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Drive SEO for potential customers who are searching for specific terms
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Provide new ways to drive lead generation for your sales team
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Offer valuable information for your customers and potential customers, and thought leadership for your executive team
But more words on more pages isn’t going to do the trick. Your site needs specific types of content that will have the most impact for the areas mentioned above. Here are five pieces of content you should add to your website immediately:
1) A blog, or maybe even more than one. Many companies have a blog already. If you do, up the ante. If you post once a week, invest the time in two times a week on topics that are valuable to your company. If you have one successful blog, weigh whether a second one makes sense to promote a different audience segment, for example, enterprise vs. service provider or wireless vs. wireline. Make sure you’re providing an opportunity for visitors to sign up for automatic email updates each time you post. That converts visitors into followers, making them one step closer to becoming customers.
2) Case studies. You can tell your story well, but often your marketing materials may sound like….well…marketing materials. Instead, offer one or more case study for each vertical market you are trying to reach. Consider using a third party to write them so they hit your salient points but are written in the customer’s voice. Be careful not to overdo it; you want to provide your best examples, not EVERY example. Think “small, medium, large”—provide a use case from a small customer, a medium customer and a large one (where appropriate) in each vertical. If you want to acknowledge a customer without a case study, use their logo with permission.
3) One or more white papers. White papers are a great way to tout your company’s deep knowledge about specific subject areas. They allow companies to be part of a conversation when they might not have a solution yet. They provide great reason for your sales team to connect with existing customers and those in the funnel. And, with a lead capture form in place, they are a great way to provide your sales team with a constant stream of new leads.
4) Press releases. When you’re first getting started, show off as much news as you can. Stuck with “no news?” There are plenty of things you can “announce,” including industry predictions, quarterly or yearly growth rates, traction in specific international markets, for example. Don’t be shy about making announcements, but make sure they map to your overall marketing goals.
5) Press clippings. Stuck with no coverage? Ask your PR team to work with you on a few contributed articles or blog posts to sites that accept them, then add those to your site. Grow this area over time. Consider paraphrasing the first paragraph of each external article to maximize SEO.
Of course, these pieces of content aren’t valuable unless you’re actively promoting them. Make sure each new piece across these five areas is heavily promoted on your social media streams, sent to your sales teams so they can send the links to their customers, added to your newsletters, and more. Your investment will pay off with new traffic and new leads for your company.