Content Marketing
So what does content marketing include anyway? Content marketing has a few, key areas that I will touch on throughout this article. Those areas include: original written content (such as a blog), blogs to videos, original video content, and backlinks.
If you haven’t heard, content is the new king, and it is one of the absolute best ways to grow your business. I highly recommend that you check out one of my all-time favorite books They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. If you’re not convinced yet that content marketing can help shoot your company to the moon, let Marcus tell you why it most definitely will. In fact, if you read this article, get in touch with our team here, and we’ll happily send you a complimentary copy of his book.
Now, let’s get down to the nitty gritty and talk different types of content and how they might help.
Original Written Content Marketing
The best form of original, written content is for your company to have a blog.
It is pretty easy to set up. It is fairly cost effective, and it can drive a whole lot of inbound traffic and leads to your website.
Blogs help in a few ways. The best way for a blog to help you is by making it helpful to others. Let me explain with an example. Let’s say that your company is in the business of manufacturing and selling pens. You probably know a whole lot about pens, right? I would think so. The average consumer might not know quite as much about pens as you do. So, where does that consumer go to learn more about pens? Google. If you wrote an article such as “Best Pens for Calligraphy,” or “Pens That Will Last an Eternity,” and someone was searching for either of those two things, whose information do you think they would find on the internet? Yours!! That will lead them back to you and helps drive your sales.
This also serves another purpose. The more information that you create on your own and publish to the world, the more that Google recognizes you (your website) as an expert on the matter and helps you to be found more often even if people just search for something like “best pens.”
This point leads right into the next area of content marketing.
Backlinks
Let’s imagine that someone did search “best pens in 2021.” If you have not written an article or blog post about the best pens around, your information might not pop up directly from that search. This is where a backlink can help. Another person or company probably has a blog or information about the very best pens around. Consumers love these types of articles because they generally discuss pros and cons of each product as well as pricing and how to buy them. If the pens that you sell were featured on this “best pens” list with a link pointing back to your website or to your online store, this could help drive sales like crazy!
This is a backlink. They are sooooo helpful.
Just like original content, a backlink can help to increase your sales directly. It can also help Google recognize you as more of an expert in your field, because now you have other experts talking about how great you and your products are! So cool!
Original content pieces and backlinks are usually pretty similar in price, and they are generally paid for as a per-piece service. For a well-written article you should expect to pay somewhere in the range of $300 – $500 per piece of content.
The factors that would cause this price to fluctuate would be: the length of the content piece, the expertise required (if you are in a very technical industry, it will cost more because your writer will probably need to do heavy research or already be experienced in that field), and how many changes you require (if you are sending the piece back to your writer multiple times for revisions, they might need to charge more – find a writer that you love and let them do what they do best!).
Another price factor specific to backlinks will be the publication that you want to be featured in. There are definitely ways to get mentioned in bigger publications such as Forbes or Inc., but generally that is a much more difficult and costly process for your writer, so the cost to you will definitely increase. This could still make sense to do, though, because the audience reading Forbes is massive and could create great opportunities for your company.
Original Video Content Marketing
Having video content on your website can be extremely powerful. It is becoming more and more normal for people to consume content in a video format. It can take less time than reading an article. It certainly takes less energy. And, it can catch someone’s eye more quickly as they are scrolling through the internet or your website.
But how much will that cost you?
This is probably the most difficult content service to put a general cost to. Usually, this will be something that is quoted out depending on the project type. Are you shooting a quick training video? Is it a commercial? Will it be a feature film? Are you wanting this on an iPhone? Or a $20,000 camera? Is it on location? Will you require the use of a studio? Custom video content really has too many variables to be able to put a base price to, but you can definitely expect it to be much more costly than a simple piece of written content.
Blogs to Video
Another content service offered by most marketing agencies is what is called blog to video. As explained above, video content can be extremely beneficial and is basically a necessity in today’s world.
A blog-to-video service can take your already invaluable written content (blogs and articles) and turn them into a shortened video format. We take your existing blog content or landing page content and create an animated explainer video. This allows you to reach both those who prefer to read and those who prefer to watch.
This service, like the written content, will also generally be sold with a per-piece pricing structure ranging anywhere from $400 – $800 depending mainly on the length of the video that you need.
Should I Create Content Myself?
Content is definitely something that you could learn to do yourself. I am not a writer by trade, but here I am, writing a blog! Is it possible? Absolutely!
However, it is extremely time consuming, so be aware of that.
I would also probably suggest deferring to an agency or professional if you are wanting to focus on something like backlinks or video content. They have built up relationships and other tools available to them to get your brand out there and placed in other publications.
They also are more equipped to film, edit, and publish video content as they will already have quality equipment and talent to help you out with this.
You can keep this service in house, but it will generally be more effective and less expensive to have a marketing agency manage this process for you.
If you are interested in content services for your company, we would be more than happy to chat with you!
You can check out our website for more information here. Or you can reach out directly to our team here. Really looking forward to meeting with you!
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