You’re probably reading this because a) you need to convince someone else that content marketing works, or b) you need to convince yourself. You’re in the right place. Keep reading to get inspired.
It’s no secret that great content moves your audience through each stage of the buyer journey. But, can we actually tie it to new business in the door? These folks can.
#1 Two blog articles and one video each week led to $500,000 in revenue in first year
Technology provider, AIS, committed to a content calendar that consisted of publishing two new blogs and one video per week with the help of inbounding marketing agency IMPACT. This resulted in $100,000 new initial sales within the first 12 months of implementing the new content calendar. According to AIS, this translated into $500,000 in lifetime value of those new customers.
What’s great about this example is that it shows what can happen when you focus your content efforts on answering your audiences pressing questions. For AIS, these questions revolved around office technology, but the principle applies to any business, or consumer challenge, for that matter.
#2 eBook led to $1 million contract
USC Consulting Group landed a $1 million contract through an email marketing lead that responded to an ebook and then case studies with the help of content marketing agency Brafton.
I like how this example highlights that the way to turn content into sales is usually through multiple pieces of content. Specifically, this example shows how content focused on converting customers needs to
- Cast a wide (but targeted) net with an offer of value to the audience - the email sent to the company’s marketing contacts
- Provide real value to the audience oriented around the challenges they face - the ebook that was compelling and led to prospects wanting to learn more
- Follow up with evidence that helps the prospect believe she will be successful partnering with you - the case studies
#3 New customers after two months of consistent blogging with a focus on ranking on Google search for specific keywords
Boulder Bibs, the company spotlighted in this example from content creation platform Verblio, seems to be a little shy in sharing their exact sales numbers, but they saw a sharp increase in sales coming from organic search traffic to their website as soon as two months after they started blogging consistently.
Two things really stood out to me in this example.
First, purposeful serendipity (aka, they got lucky, but so can you by mimicking what they did). They had a relationship with local chapters of a larger organization, which gave them an entry to repurpose some of their customer’s content for use on their own blog. Then, they tagged the organization in the social promotion of the piece. That prompted a share by the organization, and voila, a traffic spike to the website.
Second, they refined the focus of their blog articles to match the keywords they wanted to rank for in Google search results as they refined those keywords to be more specific to their desired audience. Once they were zeroing in on the specific questions of their ideal customer, they not only drove traffic to the website, but it was the right traffic to turn into customers.
Wouldn’t it be great if you were achieving content marketing results like these examples?
We think so too. That’s why we built Cobomba. Cobomba is a platform designed with a built-in content marketing workflow that enables you to build your content strategy with data-rich recommendations and consolidate other tools for research and planning. This leads to streamlined planning and team alignment.
You can try it for yourself and sign up for Cobomba's free trial today!
Editor’s note: We’re always curious about the ways to show the impact of content marketing, and we love to highlight the best examples we find. Give us a shout if you “know a guy” or you have a great example yourself.
