer than you’ve ever been, and don’t be afraid of the “TMI” barrier. People–your readers and buyers–want to hear your transparency and your failures, maybe even more than they want to read about the award you won or the tradeshow you sponsored.

Let’s tell real stories.

Be real in the company blog. Tell stories. This and four other #contentmarketing musts as you go into 2019, via @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

More than ever, great, unique content isn’t just about presenting your audience with factual research, opinions, or comprehensive information in an amazing format.

It’s about human connection. And how better to bridge that gap than through telling real stories?

In 2019, traffic and leads will go to brand leaders and marketers who focus on winning their audience’s love and trust. Those two things are what truly build engagement and bring a community together.

What wins love and trust? A few things:

No-holds-barred creativity (Typeform won a CMA award for this crazy-creative blog and audio post featuring the voice of ‘Siri’)
Originality and fresh thinking (this blog post we did on a ‘Thanksgiving spread‘ was well-received with our audience)
The highest quality (this post helped establish us in the SEO industry and is over 4,500 words and took weeks of time)
An audience-first mentality (your customer should come first in your content)

The mechanics of building great content (format, style, structure, platforms) are common knowledge by now. To build those relationships, a bigger factor to nail in your content is WHY you do it.

WHY should the consumer choose you and not the other guy?

There is SO MUCH content produced daily:

Over 3 million blog posts

Source: worldometers.com

Over 250 million posts on Facebook per hour
Nearly 500,000 tweets per minute on Twitter

Source: domo.com

Standing out will keep getting harder.

And harder.

So, instead of just publishing great content, marketers will need to push themselves further to create content that earns that love and trust – stuff with deep originality, fresh angles on old topics, imaginative ideas, and a big dose of fun.

This trend is already reflected in the data. The majority of marketers (56%) are reporting that content creation is the one area where they have overwhelmingly increased spending, according to CMI’s Benchmark report for 2019.

Source: CMI

Of course, you don’t necessarily need to increase your budget to increase your originality – instead, think about increasing your commitment, care, and dedication to serving your audience. Love and respect them, and you may just get that in return.

3. Content Backed by a Strategy

Content marketing is no longer in its infancy. The experimentation phase is at an end – we know what works and what doesn’t.

So, what consistently wins? Content marketing backed by a strategy.

In fact, this trend is one reason I launched my Content Strategy & Marketing Course.

In past years, many marketers were not aware of the need for a content strategy. That’s changing – the 2019 CMI report findings show a staggering 81% are now aware of this need, including why it’s important.

The top benefits of a content strategy include:

Content strategy helps align content marketing teams around the agreed-upon mission/goals (81%)
A great content strategy makes it a lot easier to figure out which types of content to develop/produce (81%)
Content strategy keeps the team focused on documented content priorities (73%)

Strategy-wise, things will keep growing, growing, growing – both the need and the awareness for the need!

And, as brands and businesses get wise to strategy, including how to use it effectively, content marketing’s worth will grow, too.

Remember when the predicted industry worth was around $300 billion by 2019? Now market researchers are saying it will be worth upwards of $400 billion by 2021.

Incredible.

4. Marketing Will Become Content Marketing

As early as a decade ago, content marketing was a totally new idea. Thus, it was often a side project or experiment for marketers.

Source: CMI

Today, the script has flipped. Content marketing is edging out what we think of as “traditional” marketing. Pretty soon, when people mention “marketing,” they’ll mean content marketing – and vice-versa.

It’s happening because consumer preferences and attitudes are not what they once were.

Salesy tactics are now equivocated with the word “slimy.” They make consumers feel uncomfortable, and they don’t fool anyone.

Content marketing is edging out what we think of as 'traditional' marketing. Pretty soon, when people mention 'marketing,' they’ll mean content marketing – and vice-versa, via @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

According to Marketing Land and Blockmetry, 32.4% of ALL internet pageviews are impacted by ad-blocking software. On mobile devices, that number is three times higher: 62.9% of mobile pageviews are affected by ad blockers.

Today, consumers want the power. More than that, they HAVE the power to research the right brands for them, connect with those brands, and buy from those brands. They’ll ignore the rest of the “noise” – pushy ads, intrusive pop-ups, and slimy sales calls.

Creating valuable content that meets the consumer’s real need acknowledges their power and gives them that choice of connecting with you or not.

It’s respectful marketing. It’s not slimy. It’s what today’s consumers want.

Today and tomorrow's marketing is respectful marketing. It’s not slimy. It’s what today’s consumers want. @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

5. Retargeting People Who Know, Like, and Trust You

Another trend that goes hand in hand with content marketing: retargeting.

This process taps into the segment of your audience who have seen your content, like your content, and like YOU, but may not have acted on any of that yet.

Wordstream gives a quick visual of how retargeting works in general:

Source: Wordstream

Sometimes “retargeting” and “remarketing” are used interchangeably to refer to the same process. In general, the only difference between each strategy is the platform you use to carry them out. (Remarketing, for instance, is usually done with email.)

According to Wordstream, conversion rates actually increase the more times a user sees an ad AFTER they have visited your site:

Retargeting only targets individuals who have some kind of relationship with you already. Plus, if you do it on platforms where they expect ads, it’s not intrusive at all.

For example, you could add low-spend ads to your budget to retarget people who have engaged with you on Facebook.

AdEspresso has some great strategies for retargeting on Facebook to try. First, you need to install a Facebook pixel on your site.

Then, you can create a custom audience to retarget based on which pages they visited, how recently they visited, and more factors.

Screenshot via AdEspresso

This ad strategy ties neatly into your content marketing because it gently reminds visitors that you exist and they have shown interest in your brand in the past. This is sure to be a bigger trend in 2019 alongside the continued rise of content marketing.

How to Win with Content Marketing in 2019: Stay Ahead of Trends

Want to win with content in 2019? You need to know the trends, sure – but you also need to know how to stay ahead of them.

Follow this guide and use it to propel your brand/clients to the top of the content heap. Most importantly, keep pivoting your strategy. Stay light on your feet and agile enough to make changes as necessary to your marketing.

No marketing plan will ever stay static. Make sure the ability to grow is baked into your strategy, and you’ll have a much bigger, better chance at success.

Need great content? You know who to call.

We’re up for a 2018 B2B Marketing Zone Award! Will you help vote?

November 17, 2018/7 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

As many of you know (or may not know), I’ve been a columnist over at Content Marketing Institute since March 2015.

It’s one of my most favorite guest platforms to write for on this planet. Content Marketing Institute and their people are close to my heart (as evidenced by my trips to CMWorld ’17 and ’18, respectively).

I spend a great deal of time brainstorming and creating my submissions for CMI. My guide on high-performing content even made it to their 15-most shared posts of all time.

This week I was notified that one of my Content Marketing Institute articles is currently a finalist in the B2B Marketing Zone 2018 MVP Awards in the Content Marketing category! Their panel of judges have determined that my writing is insightful, useful, thought leadership and worthy of the title of Most Valuable Post. Woohoo! What an incredible honor to hear this.

Like @ExpWriters content? Vote and help @JuliaEMcCoy win a 2018 #B2B Award for Most Valuable Post in Content Marketing! Hurry - deadline is December 5! Click To Tweet

We’re up for a 2018 B2B Marketing Zone Award! Will you help vote?

At this point, the B2B Marketing Zone has slated my article next to several others. To win, I need your help. If you enjoy what I do, like reading my blog and getting our newsletters, could you take a moment to vote? (Winners will be announced on December 5th, so you need to get your vote in before then!)

Yes? Great!!

Go here:

B2B Marketing Zone Awards 2018

Then, click on mine to “check” the box next to it and vote:

b2b award express writers

You’ll need to sign up, but it only takes a few moments and you don’t have to “check” the box to subscribe to the publication’s updates if you don’t want to.

Thank you so much, in advance!

– Julia

5 Skills You Need to Succeed as a Digital Marketing Consultant

November 7, 2018/43 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

The digital age has changed the way we do everything, and that includes the way we basically work, shop, and live.

Shopping has changed as the biggest retailers fall to e-commerce giants. Work environments and positions have changed as remote positions are becoming more plentiful.

It was inevitable that marketing would change as more companies saw the value of a digital, content-based approach to advertising.

But what exactly does this mean for job seekers? If you’re a digital marketing consultant (or you aspire to be one), what specifically should you know? And how can you keep building up your skill set in the key areas your future employers will look for?

Today, we’re going to look at the skillsets needed by the modern-day digital marketing consultant.

That’s right, skillsets – because there’s more than one area you need to master.

Even with an overlap, it is important to have a distinct grasp of each.

From content marketing to SEO to social media marketing, there are several areas you should study and know to improve your standing as a real, worthwhile, money-makin’ digital marketing expert.

Let’s explore.

Learn 5 critical skills you need to succeed as a #marketing consultant today Click To Tweet

Why Pursue a Job as a Digital Marketing Consultant?

Before we delve into the specific areas you need to study before you can become a viable digital marketer, let’s take a brief look at why it is important.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely already considering a career as a digital marketing consultant. You may even have some past experience in similar roles. But why should you continue on that way? Well for starters, there’s the job security. Check out this graphic from the Content Marketing Institute.

A whopping 91 percent of B2B marketers surveyed in that study use content marketing. That’s job security if we ever saw it – but the proof just keeps piling up. According to The Drum, content marketing is expected to be worth $412.88 billion in 2021. For reference, it was sitting just below $200 billion back in 2016.

When you’re looking to hone your skills and find digital marketing consultant jobs, you can expect an easier time finding work opportunities than many other professions under the business/marketing umbrella. But those opportunities are just that – opportunities.

They’re chances, and chances you must make the most out of. How can you do that? By taking a refined approach to improving your digital marketing consultant skillsets.

What’s a good digital marketing consultant job description? The mission is simple – use digital channels to help companies reach their customers. You’ll study the market, gain data-driven insights, and combine it with a creative mind for marketing to help your employer reach prospective leads.

The complexity comes in as you try to master all the associated skillsets you need for the job. We’ll discuss the bigger ones and go over how they overlap.

What Skills Should You Master? 5 Marketing Focuses to Study

1. Content Marketing: Your All-Purpose Lead-Generation Tool

The definition of content marketing can vary depending on where you look, but the premise is always the same. It involves planning and creating digital content to help a company connect with prospective buyers.

Content marketing could involve creating blogs, writing copy for websites, drafting long-term content plans, and much more. Check out this graphic from Timecamp to get a loose idea for your content marketing hierarchy.

The three-step process they reference involves creating big content, splitting it up into smaller parts, and then marketing those parts across digital channels. As we can see, there are a lot of steps to the content marketing process with plenty of overlap.

Digital marketing consultant jobs often call for you to combine your skills. Don’t get caught up on each individual aspect of the pyramid, as we’ll cover some of those topics individually later on our list.

But the point is that marketing in the digital age is about content. Quality, honest, informative, entertaining content can do a lot more for your clients than any type of marketing trick or “overnight” fix ever will. The only thing that happens overnight with get-promoted-quick schemes is usually the other party making off with your money!

It’s also important to remember that quality content works best in perpetuity. Clients need a consistent flow of good content to keep prospective leads coming in. Whether you’re planning it out or creating it yourself, that’s where you’ll come in as their marketing consultant.

2. SEO: Master It, and Master What Comes After

Search-engine optimization is one of the focal points of content marketing and digital marketing in general. Your mastery of search algorithms is important. But what’s even more important is how you integrate that mastery into your client’s content.

If you hope to land a nice juicy digital marketing consultant salary, you’ll need to work for a successful client. Companies that are the most successful are the ones that keep up-to-date on what they’re customers are asking for. Luckily, search engines make it easier than ever to see what exactly people want.

This graphic from ImForza shows some startling statistics. The second one is startling for the fear of tech monopolies – but that’s another topic for another day. The stat actually shows us how much we can learn by analyzing Chrome search results. And the first stat speaks for itself – if you want to bring in traffic from search engines, you need to master SEO.

Tools like SEMrush and KWFinder can be useful for helping you determine which keywords and phrases offer the biggest potential returns. But the real key for using these words and phrases to their maximum impact lies in doing so organically.

Create content that reads well, and that sounds natural when read aloud. With enough keywords in content like this, you’ll be able to generate traffic, leads, and ultimately revenue for your employer.

3. Social Media Marketing: Promote Your Content Where It Counts

There’s no denying that social media, for better or worse, is a massive part of our world in the digital age. Luckily, we don’t have to worry about the gossip side of these platforms, which can get a little cringe-y. Instead, we get to delve into the marketing opportunities they offer – which are diverse and profitable.

Social media marketing isn’t about making an account on every platform out there and hoping for the best. Instead, it’s about choosing carefully and going where you can best reach your audience.

What does your audience look like, in terms of their place in life and how the company you work for can help them? Check out this sample persona from Hubspot:

Making up these types of personas may be your job as a digital marketing consultant, or it could fall on someone in your department. Once you have this data, you can use it to discover where your audience is most likely to be, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform.

Remember how we said content marketing and SEO would overlap with some other skillsets on this list? Once you have your social media platforms and audience pinpointed, you can start sharing your content (blogs, web pages, graphics, etc.) with them.

The important thing is putting it all together, and part of that involves making sure you master the promotional aspect of digital marketing with a good grasp on social media.

4. Staying Active: Blogging, Personal Social Media, and More

This is a skill set that some marketers tend to overlook. But let’s say you’re looking to be a digital marketing consultant freelance or temporarily, and your interviewer asks to see samples of your work. What do you show them?

Portfolio? Yes, that’s a great start. Links to published pieces? Great, that shows you’re an accomplished marketer. But there are also benefits to having your own personal investments in content marketing such as a dedicated blog and social media page.

It’s also important to be ready for an interview during your job. Kipp Bodnar, the CMO at Hubspot, has a terrific list of 14 Interview Questions to Ask Marketing Job Candidates — if you want to be ready for a serious opportunity like Hubspot would offer, this is a great list of questions to read through and get ready to answer.

When you blog regularly and stay active on social media about your industry, you show employers you’re not only looking for a job – you’re looking for a career. You take the step from being a person who works in marketing to becoming a full-fledged digital marketer.

5. Staying Active: Researching, Education, and Training

Being active as a digital marketer is so important, it made the list twice – but how? While blogging and posting on social media is important, so is being a student of the game.

Check out this graphic from Smart Insights about content strategy.

How does strategy factor into research, education, and training within your field? Digital marketing changes as digital channels change – which is, practically, all the time? If you’re looking to develop a good career as a contracted or independent digital marketing consultant, you’ll need to be on the cusp of your industry.

Continue your training constantly by reviewing new material, reading case studies, and analyzing fresh statistics. You can learn new things all the time and, thus, create more profitable strategies for your employer. Whether you’re discovering a new way to promote content on social media or a better way to make your grammar flow, improvement is easy when you’re always learning.

How about a specific digital marketing course you can use to hone your skills? There are plenty out there, some free and some paid, each offering its own level of return. The question you have to ask yourself beforehand is how much is a profitable digital marketing consultant career worth to you?

Improve Your Skillsets with a Content Strategy Marketing Course

If you’re in the market to learn more about a variety of marketing skills in a single, concise course, check out our flagship Content Strategy & Marketing 6-week Course.

I compiled a great assortment of resources that I used to launch my own agency into a seven-figure success story.

Here’s what you can expect with this course:

The question to ask yourself is simple – how much are marketing skills worth to you and your potential future employers? $1,000? $10,000? Remember, when you’re a career marketer who is spending money on training materials, you’re making an investment in your future.

A high-quality training course from a reputable organization can look great on your resume. It’s the perfect way to complement a college degree without requiring you to accrue six-figure student loan debt.

With a course like this one, you get a full series of lessons, individual mentorship, and a great learning environment – it’s all the things you’d expect in a marketing class but without the headache of fighting the morning commute to get to a university.

Honing Your Skills for Success as a Digital Marketing Consultant

Digital marketing isn’t the future – it’s the present, and it is only going to become more important as time goes on.

Popular channels like search engines and social media platforms are the go-to sources companies need to delve into for traffic. Your skillsets should include a firm grasp on content marketing, which can be used to reach users through multiple internet avenues. You should also understand SEO from both a technical and functional perspective.

Throw in a mastery of social media and your digital marketing repertoire is almost complete. Don’t forget to stay active in your industry through blogging, social media posting, and of course, continued education.

Digital marketing consultant jobs can be fun, engaging, and a great living. If you have the right skills, you can pay the bills as an all-purpose digital marketing sensation.

short term vs long term content marketing guide

When Will My Content Return on Success? The Truth About Short-Term vs. Long-Term Success in Content Marketing

October 30, 2018/20 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

“I blog all the time and I’m not seeing any traffic — why bother?”

Okay, there’s a lot wrong with that sentence.

First of all, define “all the time.”

Does that mean every few months, every month, weekly, daily — hourly?

The fact is — and you can quote me on this — the truth about how long it takes to get noticed in your content marketing… hurts.

The Painful Truth About Content Marketing ROI — and Why You Should Grin and Bear It Anyway

The honest-to-goodness truth about content marketing ROI is you’re not going to see content success the moment you press the launch button on your website and post your first blog.

In fact, you’re not going to see success with your content in the first month — and maybe not even in the first year, depending on your post frequency (and the quality of your content, of course).

Nope.

If you’re looking for a significant return on investment (ROI), then you NEED to be in it for the long haul.

In fact, this study from HubSpot outlines the magic number quite clearly — it’s around 400.

After approximately 400 blog posts, HubSpot’s statistics showed that traffic just about doubles.

For the savvy content marketer, that means you need to be prepared to deliver consistent, long-form content to drive the results you desire.

Publishing content consistently but not seeing any positive results? @JuliaEMcCoy discusses the truth about short-term vs. long-term success in #contentmarketing in this blog post #contentroi Click To Tweet

And when I say consistent, I mean you have to have an editorial calendar and stick to it.

No ping-ponging around with posts — posting twice a week one week, skipping a week, then posting again.

I know, it’s not easy.

Even Content Marketing Institute has found that more than half of marketers struggle with it.

And yet, visitors want reliable, consistent, frequent updates — that’s what drives traffic. So, if you want the traffic, you’ll need to buckle down and find a schedule you can adhere to.

Now, back to posting frequency. To get that traffic revving, you’ll need to not only be consistent — but frequent — with your posts.

It’s a proven fact that companies that posted 16 or more pieces of content per month had 4.5 times more leads than those who posted 0-4 times.

Companies that post 16 or more pieces of content monthly have 4.5x more leads than those who publish 0-4x/month. @Hubspot Click To Tweet

And that just makes sense, since all that posting means these businesses are providing their sites with four times the indexing and backlinking opportunities.

You just need to be sure that all those posts are contributing high-quality content in order to keep visitors — and Google — happy.

That means that even posting once a week, which many bloggers do, is likely to keep you in the realm of blogging hobbyists who don’t expect high traffic.

So once you’ve decided you’re serious about moving forward with your content marketing, you’ll need to determine your goals.

Want the maximum traffic? Consider publishing 4 posts a week, which will bring you up into that high-traffic-driving stratosphere.

Looking for slower but steady growth? Consider 2-3 posts per week.

If you don’t mind taking it very slowly, posting once per week is fine. Just keep in mind it will take you more than a year to see a significant jump in traffic.

Once you’ve got your frequency and consistency down pat, you’ll need to concentrate on the meat-and-potatoes portion of success — and that’s your content itself.

What's the recommended posting frequency for #contentroi success? @JuliaEMcCoy shares her insights, plus studies from @hubspot @cmicontent @backlinko @unbounce and others #contentmarketingroi Click To Tweet

Long-Form Content Provides Consistent Success

Content return on success is not just about churning out random thoughts in 500-word posts. You have to consistently provide visitors long-form, comprehensive content that’s relevant to their needs.

Multiple studies have proved this, and we’re a case study on this (stats on our own content marketing ROI coming up soon).

To underscore the importance of this, BuzzSumo studied more than 100 million articles and found the posts most likely to be shared were over 3,000 words long.

Image: Search Engine Journal

And high rankings were tied to long-form content in a Backlinko study that examined more than a million blog posts.

Of course, it’s not just the quantity that counts — it’s quality, too.

Higher-Quality Content Brings Higher Content Marketing ROI

Seems intuitive, right?

And yet so many people miss this critical part of the content ROI equation. That’s why I conducted a case study using my own company as a benchmark.

Why?

Because Express Writers has managed to pull down six-figure earning months on the basis of our content alone.

We did it by publishing over 1,000 blog posts with consistent, long-form content over six years. Yes, you read that right — six years. As of this post, we’re at 1,142 blog posts, total.

That content, which is published weekly along with a few podcasts with notes and recaps from our #ContentWritingChat, costs us about $1,600 per month.

It’s a very long time, a lot of investment, and a lot of content — but worth every minute of the hard work.

If we bought that kind of traffic versus generating it ourselves, it would set us back a mind-blowing $66,700.

But just by rolling up our sleeves and finding ways we could provide serious benefit for our reading audience, we were able to create a business that frequently breaks the six-figure threshold in a month — while spending under $2K.

Of course, as I mentioned, our content isn’t just long, it’s high quality — and that’s what you need to strive for.

E-A-T Your Words — How to Create High-Quality Content to Win at Content ROI

High-quality content needs to adhere to Google’s quality rater guidelines, which require that it’s got a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T), a nice dollop of main content with a helpful title, and achieves a purpose for the page on which it’s hosted.

For just $1,600 per month, Express Writers generates monthly traffic that's worth a whopping $66,700. @JuliaEMcCoy shares how we do it in this blog post about #contentroi Click To Tweet

Sounds like a tall order, right? It’s easier than you think, as long as you break it down into bite-sized chunks, as follows:

1. Create Unique and Useful Content

Nobody wants to read the same old information turned around and spit back out in a different format.

According to Social Media Examiner’s recent report, more than half of marketers say people want content that’s unique and useful.

And Google’s watching, too. If you publish something really lackluster, they’ll call you on it.

Image: Google Support

If you’re not going to come up with original, useful content — just stop. Content marketing is not for you.

But if you’re on fire to share actionable, relevant tips with the people who need to know them, then step on up — and reap the benefits.

Here are some critical ways you can create and share long-form content that will have your readers coming back for more, post after post.

2. Give Them Data-Driven Information

You don’t have to write content that’s full of numbers and equations, but readers are looking for information that is provable, factual, and can help them draw conclusions.

To increase social shares, put some of the data in an infographic.

In fact, infographics are a great way to share actionable material that provides real benefit to readers.

Check out this great one from Unbounce, a literal 6-month guide to online marketing in free content form:

Image: Unbounce

That image is just the tip of the iceberg — the infographic actually “unfolds” like a brochure (and you can get it as a PDF for convenience). Here’s the first part:

The information presented is attractive, data-oriented, and actionable — checking lots of boxes for visitors that are hungry for unique and useful stuff.

The ROI on this guide was and is huge, too — Oli Gardner’s team has told me it actually served to build their brand and was a fundamental piece that got their brand rolling in the early days. (Unbounce’s Content Director Dan Levy was one of my guest instructors for the Content Strategy & Marketing Course.)

3. Build Trust and Authority

If you’re creating unique and useful data-driven content, it just follows that — eventually — you’ll be seen as an expert in your industry.

Short-form or long-form content? @JuliaEMcCoy discusses #contentmarketingsuccess in this new blog post, with studies from @hubspot @cmicontent @backlinko @buzzsumo and more #contentroi Click To Tweet

To encourage visitors to keep coming back for more, establish a relationship with your community through a response/comments section in your blog or by providing relatable, actionable examples.

One way we do this at Express Writers is by sharing case studies of our experiences to help other content marketers adjust their strategies for better content ROI.

We also put a strong focus on being relevant and authentic because we know that’s what people want. No more burying sales pitches in cleverly designed content pieces — it just doesn’t work.

Image: Express Writers

Remember, your content isn’t all about driving results. It’s also about sharing your passion for your industry and providing real service to your readers.

The results (read: content marketing ROI) are just what happens when you create and share truly good stuff.

Content marketing ROI happens when you create and share truly good stuff. @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

If this is your mindset the next time you sit down to craft a piece of content for your site, you can’t help but create something that will inspire and engage your audience — and increase your content marketing ROI by default.

The Long — and Short — of It

So, you want content marketing success, right? Then you now have every tool you need to take action and make it happen.

You understand posting frequency and how posting more often helps increase your traffic.

You’re definitely down with the fact that it might take up to 400 posts before you start seeing that jump in hits, but you also know that like anything good in life, the waiting’s worth it.

And, you totally get that making the effort to create fantastic, long-form content is exactly what’s needed to engage, educate, and build an authentic relationship with your audience.

Short-form content is just not going to cut it for posts that create movement, traffic, and revenue on your site. And sleazy sales tactics are definitely out of the picture.

So, sit back and start brainstorming those actionable, relevant long-form beauties. Whip out that editorial calendar and create a consistent schedule your readers can rely upon.

Dig through the data and come up with something really unique, unusual, and share-worthy.

And, in the process, discover that you’ll win a lot more than just content ROI with this strategy — you’ll also win trust and loyalty. And that’s priceless.

Your Nutshell Guide to Better Website Conversion Optimization: Boost Your Site’s Profitability With These Tips

October 18, 2018/26 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

Even if your content is killer, your conversion rates can still be lackluster.

*mic drop* 🎤

That’s because every tiny detail, including the surrounding content, sidebars, header images, and links (let’s call them the “peripheral stuff”), contribute to your user’s experience (UX, for short).

You may think these extraneous details have no bearing on the effect of your content, but they DO matter – a lot.

As it turns out, they can influence the user psychologically, especially if you cap your content with an ask or a call-to-action.

The surrounding stuff, the little details beyond the meat of your content/copy, can make your reader more or less likely to follow through with your CTA.

For example, did you know that something as simple as removing social login options (like Facebook) from a page resulted in increased conversions for a Norwegian cosmetics retailer?

It’s true. They did a split test, pitting one version of the page with a social login option against another version without it:

#1: The page with a Facebook login, above.

#2: The same page without the Facebook login.

The results? The one without the social login option (#2) earned a 3% increase in conversions and a spike in revenue for the company.

That’s exactly why website conversion optimization exists.

It’s there to help you create the version of your page that is most appealing to your customers/readers/audience and keeps them primed to act the way you want. In turn, this increases the likelihood of those people buying into your CTAs.

If your content is great but your UX sucks, you’ll have a harder time getting people to bite.

Websites that are harder to use due to off-putting ads, poor design choices, bloated copy (or not enough copy), and other UX mistakes are roadblocks to conversions.

The key is not to apply very specific tweaks that worked to increase conversions for another company. Everyone’s customers are different, so everyone’s data from split testing these optimization tweaks is totally subjective.

Instead, try implementing universally approved tactics, then test them to make sure they’re right for your audience.

We’ve rounded up a list of these universal approaches that pretty much work for everybody. Ready? Let’s break them down.

Read a nutshell guide to website conversion optimization and 5 data-backed methods to improve your site conversions, via @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

Your Guide to Website Conversion Optimization: 5 Data-Backed Ways to Improve Your Conversions

1. Use SSL Certificates/Trust Badges

One of the major ways to increase conversions on a page, especially a check-out or sales page, is to instill trust in your customers with the right elements.

If a customer is thinking about purchasing, they may already have some level of trust with you. In this case, you want to make that sales/check-out page help them cross the finish line.

Securing your site with an SSL certificate is one major way to build your trust and optimize your conversion rates. (Sometimes your web host will offer this as a service along with hosting your website.)

Take a look at how this appears on our site:

Or, for another example, here’s Amazon’s SSL-secured site:

Want to see a non-secured site? It doesn’t look as trustworthy, immediately right off the bat. This isn’t a good first impression:

Learn more in Google’s useful help article about SSL certificates.

You can also include a “trust badge” on the page. This little graphic is evidence your site is safe and secure as verified by an outside, trusted objective source.

Most of the time, these badges tell the consumer that your site uses SSL (secure sockets layer) technology to keep data like credit card numbers encrypted and safe. Others may simply signify a credible third party deems you trustworthy.

A good example: the Better Business Bureau, or BBB, has “Accredited Business” badges that show they have verified your company as trustworthy.

Here are some more examples of recognizable trust badges:

Using trust badges is a pretty fail-safe method because plenty of consumers are worried about the security of their information online.

According to a European study conducted by GlobalSign, 77% of internet users are worried about their data safety, including whether it will be misused or intercepted. Additionally, most people check for security indicators on web pages, whether it’s right before a purchase (24%), before handing out their details (48%), or just out of habit each time they visit a new website (21%).

People are rightly anxious about protecting their data, so addressing the underlying worry can help ease the way to more conversions, including completed check-outs.

Your website not converting? @JuliaEMcCoy discusses #websiteconversion #websiteoptimization in this nutshell guide to improving site conversions Click To Tweet

In fact, Blue Fountain Media showed how effective trust badges can be when they conducted a split test on their “request a quote” form.

One version of the form didn’t include a badge:

While a second version of the same form included a VeriSign seal:

The results: The version with the trust badge got 81% more form fill-outs than the one without it.

The takeaway: If you could instill more confidence in a user’s purchase or other action on your site, why wouldn’t you?

Get verified by a third party, or purchase SSL for your domain (DigiCert by Symantec is a good option.)
Slap a trust badge like an SSL certificate on pages where it makes sense
Test to see if it makes a difference in conversions

2. Use Pop-Ups Correctly for Better Website Conversion Optimization

There’s a lot of contention surrounding pop-ups. Do they help conversions? Do they hurt? There are arguments for both sides.

So, should you use pop-ups? Shouldn’t you? (Do you want to tear out your hair yet?)

Guess what:

The question is not whether you should use pop-ups.

The question is how you should use them if you go that route.

Your pop-ups could be killing your conversions. @JuliaEMcCoy shares her insights on #websiteconversion #websiteoptimization in this nutshell guide Click To Tweet

A. Avoid Intrusive Interstitials (or Risk Google’s Wrath)

What the heck are “interstitials” as related to pop-ups?

Short answer: An interstitial is a period of time when your website content is supplanted by a promotional message.

Often, an interstitial looks like a pop-up that covers the entire screen. The user can’t see or access the content they were actually looking for until they respond to the interstitial, like so:

Things can get very sticky with interstitial pop-ups. The line between “quick grab for your attention” and “intrusive” is thinner than thin.

For mobile browsing, Google doesn’t want to see intrusive interstitials anywhere near your website. These are pop-ups that impede the user’s ability to access the content.

Google also stipulates when interstitials are okay:

You can use them responsibly if:

You need to fulfill a legal obligation (like verifying a user’s age)
You need users to log in to access parts of your site
You make sure your pop-ups are reasonably sized (read: not gargantuan) and are easily dismissable

For a full explanation of what you should and shouldn’t do regarding interstitials, check out this post on Search Engine Journal: 7 Tips for Using Pop-Ups without Harming Your SEO.

B. Time Your Pop-Ups Right

Perhaps the most important key to getting pop-ups right for more conversions is timing.

When and where your pop-ups pop up can make or break things for you.

According to Sumo’s analysis of 2 billion examples of pop-ups, the ones that converted the worst were rushed. That means they appeared too quickly, such as seconds after the page loaded.

In contrast, a well-timed pop-up can pay off… big time.

Here’s a great example Sumo supplies:

The pop-up below was timed to appear 15 seconds after a visitor started viewing an ebook product page. It offers a free download of the first chapter.

This pop-up has a 38.4% conversion rate, and it’s all because it literally pops up at the exact right time – when the user has had a chance to check out the product and get interested.

The takeaway: For pop-ups, timing is everything.

To discover the best time to launch your pop-up, Sumo recommends checking Google Analytics for the average time on page. For instance, maybe users spend an average of 20 seconds on your page before bouncing. Figure out how to sweeten the deal with a timed pop-up (maybe at the 15-second mark?) so they’ll want to follow through with whatever your CTA asks of them.

3. Entice Users with Buttons That Look Like Buttons

According to CrazyEgg, website users expect buttons. They look for buttons. They need buttons.

Why?

Because, since the dawn of the web (think the 1990s), this is how you interacted with web pages. When users see a button, they expect to take some form of action.

Here’s an example of good button design from a company who placed a PPC ad on Google for the keyword “buttons and website conversions.”

Obviously, they’re aiming for conversions themselves with this ad. The page, as such, lives up to expectations.

May I direct your attention to the CTA buttons on this landing page?

They’re big, colorful, rounded, and satisfyingly button-y.

Plus, when you hover your mouse over them, they change color.

I really want to click this button.

Landing pages without buttons are confusing. What am I supposed to click on?

Unsurprisingly (or maybe surprisingly), studies have shown that this logic holds up.

In a series of tests between pages with buttons that look like buttons and so-called “ghost buttons” (essentially transparent boxes with text in them), ConversionXL showed that users prefer the former over and over again.

For instance, in the first split test, users clicked on the ghost button version 20% less than the regular button.

Another case study from Unbounce shows more of the same. They tested two versions of CTA buttons: A rectangular version and a rounder, more button-y version.

The rounder version won by a landslide – it increased conversions by 35.81%.

The takeaway: When you create CTA buttons, make them look like a button! In other words, make them irresistible.

4. Keep Forms Simpler and Ask the Right Questions

Another piece of your website you can optimize for conversions is your form. Email sign-ups, surveys, check-out pages, and opt-in forms are all fair game.

To get the best conversions from your forms, the conventional wisdom is to keep them shorter.

At least, it was.

As this post from Venture Harbour argues, shorter does not necessarily mean better.

In this piece, the author examines 5 different case studies where other factors played a bigger role than length.

For instance, a case study from Marketing Experiments found that they didn’t need to shorten their form to increase conversions. They just needed to get rid of the copy on top of it:

The copy above the form in Version B reduced conversions, driving them down by 28%. That’s because visitors to this page were already highly motivated to fill out the form, and the copy got in the way. Form length didn’t matter.

In another case study from ConversionXL, they literally tested how form length would affect conversions.

They started with a form containing 9 fields. After whittling it down to 6 and testing the shorter form against the original, they found that conversions dropped by 14.23% with the shorter form.

What mattered more than form length? The type of questions they were asking.

In fact, after tweaking the form copy (but keeping the fields at 9 total), they saw a jump in conversions – 19.21%, to be exact.

The shorter form didn’t have the questions that users were interested in answering. The longer form kept them, but with rephrased copy that helped reduce any anxiety about filling it out.

The takeaway: The context of your form is critical to conversions. Do users expect to have to answer a lot of questions (like if they’re requesting a quote for services)? Or do they just want to get to a freebie download as quickly as possible?

This should come as no surprise, but your particular audience’s needs/expectations should determine the length of your forms. Just don’t get overly complicated, and ask the right questions.

5. Never Oversell

You know that icky feeling you get when a salesperson is desperately trying to wring money from your wallet?

You just want to be left alone to browse in peace, but they carry on with their sales pitch anyway. They’re either totally oblivious to your disinterest or too focused on the $$$ to care.

It turns out you can replicate that exact experience on a website. (Of course, that doesn’t mean you should.)

For example, when I recently visited a blog that usually serves up the good stuff, a pile of CTAs plus a few small pop-ups met me instead.

Where should the user’s attention go in this scenario? If you’re overwhelming them with asks before they can even read your content/start building trust, well…

That’s how you turn them off.

Overselling can backfire.

Instead, keeping the asks simple and focused can go a long way. Take another case study from ConversionXL, where they optimized a landing page for Truckers Report, a resource that hooks truck drivers up with better jobs.

Here’s the original page:

After drilling down and simplifying the page through a few tests, they arrived at a version that converted nearly 80% better than the original (and the original wasn’t that complicated, to begin with).

Sometimes, simpler is better. Just repeating your CTAs all over the place without thinking about UX won’t convince visitors to act. It will do the opposite.

The above example shows us that you don’t have to oversell to get the desired results.

The takeaway: Instead of adding more elements to your webpage to increase conversions, try taking some away, simplifying, and narrowing your CTA down to one well-placed option.

Just repeating your CTAs all over the place without thinking about UX won’t convince visitors to act. This and more #contentmarketing nuggets in @JuliaEMcCoy's nutshell guide to #websiteconversion #websiteoptimization Click To Tweet

Website Conversion Optimization: There’s No One-Size-Fits-All

Optimizing your website for maximum conversions isn’t a straightforward task.

There is no checklist with boxes to tick. There aren’t any “best practices” that work every single time, for every single webpage.

Instead, website conversion optimization will be totally unique for you or your clients. It depends on your brand, your website, and your customers.

The best first step for any website to optimize their conversions is not to look at what their peers are doing, but rather what their audience wants/needs/expects from their website, content, and web pages.

Start with providing the best user experience possible, and you’re on your way.

Why Your Content Isn’t Performing, and 6 Methods to Refocus on for Killer Results

October 9, 2018/31 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

Despite your best efforts, your content isn’t performing.

It might even be failing, and the reason(s) for it may remain elusive.

This is frustrating beyond belief, not to mention discouraging. (Head, meet desk.)

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You’ve heard over and over how successful content marketing can be (in CMI’s B2B Content Marketing Trends Report, 73% of respondents said their organization’s content marketing approach was either moderately or very successful) – so it’s even more disheartening when you can’t seem to get there yourself.

Luckily, content problems are common enough that we might be able to boil yours down to one or two (or a few) reasons why your content marketing creations aren’t working.

Read through these scenarios and see if any could apply to your content. Then, keep scrolling for tips to help you turn it all around so you see success the next time you roll up your sleeves to create.

Are you having trouble seeing results from your content marketing? Here are 6 methods to help you re-focus for killer results, via @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

Your content failure might have happened because…

1. Your KPIs and Content Expectations Don’t Match Up

If your content expectations versus the reality of your KPIs (key performance indicators) present two wildly different pictures, something is up.

Either your content is flat-out failing or your expectations are too unrealistic to achieve.

Both scenarios require a reassessment of your approach, whether your content needs an overhaul or your expectations need tweaking.

2. You Don’t Have a Strategy

If you’re creating content on an ad-hoc, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants basis, this could be the major reason why it isn’t performing.

Without a content strategy, you won’t have a roadmap that leads to achieving your goals. It’s exactly like driving on a dark road without any directions or headlights.

One of the major ways a strategy helps your content is by laying out how each of your pieces maps to the buyer’s journey.

When a customer is able to find the exact type of content they need at the exact sales stage they’re in, it helps them move steadily down the sales funnel – closer to a sale with your brand, in fact, since it’s your content they’re engaging with.

Without this mapping guiding your content creation, you’ll be taking wild guesses about what types of content will nurture leads and encourage conversions. It just won’t work.

3. You’re Overly Focused on Selling

Yes, your ultimate end goal is to get those conversions (traffic to leads, leads to sales), but you’re self-sabotaging if your focus is on selling your products/services, promoting your brand, or a mixture of the two.

Overly salesy content is a cause of death for any campaign because it moves toward being interruptive and valueless for the consumer rather than helpful, interesting, or educational.

Consumers (especially millennials and Generation Z) don’t like ads for a reason. They’re pushy, annoying, and can feel a bit slimy.

82% of Gen Z-ers say they skip ads whenever they can, according to a Kantar/Millwardbrown study.

Do you want to be seen as an authority in your field and a helpful advisor, or like a shady used car salesman? Promoting yourself too much in your content will lead to the latter, which turns people off.

4. You Aren’t Talking to the Right Audience

If publishing content feels like shouting in an empty room (*taps mic* — Is this thing on?), consider this:

Are you speaking to the right crowd?

Content targeted at the right people is more likely to hit its mark.

The people you need to talk to are the ones who will care about what you have to offer, whether that’s your knowledge, your brand, or your products/services.

If your content isn’t connecting, it might be because you’re throwing bananas at horses or apples at monkeys.

6 Tactical Tips to Turn Your Content Marketing Around

1. Study Up on Your Audience, Then Write FOR Them

If your content isn’t performing, you should take a hard look at your target audience and buyer personas.

Are they still relevant? Or are they off the mark?

Go back and do your research. Do surveys, interviews, and polls with your customers and social media followers. Look at who your competition is targeting. Reassess who your brand ultimately seeks to help with content.

Michelle Linn has a great method to help you refocus on your correct audience: Ask yourself who you can help rather than wondering who you can target.

Once you have an updated handle on your audience, write your content FOR them.

Put yourself in their shoes.
Speak their language. Imagine talking to them across a dinner table and what you would say.
Address their fears, pain points, desires, and questions.

A good exercise to try if you struggle with content that’s too self-promotional: Eliminate all uses of pronouns like “I,” “we,” and “us.” Instead, use “you” and “your.”

2. Research and Capitalize on a Trending Topic

If you understand your audience well, yet regularly hit “publish” and hear nothing but crickets chirping, you need to start getting more eyes on your content.

You can easily do this by jumping on a trending topic. Their impact is fleeting, but it can be big once it hits.

To find one:

Check industry news.
Look at top posts on competitor sites and search for patterns.
Check BuzzSumo for current trending topics in your niche.

You need to be quick to find a hot topic and get related content pushed out in a timely manner, but it can be worth the time crunch for the traffic potential alone. Plus, these types of pieces are great lead-ins or introductions to your brand for that all-important awareness phase of the sales cycle.

3. Return to Start and Put a Content Strategy in Place

If your content creation is willy-nilly, unorganized, or undocumented, stop.

Do not pass “go.”

You needed a strategy yesterday.

Reaching any type of goal requires a plan of action. Especially if your goal is content that performs and leads to profitable results.

For content marketing, the plan of action that helps guide you to ROI is a content strategy.

The most current research in the Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Report shows that the majority of the most successful content marketers have a strategy in place (62%). Meanwhile, among the least successful marketers, only 16% have a strategy.

This is no coincidence. A strategy gives you all the tools you need for your content to perform.

Period.

4. Stop Using Too Much Industry Jargon

Another reason your content might be falling flat?

Your tone or style might not be gelling well with your audience (see point #2).

If you’re not writing for your audience in a way that connects with them, it doesn’t matter how well you know your targets or how interesting/useful your topic – a wonky tone throws everything off.

A prime example is peppering your sentences and paragraphs with too much jargon.

For instance, if you are writing content aimed at cancer patients for the medical industry, you don’t want to overuse a term like “malignant fibrous histiocytoma” without explaining what it means in layman’s terms. (It’s bone cancer.)

The paragraph below is not aimed at patients. However, if you write content full of industry jargon like this and it’s not intended for your peers, it’s time to get simpler, more general, and less formal.

Screenshot via Medscape

5. Trim the Fat from Your Content (or Get an Editor)

Another way to alienate readers and throw off your content performance is to stuff it full of fluff.

Phrases like the ones below are unnecessarily long, wordy, or redundant. They all have simpler alternatives that are easier to read, as Grammarly has shown:

Filler words and phrases decrease the overall value of your content. They stuff your pieces full of hot air and make them harder to read.

When you create content that’s concise, you don’t hem and haw. You get to the point(s) quicker, which gives the audience the satisfaction they crave.

Uncoincidentally, that leads to our next point.

6. Tell Them Why They Should Care

In high school or college, you probably wrote essays and papers in a specific format. The introduction was where you announced your topic and told your readers where you were taking them.

That’s still a good practice, but one major piece is missing for online writing: the point.

In most college essays, you save the main point for your conclusion, where you hammer it home.

Doing this in your content is a sure method to make any reader lose interest right away. Since their attention span is fleeting, they need the “why” to smack them in the face.

Why should they keep reading?
What’s in it for them?
How does the content apply to their concerns, desires, needs, fears, etc.?

If you can hand your reader the “why” right away, they’ll be more likely to keep reading, which can improve your content performance.

If Your Content Is on Life Support, Don’t Give Up

Even if your content is underperforming (or lying on its back with its legs in the air), there’s still hope.

Take the opportunity to analyze what might have gone wrong, then make an effort to fix it.

Update old content pieces that never realized their potential, keeping the above tips in mind. Brainstorm and work hard to be super creative – that will help you stand out a lot.

Be gentle on yourself. Progress takes time.

And don’t give up.

You can do great content.

Need an extra helping hand? Check out our content pricing here.

12 Creative Content Lessons From One of the Most Popular Superhero Movies Ever (Batman)

September 25, 2018/56 Comments/in Content Marketing /by Julia McCoy

If you’re a content marketer, I’d bet you feel nothing like Batman. Your utility belt might be full of data, LinkedIn connections and long to-do lists, instead of throwable weapons. And, your dress code might be business casual instead of black leather combat suits.

But there’s a ton that you can learn from the Dark Knight Rises.

Let’s face it: coming up with creative content ideas are tough, but they’re important for keeping marketing efforts fresh and for connecting with those hard-to-reach leads.

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Unique content marketing ideas can cover a wide variety of topics. They can include the services you offer, the strategies you use to grow your business, the way you come up with content topics, and much more.

Today on the blog, we’re taking in some content marketing inspiration from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Specifically, the final entry, the Dark Knight Rises, offering a fitting end to an epic trio of films.

Image from imdb.com

(Heads up: this blog will contain spoilers from the movie!)

Brimming with brooding imagery and packed full of powerful themes like pain, triumph, and redemption, it’s an inspirational film. It should be – it grossed $1.08 billion at the box office, and ranks as one of the most popular films of all time.

If you’re looking for content marketing ideas in 2018, we’ve got you covered. Here we go – inspired by the caped crusader’s third appearance on the big screen under Nolan’s guidance: a dozen unique content marketing ideas to inspire your next campaign.

(Sadly, calling yourself Batman in a raspy tone doesn’t make our list. Unless you’re Batdad.)

Read 12 unique #contentmarketing ideas to inspire your next campaign, inspired by a certain caped crusader’s third appearance on the big screen. @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

Learn from Batman: Try These 12 Creative Content Ideas & Strategies

1. Keep Up With Current Trends & Pull Topic Inspiration from One Hot Trend

As the film begins, things look much different from the end of part two. Bruce Wayne is a recluse, hidden from the public eye. But even he kept up with what was going on around him.

Content marketers should do the same. Not a social butterfly? Not one to chase down trending topics in your spare time? Learn to, for the sake of your clients. As always, base your research on your clients and their industries.

CMI: The Content Marketing Institute offers great content (obviously) as well as educational resources, print materials, and even special events.
Smart Blogger: From beginner tips to certification courses, Smart Blogger offers great tools to help you be creative with your content.
OkDork: Along with great blogs, OkDork offers you videos and guides to help improve your marketing skills.

Wondering how to apply “current trends” to “new content marketing idea”?

Let’s say you write blogs for a mattress company. Think about ideas relevant to the time of year. For example, where to buy cheap mattresses for freshmen headed off to college in the summer or fall.

2. Learn What Topic Ideas Work (and Don’t Work)

“Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Thomas Wayne uttered that famous line at the beginning of the trilogy.

A big part of success is learning what works – and what doesn’t. If you discover topics that bring traffic and engagement, you’re on the right track. BuzzSumo shares a great graphic about content and topic planning.

But what if your idea checks all the boxes but still doesn’t work?

Use it as a learning experience – knowing what hasn’t worked is just as important.

We’re reminded of it in the third film, and it’s true in every aspect of life – including content marketing. Why do we fail? So we can learn to succeed.

3. Choose Today’s Relationships Carefully for Better Future Results

Batman seemingly had his mojo back before he ran into Bane and ended up with a serious back problem as a result.

All because he trusted a cat burglar – in hindsight, maybe not the wisest move.

Marketers must choose their relationships carefully. Your clients, employees, partners – every node in your network can impact life as a content marketer.

If you’re looking to create B2B content marketing ideas, base yourself in an industry you know well.

It will be easier to find clients you can offer greater ROI to.

Don’t feel bad if not all relationships work out. Remember, by the end of the film, Batman was betrayed by two women. Even the world’s greatest detective can miss warning signs.

4. Consult Proven Experts for Content Strategy Guidance

If Master Wayne would’ve listened to his sagely wise butler, Alfred, he could’ve avoided a backbreaker that puts pro wrestling to shame. But he underestimated Bane and paid the price.

As content marketers, we can draw inspiration from the experts. This transcends just seeing what topics they choose and how they structure content. How do they achieve consistent success? How do they operate thriving agencies?

Look them up, read their work, and consider what they have to say. Your spine may not depend on it, but your income could!

5. Don’t Let Success Make You Stagnant

While beating down Batman, Bane even found time to talk trash – telling the Dark Knight he had lost his strength after years of peace.

Check out this graphic about how fast the content marketing industry is changing:

Our industry is constantly changing. Even if you’ve found great success, don’t become stagnant in your approach. (Learn more about how we blog in a fresh, inspiring way that nets 99% of our leads and income at Express Writers.)

There are plenty of ways to keep your content fresh.

Choose hot button topics, create weekly blogs, or even ask your readers what they’d like to see.

It’s a great way to try something fresh without diving head-first into new territory – like Batman dived right into Bane’s lair. We all know how that turned out.

6. Return to What Originally Made You Great

Content marketing is hard, but our habits can make it harder. Sometimes we spread ourselves too thin. We want to do anything and everything, when less is often more.

Remember how part of Batman’s return involved bracing his wounded appendages and getting back to training? You can take your content further by putting the focus on your specialties and niche first.

We’re not saying not to explore new content types. But if you’re a blogger who got success by blogging, you should probably keep blogging no matter how big your business gets.

7. Don’t Underestimate Your Competition (Study It Instead)

Back to the scene where Alfred tries to talk sense into Bruce by telling him he wasn’t ready to handle Bane at that point, this dialogue delivers a powerful and clear lesson – don’t underestimate your competition.

It’s easy to get caught up with your own creative content ideas and forget there are thousands of competitors just as determined and skillful as you. Don’t underestimate your competition. Better yet? Study it.

That’s a screencap of SEMrush’s domain vs. domain analyzer’s benefits. You can compare keyword, topics, and more. It’s good to know how you’re doing – but better to know how you’re doing in relation to the competition.

8. Plan Out Your Topics Ahead of Time

During the climax of the film, we see Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and numerous other characters all working together like a single, cohesive unit to stop Bane’s destruction of Gotham City.

Not only was that inspiring from a cinematic perspective, but it shows the benefit of planning ahead. If you’re looking for content marketing ideas in 2018, as far as topics go, why not plan out a whole schedule in advance?

Try choosing topics for a week’s worth or a month’s worth of content as opposed to choosing on a piece-by-piece basis. You can create a series and even full calendars ahead of time for better results.

9. Reestablish Yourself Even if Things Get Hard

One of the most impressive things about Batman’s journey was how far he had to come to recover from his losses. He’d had his back broken, his riches wiped away, and the bulk of his arsenal stolen by his rival.

So many times as content marketers, we find things that once worked for us just don’t anymore. Maybe a long-running blog series isn’t bringing in the traffic it used to, or our social media polls don’t elicit as much participation.

If this happens, it can be the perfect opportunity to launch a new series or take a new approach. Don’t let a minor setback derail you – view it as an opportunity to try something new or revisit older successes.

10. Go in for the Long Haul (and the Long Word Count)

There was a time when Batman was ready to sacrifice his life for Gotham. We don’t want you to go that far for the sake of work, but we may ask you to make another sacrifice. According to Top Rank Marketing, longer articles are better at engaging the reader.

The lengthier side of content gives you extra room to be expressive, which is the key to engaging more viewers. You can add more references, more facts, and more calls to action.

If a user is glad they clicked your link, they’re even likelier to return. If Batman can haul a bomb outside city limits and abandon ship before detonation, we can all add a few extra hundred words to our content.

11. Don’t Work Yourself into a Corner

Creative content ideas are easiest to come up with when we have a clear mind. But our thinking can become clouded if we have too many clients, too many projects, and not enough time.

Even Batman needed a break – by the end of the movie, he’d gone on a permanent hiatus. We aren’t telling you to find someone named Robin and pass your business onto them when you get tired. But we are saying planning out a schedule ahead of time can help with your content marketing efforts.

This image from CoSchedule shows us how even social media sharing can be scheduled out ahead of time on a piece-by-piece basis. Plan ahead, and you’ll have less clutter with better content.

12. Triumph Over Your Rivals – and Over Yourself

The ending of the movie shows Batman finally defeating Bane. But his real victory was over his own weakness, fear, and pain.

As content marketers, we know how frustrating the creation process can be. Trying to create that killer content piece or lead-generation sensation is hard. It can require tireless dedication, research, and promotion.

But don’t just overcome the statistical hurdles in your way – improve your own self as a content marketer. Become better organized, with these simple tips:

Document Everything: Taking notes can make your life a lot easier. Document projects, client requests, appointments – everything. You’ll be glad you did later.
Create a Single To-Do List: Your lists aren’t helpful if they’re all over the place. It’s better to have one master list than a half-dozen shoddy ones scattered about.
Commit to the Changes: Changing your approach can be tough, but you need to constantly commit to overcoming your obstacles.

Bruce had to take off the rope to make the jump to freedom. For marketers, that’s the equivalent of continuing to improve no matter how hard it seems. Scary, but ultimately freeing.

Rise Up to a Better Approach Toward Content Marketing

Batman had it right – there’s no obstacle that can’t be triumphed over if we apply ourselves and utilize our inner strength. Even when he was broken physically, mentally and financially, betrayed by two women, and seemingly overmatched, he rose to the challenge.

Creating that killer content piece or that refined approach to marketing services can be easy once you get inspired with these tips.

The bonus? You’re fighting against search algorithms, not the League of Shadows – so you’ll have an easier time than the Dark Knight did.