5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Quality Content

Business content today is a significant part of any effective marketing plan. In fact, the process of creating and distributing content is so important that it qualifies as a strategic business activity.

That's why your business needs a content plan.

The word "content" is confusing enough due to the way it gets bantered around these days. But it's also difficult for many small-business owners to come up with a big-picture view of the role content plays in helping them to acquire clients.

First things first: Content means more than cranking out the occasional blog post. You have to think of your content as a total body of work that you're building to serve a specific set of long-term business goals.

Among other things, that means you'll have to understand and create content for the most important keyword phrases in your industry; for the essential educational themes in your business; and for your company's core points of differentiation.

Above all, though, you must think of content as a tool that moves your prospects from awareness to conversion. And in order to succeed at this, your content needs to serve at least five key purposes. Each of these purposes represents an important part of your overall content strategy.

1. Establishing and Building Trust

One of the first jobs your content must accomplish is to bridge the gap from awareness to trust building with your prospects. Your SEO efforts will combine with this type of content to make sure you are found --  and found in abundance -- online. Content that serves this purpose includes:

 
• How-to content - Specific advice or tips and tricks 
• Reviews - Customer reviews on sites like Yelp and Google Places 
• Testimonials - Endorsements from happy customers 
• Articles -- Content that you've written or that mentions your firm in outside publications

2. Educating and Informing Customers

Once you create awareness and establish trust a prospect will be hungry to learn much more about your unique approach, your solution, your story, and your organization. Ideal content for this purpose includes:

 
• White papers - I don't mean boring, dry technical stuff, but rather high-quality writing that ties together and explains a bigger topic 
• Newsletters - Weekly or monthly educational content that nurtures a prospect's interest 
• Seminars - Whether in person or online, these allow prospects to learn as well as to engage 
• FAQs - Some folks just need fast, accurate answers to their questions, and this format serves them well 
• Survey data - Results from surveys can be very compelling as a way to let prospects know you understand them

3. Creating Engaged and Loyal Customers

Getting your customers involved in creating content builds loyalty and community, it proves that your business delivers results, and it offers new avenues for creating and distributing your content. This includes:

 
• Automatic referrals and reviews - Create ways to move happy customers into your referral and review process 
• Testimonials - Automate this process by providing online audio and video tools for your customers to use 
• Video success stories - Create events that bring customers together to tell their stories, and to network with your team and with one another

4. Filtering Content for your Customers

One of the primary jobs of marketers these days is to provide some insights into the stream of information that deluges customers. Filtering and aggregating content produced by others is not only a great service -- it's a great differentiator. Some ideas to consider include:

 
• Custom RSS feeds - Create customer- or industry-specific feeds to share 
• Republished, shared, and retweeted content - Point to and share great content that others have produced 
• Curate content - Use tools like Storify to collect and republish content like customer newsletters

5. Selling

This last category gets overlooked, especially when companies view content as "writing for the sake of writing." Ultimately, however, great content has the ability to call and convert prospects into buyers. Good content-driven selling tools include:

 
• In-person events - Live events are absolutely the best way to turn content into a powerful closing tool 
• Case studies - Deep studies that highlight another client's successes offer tangible proof that your prospect is making the right buying decision 
• ROI calculators - Use content to help prospects understand the specific value they'll get from making a change and building a business relationship with you 
• Results - Provide documented proof that your business delivers results, using simple and easy-to-understand content that addresses your prospects' most important needs.

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John Jantsch is a marketing consultant and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine, and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.