4 Quick Wins Until Your Content Marketing Kicks In

You may already know that the reality of effective content marketing is that it takes time. But whatyou may not realize is that there are things that you can do in the short-term that will drive moretraffic, more leads, and more business until your content starts to kick in.

That period where you keep your head down doing the work without getting a lot of immediateresults is what some in our industry have called the slog. It started with Scott Clark at Buzzmaven.Then Rand Fishkin held a whiteboard Friday on surviving the SEO slog.

Slog is defined by Merriam-Webster as:

to keep doing something even though it is difficult or boring: to work at something in a steady,determined way

Scotts post touches on the SEO slog as well as the broader slog of digital marketing with interviewsfrom six seasoned digital marketers. He equates building an SEO foundation to that of a skyscrapersun-sexy infrastructure. Rand follows up with his visual explanation of how that same slog isinsidiously frustrating for lots of folks in the field due to the lag time of work and results. He evenrefers to the difference in effort of what is needed versus what is expected as the delta ofdissatisfaction.

Their messages apply to content marketing as well. Ask anyone with experience and they will tellyou content marketing takes time to work. You need to be disciplined, patient, and in it for the longhaul.

Like so many things in life, there is just no shortcut to content marketing.

Everyone seems to be looking for immediate results in our always-on world that we live in today.And sure, who doesnt want immediate results? But like so many things in life, there is just noshortcut to content marketing. You have to put in the time. Its no different than losing weight orworking out. You cant take a pill to lose 10 pounds. You cant watch a video and double the amount ofweights youre lifting. Committing to something and seeing it through is hard even when you knowits good for you. Its why more than 50% of people stop their New Years resolution of going to thegym.

History is riddled with people giving up. And its also riddled with people that have stuck it out andeventually have been successful. The late Monty Hall said it best: Actually, Im an overnight success.But it took me 20 years. And lets be honest, if youve ever accomplished something after working at itfor a long-time, doesnt it feel good once you start to see the results? At Vertical Measures, wevebeen practicing what we teach for 10 years. And were still learning. Were still sharpening our ax.

The bottom line is this commit to content marketing, see it through and it will absolutely transformyour business.

Our Take on the (Content Marketing) Slog

Initially, there is that honeymoon period. You are excited to get started and off you go. While wecertainly believe having realistic expectations is important its hard not to get fired up and be overlyoptimistic. Typically, in this honeymoon phase you may be doing some discovery, building outpersonas, putting together an appropriate plan, analyzing the SEO landscape and getting started onsome initial content. Life is good.

After the honeymoon, we enter the pre-Slog stage where content creation is in full swing and yourelikely in need of some technical SEO clean up. This SEO work is critical because you cannot build asuccessful content marketing system on a weak foundation.

Next we enter The Slog, wherefrom a distanceone month looks similar to the next. A lot of work isgetting done but with few obvious and immediate results. Two issues can cause the slog to be longerand more dreadful than it should be

Lack of communication internally or with an agency partnerBeing too critical of the content

The issue of lack of communication speaks for itself. The issue of being too critical of the content iswhere there is often a misunderstanding. In many caseswe find that our clients are looking forperfection whereas were looking for progress. This stands true if youre producing your contentinternally or working with a partner. It all comes down to the fact that if you dont publish it, Googlecannot find it. Neither can your prospects that you are looking to educate.

If you dont publish it, Google cannot find it.

Here are four things that we have seen be very successful in driving some quick traffic and leadsuntil the power of content marketing kicks in.

1. Free Guides

A big part of our content marketing process is following the hub and spoke model. The hub is abigger piece of content like a free guide. We typically start with this type of content first and thenover time build out more pieces of content, called spokes, that lead you back to the free guide, orsometimes known as a whitepaper. We recommend that this guide is gated behind a form on a welldesigned landing page.

This guide can be used to gather leads from existing traffic with a strong CTA on your homepage andthroughout your site. It can also be leveraged alongside two of the other tactics that Imrecommending below.

2. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Pay per click advertising can sometimes be viewed as the antithesis of SEO, but we prefer to view itas complementary. The real beauty of PPC is that it drives qualified traffic at a predictable volumeand price. It can also provide some early learnings on what type of content your customers areinterested in. Follow my first recommendation of creating a free guide and use that in your PPCcampaign. Weve seen these type of guides drive as much as a 50% decrease in lead cost for clients.

The real beauty of PPC is that it drives qualified traffic at a predictable volume and price.3. Email

Do you have a database that can be easily rekindled? Its far too common that we encounter a clientthat either has a dormant list or a list that is not being appropriately handled. In one case, a newclient of ours pointed out that they had a database of about 6,000 people that had not beencommunicated with for some time. After carefully reviewing the list and pruning the necessaryemails, we delivered an email encouraging them to download a free guide. Marketing automation, inthis case HubSpot, was used to nurture them based on where in the buying process they were. Fromthere, we were able to serve up more appropriate content to help move them through the buyingprocess.

4. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

In some situations, it may not be an issue of more traffic, rather of capitalizing on the existing trafficthat youre already getting. No doubt, youll want to grow your traffic in the long run but in themeantime, see if you can better maximize the traffic you already have. This is where conversion rateoptimization, or CRO, comes in.

CRO is a methodical approach to improving the performance of your website based on analyzing andtesting different designs. By identifying friction points on your site you can make small, incrementalchanges to increase conversions.

After just a week, we were able to capitalize on one clients existing traffic to increase conversions bymore than 77% on one of their key landing pages.

In Summary

Content marketing takes time. But if you are disciplined and consistent about creating content thatyour customers want it can transform your business. Until it does, consider the options here to helpdrive some earlier wins.

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