The #1 Way to Grow Your Business Organically

Why long-form content is taking over the marketing world.

 

The hardest part about growing a business is just that: growing.

Marketing sucks.

It’s costly, a gamble, and unfortunately, necessary for nearly all types of businesses.

Marketing is completely unavoidable and is not as easy as putting an ad in the newspaper. Not to mention, customers are fatigued by advertisements. They see so many every day and don’t give them a second thought; why should they give yours the time of day?

There is one form of advertising, however, that is extremely effective. It converts customers at a high rate, traffic comes in organically, and your customer doesn’t even know they are looking at an advertisement. That, my friends, is the beauty of long-form content marketing.

Here is how it works:

• You own a company that sells shampoo for dogs.
• You write an article or blog post on your website titled “How to get rid of skunk smell on short-haired dogs.”
• Your article is well-written, SEO optimized, and somewhere around 500–1300 words.
• You offer legitimate advice that people will find useful, such as vinegar or dish soap solutions. You go in-depth on how to use these solutions, even though your product is not yet mentioned.
• You naturally integrate your product into the content as one of the solutions to the problem.
• The viewer, who is your exact target customer, understands (with the help of your effective copy) that the money for your solution is worth more than the hassle of dealing with the other options that you provided.
• Because your content is still valuable to those who won’t convert to customers, the traffic and time spent on your page will help you rank higher in search engines.

If you search for “article content writer” on a job board website, you’ll see that a lot of businesses that have nothing to do with blogging or journalism are hiring for this position. A lot of businesses are shifting their marketing strategy to this, and for very good reason.

Now, I certainly wouldn’t recommend long-form content marketing for all types of businesses. Restaurants and most businesses that require you to visit in person are not going to see that much use out of this. Companies that ship products or provide services around the country (or even the world in some cases), however, will see a substantial benefit. Even more specifically, businesses that sell a high-cost item or service would really benefit from long-form content marketing, as the whole article (if written properly) is an advertisement that your customer purposely looked for and will spend more time understanding what your product is than if they were just subjected to a Facebook ad or even a 30-second YouTube ad.

Obviously, I am a big fan of this type of marketing, but there are cons:

• You need to be consistently writing new content in order to keep your site ranking high in search engines.
• It takes time to write and publish these articles.
• It normally takes a few months before you start seeing results.

If your marketing team (if you have one) isn’t familiar with how to write SEO-friendly content, it may be worth hiring someone that is. If that isn’t in the budget, you may be able to cut costs by hiring a freelancer. If you don’t want to spend any money, you can certainly try to learn how to do so yourself but be prepared to spend a lot more time than you might expect.

Long-form content marketing can drive a lot of sales to your business. While it may take a few months before you see any results, the results that you do see are going to be much more substantial than the ones you would see from running social media ads. If you are ready to take the leap into long-form content marketing, click the button below to view what we have to offer.