Promotion and Conversion Tactics for Content Marketing

Creating content is only one aspect of content marketing. You will also need to develop a good promotion strategy and a strategy to convert your new leads into paying customers.

Promotion Tactics

Asides from a good content creation strategy, you will also need a promotion strategy that complements it. Here are a few ideas:

1. Epic Content + Outreach

If you’ve decided to spend time creating long form authoritative content, then email outreach might be a strategy you want to consider.

You can use a tool like SEMRush to see who linked to similar articles and then inform those bloggers about your content.

Buzzsumo is another tool that you can use to identify people that shared similar content on social media.

Finally, a tool like Buzzstream can help you keep track of and manage your email outreach efforts.

2. Influencer Marketing

Collaborating with influencers is another way you can get your content shared. A few ideas include linking to their blog posts in your articles or organizing an expert roundup.

For the best results, figure out how you can build a real relationship with other influencers and help them out. Even highly successful people and companies have things they need help with, including increasing sales and time/resource management.

3. Guest Posting

If you want to focus heavily on content creation, then guest posting might be a good promotion tactic to focus on. Guest posting on popular blogs allows you to get traffic and authority from the audience that they built up over the years.

This can be a fast and effective way to build your own audience if you aren’t familiar with other promotion tactics.

4. Additional Resources

Here are a few additional resources that you may want to look into while forming your promotion strategy:

40+ Expert Tips for Blog Promotion – This roundup contains a variety of tips for content promotion from over 40 experts.

Guide to Expert Roundups that Get 1000’s of Social Shares – This expert roundup guide explains how to create an expert roundup that gets thousands of social shares and also includes tips from several bloggers that were able to create highly successful roundups on their own blogs.

Blog Promotion Checklist – Adam Connell came up with this blog promotion checklist that provides a few good ideas for promoting your content.

10 Steps to Creating a Winning Social Media Strategy –  Rebekah Radice created this popular guide on how to use social media to drive traffic to your business.

Growing a Social Media Following from Nothing – Matthew Barby shares a case study on how he grew a social media following of thousands from scratch and got thousands of social media visitors. It’s a good read if you want to look into the thought process of coming up with an effective social media strategy.

Advanced Content Promotion Checklist – Vinay Patankar from Process Street created an excellent content promotion checklist, which includes an interactive version that you can use on their site or a downloadable PDF.

Conversion Tactics for Content Marketing

A lot of people that get into content marketing create content solely to generate more traffic to their website. But sometimes getting more traffic is not enough.

Your content marketing will be more successful if you have a plan to convert your visitors and subscribers into paying customers. Here are a few conversion ideas that you can use…

1. Email marketing

Your readers signed up for your email list to learn more about a topic or problem that your product or service helps solve. Now that they are on your email list, you can market your product to them.

You will want to test the frequency and format of these promotional emails. Some companies will offer a free trial upon sign up or let the subscriber know about an upcoming demo.

2. Product Launches

Some content marketers will do product launches, which are limited time sales events. For a product launch, people will often share helpful information for free that gets customers excited about the product.

A product launch will often involve a series of emails and either a webinar or series of informational videos.

The product is open available for a small period of time, usually a few days, and then enrollment is closed.

Note that product launches can also be used on products that are always available. Scarcity can still be applied by having a discount available for a limited time or valuable bonus that will no longer be available if the prospect does not enroll in time.

Most people that do product launches will create valuable content for their newsletter subscribers 90% of the time or more and only launch products a 2-3 times a year. Since they are sharing free content most of the time, this approach keeps their email read rates high so that when they are ready to sell, their prospects are paying attention and perhaps even eager to buy.

3. Incorporate your product into your content

Incorporating relevant mentions of your product into your content. The key to making this approach work is to not be too “salesy” with your content.

The content should mostly be aimed at helping your customer, but you can mention your product or service in the content if it makes sense.

Another thing you can do is incorporate a call to action to drive qualified prospects to learn more about your product or service. KissMetrics funnels visitors to try out their product with a clear call to action on top of their blog.

4. Webinars

Webinars are extremely effective when it comes to selling more product.

Some companies use webinars to simply explain the features of the product and answer questions. These webinars will attract prospects that are already interested in your product and are more likely to purchase.

Sometimes potential customers aren’t aware of all the features, so these information webinars can show your prospects how useful your product is, which can result in sales.

Another effective webinar format is to teach your prospect how to solve their problem and then explain how your product can help your customer implement this solution. This format can be a great way to attract prospects who don’t know anything about your product and quickly convert them into a customer.

Content Marketing Guide