Much has been made about finding and appealing to your target audience.
How can you find them?
Why, through content marketing, of course, and with professional online marketing tools like SEMrush suite.
What is Content Marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute,
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
In other words, you will consistently create and distribute valuable content which ultimately results in sales.
Content marketing is so important, there’s actually a Content Marketing Institute.
The best part: This post will tell you how to be a successful content marketer in 4 easy steps.
It gets even better: These tips are free.
By the end of this post, you will know how to follow the 4 steps of the content marketing funnel:
- Create great content.
- Promote so people will come.
- Get them to subscribe with a free incentive or free incentives.
- Market effectively.
When you’re done reading, you will also know how to generate business to consumer (B2C) income.
What is B2C Marketing?
Business to consumer marketing refers to the process in which you promote your content, products, and services, to individuals rather than companies.
4-Step Content Marketing Funnel
Step 1: Create Great Content
You need to be an authority in your niche.
This means your post need to outshine your online competitors.
Google your keyword.
How many tips does the Number 1 post on Google have?
Make your number of tips longer.
Are you ready for the rule? Brace yourself.
The 10X rule says to make your number of tips 10 times longer than your competitors.
How many words does the Number 1 post for your keyword on Google have? Make yours longer.
With a post so packed with information, people will click your post over your competitors.
Don’t ignore what people see in search engines after your headline which contains the number of tips.
They see the meta description.
Are your tips free? Say so. Is your information current? Will your “hacks” help people now? Tell them.
Moz offers a powerful tool that enables you to see your competitors’ meta descriptions and keywords.
If you download the MozBar, a Chrome extension, you get unlimited queries.
Step 2: Promote Your Post
I recommend you promote your posts at websites with a high Domain Authority ranking.
All these blog submission sites allow self-promotion and have high Domain Authority rankings.
Not only will your content get exposure to new audiences, but you will also get a link from a site with a high Domain Ranking which boosts your SEO.
Google has announced starting the spring of 2020, nofollow links will carry more weight than they used to.
Step 3: Get Visitors to Subscribe to Your Email List
Use powerful opt-ins to get people to subscribe
These include freebies people interested in your niche would gladly pay for. Give them out for free in exchange for their email address.
Not too long ago, ebooks were popular optins. Today, content marketers are moving in other directions. For example, many content marketers make videos full of tips and demonstrations and giving those out in exchange for emails.
So many videos making tools are free, this is cost-effective for you. You don’t need a budget.
However, you do need a tool to collect emails.
You may have to do some research to find a way to collect emails that fits your needs and budget.
For years, I happily used Rapidology. Rapidology is free.
Step 4: Make money!
It’s time to sell your products and services to your new subscribers.
The best part: Once you sell your new readers your product or service, you can upsell.
For example, my business partner is currently giving away a free course. This freebie only contains a small fraction of the course’s information.
This sneak preview is meant to entice the subscriber into going for the upsell– signing up for the paid course.
Conversely, if someone reports they can’t afford your paid product or service, offer them a down-sell.
This happened to me recently.
A reader wrote to me explaining she needed blog coaching but couldn’t afford my hourly rate.
Since she wanted coaching in the area of blog monetization, I offered her the link to my monetization resources available online at Amazon. She wrote that she was more than grateful.
How to Market to Your New Subscribers
I cannot stress enough the importance of your email list.
Once you own people’s emails, they are yours to do with what you please. For example, you can send them updates on product developments, limited-time discounts, and of course, your website content.
Always keep the emails you generate confidential. This will work toward building trust in your readers. People give their money to people they trust.
Another way to market to your readers is through the email subject line.
This is pivotal to getting them to open the emails.
Michelle Schaeffer has a free tool, Hook, Line, Dynamic that will write your email subject lines for you.
An effective method I use is to Google “Best Email Subject Lines” and to tweak those.
If you sell a product or service with a limited-time offer, make sure you write that in the subject line.
The best subject lines convey a sense of urgency.
Have you heard of the FOMO acronym? You should appeal to people’s Fear of Missing Out.
How?
In the subject line write “On sale now,” “This week only,” “Limited time offer,” and so forth.
Wrapping Up These Effective Content Marketing Hacks
In closing, these tips are easy, free, and actionable.
This post contained two actionable lists: The first explained how to follow the steps of the content marketing funnel to boost your email list and make sales.
The second list of tips explained how to get people to open your emails.
Use the tips in both action plans to have a more traffic-filled and profitable 2020.
Thanks for reading. Drop a comment and let me know what you think.
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