For the last eighteen months the marketing world has been lauding the benefits of content marketing. However, it may be time for you and your business to re-assess whether your “content marketing” efforts are really making a difference. If you’re still wondering what content marketing is, you’re probably not too far behind many other businesses who misunderstand the purpose of creating and sharing content.

Content marketing is the creation and distribution of relevant and valuable content that leads a specific audience to perform an action. In most cases, the primary goal of content marketing is to create leads, but too many businesses think that posting the occasional blog post or emailing out a free e-book once in a while is an effective marketing strategy. If you fall into this category, take a look at your lead generation analytics to determine whether those tactics actually work. For most people, they don’t.

If you’re looking to gain real and valuable leads from the content you create, then you need to tie your content to a larger inbound marketing strategy. Creating good content for your audience and customers may be good for your brand awareness and public relations efforts, but the whole purpose of marketing is to drive sales.

So how can you ensure that the content you produce—blog posts, video, white papers, e-books, etc.,—is actually creating leads and driving sales? First, meet with your marketing and sales teams to discuss what types of content they think will solve pain points for customers or prospects.First and foremost, your audience needs to want to engage with your content for you to actually obtain results.

Next, implement and track your content marketing efforts. Very little will come from implementing a marketing campaign, or effort of any sort, if you don’t have data to determine the success or failure of your efforts.

Finally, follow up. Especially if your content is downloaded or emailed to prospects, you should always capture information like emails and phone numbers, so you can follow up with the customer after they’ve engaged with your content.

To learn more about inbound and content marketing, click here.

And if you’d like help with your content marketing, fill out the form below. We’d love to help.