4 Effective Ways to Use Content Marketing to Drive Sales

The best part of marketing is storytelling, which lets marketers get creative and produce content that audiences relate to. Your audience wants to hear from you, so make sure creating a narrative around your brand, products, and services on a consistent basis. 

Use your content to promote your products, explain your services, bring awareness to your brand and tell stories about your audience and how you helped them achieve their goals and make their everyday life easier. Once you do all that, sales will follow.

4 Ways to Use Content Marketing to Drive Sales

1. Engaging Blogs

We all know that content is king, and by that, most marketers mean blogs. They're a great way of diving deeper into all the unique aspects of your products and services as well as a great way for you to secure a good Google ranking. 

That will play a big part in leading readers and prospects through your sales pipeline. With a better Google ranking, comes a bigger number of people discovering your business on the daily basis. 

Once your potential customers pass through the top level of your sales funnel, they’ll want to continue reading your blog posts to educate themselves further on your products and services. That's why you want to answer any potential questions, explain all the different ways one can use your products for different results and describe who will benefit from your services the most. 

Don’t be afraid to write long-form, in-depth articles. Today’s readers are invested, with most of them gravitating towards blogs that are up to 2,000 words long. Make your blogs as informative as possible, while also keeping them light and easy to follow. 

Make sure to listen to your audience, for example by asking specific questions in the form of an assessment. Use the results to provide them with the type of content they want. If you’re selling a service that is unique and hard to explain, break it up into more than one article and invite guest blog authors to describe how they get the maximum out of your service. 

A great example of this is how skincare brands write blogs about different skin types and provide people with the service of figuring out their types and have influencers write SEO blogs designed specifically for every skin type. 

That way, people with dry skin can get content customized to their needs. Furthermore, they can read about different products the skin brand offers in order to find the best course of action for them.

2. Case Studies

Case studies are the best type of social proof you can provide to your potential customers. They show just how you helped companies and people reach their goals, save time, and make more revenue. 

The trick to creating an effective case study is to pick the right business/person. You need someone who will be happy to share their experience with your brand, but don’t forget the numbers! You need someone who has a significant ROI and can specifically pinpoint your brand’s influence. 

Once you pick the right business/person, create a story focused on ROI and revenue, as well as the emotional benefits of using your products and services. Write about how your brand led them to be able to afford to hire more people and provide their employees with a better work-life balance. 

Make sure to include photos and infographics to make the case study more personable and easy to digest, plus this helps lead potential customers down the sales funnel.

3. User-Generated Content

A great way to bring people to your sales funnel is by sharing user-generated content. The reason behind this is FOMO (fear of missing out). If you share a great number of reviews, social media posts with tags to your brand and tutorials made by your audience, people will feel like everyone is using your products and services, and they’ll want to do the same. 

Interact with your audience and encourage them to share their photos, videos and blogs about your products. That type of content enforces your authority and gives you an edge on the market. 

Don’t forget to go beyond your target persona and try to get people outside of your audience scope to test your products. Promoting products and services we use every day can be done in a variety of ways, however, there is an even bigger number of ways you can use them. 

With social media, brands are now more than ever using that fact to spotlight their customers and how the brand is affecting their everyday lives. 

4. Give Tutorials

Tutorials have taken the Internet by storm, and for a good reason. With research showing that 80% of people look at videos and search pages when they research products on the internet, they are the perfect content type to give your audience all the needed information on your products and services, as well as the differences you incorporated in your new launches. 

People love to watch and read tutorials to inform themselves, so make sure to create informative, easy-to-understand tutorials that will be a valuable asset to your marketing campaigns. 

Tutorials are especially useful when justifying your price. Since your audience has access to your competitors, their prices and promotional packages, you’ll want to provide them with the reason behind your prices. 

If your prices are higher than your competitors, explain all the benefits of your products and services, including things like warranties, payment methods, customer service, money-back guarantee and shipping options. 

Seeing how slow fashion and ethical consumption are on people’s minds, make sure to show how you’re supporting local communities and small businesses through your business model. 

On the other hand, if your brand is the cheaper option, you’ll want to convince your audience that you’re not sacrificing quality. The best way to do this is by testing the durability of your products and the customizable options of your services.

Conclusion

We’re sure no one is doubting the importance of quality content — and in this article, we wanted to further demonstrate different and effective ways of using it to drive more sales. Some types of content take more time to produce than others, and you may see different long-term effects so make sure to analyze your marketing effects to find the best course of action for your brand.