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Content marketing can be a powerful tool when used to its full advantage. It’s a great way to increase not only the quantity of the traffic to your site, but the quality as well. Getting new customers to your site is important for your business to grow, and it’s all about growth. Read below to find out how to use content marketing to attract new customers. 

You have a company and your marketing tactics seem to be working moderately well, but you want more. You’re looking to increase your site’s web traffic and acquire more customers overall. Sound like you? Blogging could be the solution you’ve been looking for to take your business to the next level. Businesses that blog to take advantage of inbound marketing techniques acquire 60% more customers according to a Hubspot survey. Still not convinced? Here are six reasons why creating a business blog can make a company more successful.

Necessary? We can't say for sure because there's always "that one" situation. Suggested? Absolutely! It is no secret that video marketing is on the rise exponentially and taking over our content marketing platforms near and far. From social media networks and web pages to digital billboards and other displays, there has never been a time where video marketing has played such an impactful role in the way brands get messages to their audiences. YouTube is now the 2nd largest search engine in the world, next to Google. YouTube processes more than 3 billion searches a month and 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute (source). If your content marketing strategy does not include video, it's time to get filming, or if thats not your specialty, contact a CT Video Marketing Agency! Check out the infographic (source) below to see some more eye opening information regarding the impact that video marketing is playing in todays market.

Around our office, it seems as if the first couple weeks of the new year flew right by. We've certainly hit the ground running! Giving ourselves a minute to breathe, we reflected back on the year behind us and soaked in some of the top changes in content strategy in 2016 which led visual marketing to sit amoung our top 3 most important methods for growing your brand this year.  While networking on social media, we came across this excellent infographic put together by Venngage. These statistics give us excellent insite to the marketing world around us and  provide a plethura of knowledge and opportunity for your business. This could be your year! Look below to learn more about how businesses harnesseing visual marketing have met success:

Do you feel that your content marketing strategy seems to be falling flat lately? You are stuck in the same grueling routine and what was once a creative process now seems to be a slow and mindless zombie. However, unlike the show The Walking Dead, there is a cure to bring your content marketing strategy back to life. 

If you blog, post on social media, and regularly update your website's SEO, you already have a content marketing strategy. Whether this is intentional or not, to stay alive in the marketing game, you need to set a goal and regularly find innovative ways to make your content shine brighter than the rest. Your content is more than a sales technique as it bridges the gap between your business and the consumer allowing them to get to know you on a deeper level. Building trust and customer relationships is developed by businesses with a strong content marketing strategy that constantly seek innovative ways to advance and highlight their efforts. 

Marketing is a difficult and delicate art form, and some would consider it to be as difficult as training to become a Jedi Knight. Content will always be the crowning jewel for gauging your online marketing success. Is your website's content engaging and instructive or is it self-referential and littered with jargon? These are impotatnt questions for business owners to consider as they focus on how they're structuring content. If you aren't doing this constantly, you're missing out on a wide variety of opportunities. To help lift your content marketing from the swamps of Dagobah, we've included five mistakes that often hinder a businesses' plans for content marketing success.

Your Content Was Written By A Fourth Grader

Well, not really, but you get the point. Quality content is the foundation for building trust with readers, leading to increased engagement and higher conversion rates (not in all cases). Admittedly, if your content isn't performing well, you may find that a failure to adhere to the basic rules of quality writing may be the source of the problem. Not only is content quality important for educating prospective customers, but it's essential for satiating Google's fluid SEO requirements.

Your Older Content Has Become Stale

This is similar to the issue of poorly written content, yet it's often more easy to fix, especially if you focus your efforts on creating evergreen content. Consider this, have you ever put a lot of effort into a post that was engaging and on-point when you first published it, yet after a while, it generated fewer and fewer visits?
When content becomes outdated, it becomes more difficult to attract and engage readers, often reflecting poorly on your company's ability to relate to reader's current challenges.

You Don't Have Quality CTA's To Take Readers To The Next Step

This mistake can be quite disheartening, especially if you have taken ample time to create content. However, you can't assume readers will consume your content and magically transform into loyal and engaged customers. Rather, you should gently encourage them to take the next step in the purchase process, which often requires them to click a CTA (which brings them to a landing page where they can access valuable content offers in exchange for some of their basic contact information).
Readers generally anticipate a request for them to take action after reading compelling content (after all, that's the main idea behind marketing-- you want readers to do something based on the information they just received).
Make sure that you place an eye-catching call-to-action on your blog posts. Without it, you are leaving your readers at a dead end.

Inconsistent Posting

Be consistent. While you don't have to post every day, readers will appreciate consistency. By publishing on a consistent basis, readers will look forward to reading your content. At first, it may be difficult to be consistent with blogging; however, it helps if you plan a few posts ahead of time. Your blog's success depends on your goals and the effort you put into creating fresh, interesting, and consistent content. Don't fall into the habit of skipping posting. A short, thought-provoking post is better than nothing. Just don't publish useless posts that do nothing more than clutter your blog so people can't find your good content.

1. How Much Do I Really Know About Content Marketing?

Content marketing is always updating and developing into something more, so it is important to do the research and keep yourself informed. Content marketing is is the practice of content including articles, web pages, blog posts, social media, videos, images, and infographics as a promotional vehicle for your business. Effective content marketing provides prospective customers with informational, entertaining, and relevant information, rather than using “salesy” jargon.

Should you be concerned with SEO in your content marketing efforts? The answer is a resounding yes. So, now you may be wondering why you need to keep SEO in mind when you're writing your content, and fortunately, the answer is quite simple. For many years, you could build a satisfactory SEO strategy around tricks and basic tactics, optimizing and banking on opportunism; however, that doesn't work anymore. Rather, now you must create engaging content. SEO provides an opportunity to blend science and analytics with creative content. So, how should you approach writing for your readers while still appeasing search engines? Well, you can take a look at our comprehensive approach to SEO in 2015. In the meantime, take a peak at this Brafton infographic to learn why content marketing provides a measurable boost towards improving your businesses' SEO efforts.