The Power of Solution Based Content
Often a question that comes up is “Why should I create content like blogs and videos?”
The answer from the marketing mind point of view is quite simple. It has to do with the True Power of Solution Based Content.
When a business or entrepreneur creates solution-based content that is valuable, it creates a natural chain reaction that can lead to sales, referrals, and brand building. This serves the business as it becomes a resource for answers to questions in the community.
Solution Based Content Chain of Events
As I mentioned, a “chain-reaction” begins to take place as you provide valuable content that helps your ideal customers.
This is very different from creating content that focuses on how big you are as a business, how long you’ve been doing what you do, or even the awards you may have won. The type of content which I spoke about in detail in another article is solution based, and not “me” based.
When you as the entrepreneur or business owner create in-depth and complete answers your customers need solving, you move from a salesy person or business, to a guide or resource…one your customers can potentially trust.
I say “potentially” only because if it’s their first exposure to you, it’s a “know-like, then trust” type of relationship building that takes place.
So, back to the chain of events.
There is a formula that is much like 1+1. It always equals 2. If you create and distribute solution-based content that solves the problems your ideal customers are struggling with, you will create awareness.
The awareness comes from the search engines. Once the article has been posted to your site, there is an increased probability it will be served up as a search result when someone types the question your article solves, into Google search bar.
Awareness turns into traffic with solution based content
As more people are shown your content as a potential solution, depending on where it ranks in the Search (more clicks when you’re on search page one, and more as you are near the top), the more clicks or traffic to your article or website will occur.
This is the Power of Solution Based Content. Because each time you show up in search, or when someone clicks on your result as their choice and visits your website, it could result in sales. And the cost of this click?
FREE. It’s referred to as organic traffic. In other words, the search engine is not charging you to show up as an answer to your ideal customer’s search query.
Is being “organic” important?
I want to give you one quick and simple example of how powerful creating solution based content can really be.
We create content for our clients based on what we’ve been discussing. We do this for most of our clients once a week.
I want to use one example from an HVAC company. The article was:
Why is My Hot Water Heater Making Knocking Sounds?
This appeared as the # 1 organic search term as well as what is referred to as a snippet. This is a short answer Google creates from the article in an attempt to solve their customer’s search query, without them leaving the search.
SwingPointMedia is a marketing company focused on using content marketing, such as written articles, video and podcasts, to attract their customers ideal audiences. This approach has proven to attract higher quality customers while simultaneously reducing the sales cycle by as much as 70%.
SwingPointMedia serves local businesses in Southern California and can be reached by calling 760-422-5176.
You are invited to also attend a free weekly presentation, providing you the tools and strategy to roll out your own content marketing program for your company, or see exactly what SwingPointMedia does for its clients to achieve success. It can be viewed live on SwingPointMedia’s YouTube channel, at 11 am pst.
This single article over the past 3 months has generated 1,614 clicks to our client’s website, specifically to this article.
The value, or savings experienced by our client was this:
If they were to pay for this keyword phrase it would range from a low of $16 per click to a high of $25 per click.
For our example, let’s use the $16. This means that when someone clicks this article or search results, my client would have to pay $16 each time.
Taking the number of clicks they received, which was 1,614 and multiply it by the low of $16, it would add up to $25, 824. (1,614 clicks x $16/click)
This amount, $25,824, would be the amount paid to Google for this traffic. This is called paid traffic.
Paid vs Organic
For our client to determine if paid traffic was worth it, they would have to track exactly how many sales came from these clicks, then determine the profit margin of each water heater sold, and finally, determine how many water heaters they needed to sell to get a return on their ad spend.
Because the traffic was free, the ROI was unfairly high…why? Because the only true cost was the original article. To create the article, post it and distribute it, our client paid less than $500.
A long way from $25,824 bucks!
But Wait. It Gets Better
Great Content = Awareness
Awareness = Traffic
Traffic = Opportunity
Opportunity? Yes, opportunity to convert this highly targeted traffic into sales!
This is a step many businesses or marketers will overlook.
When this traffic has arrived at your site and they are beginning to see that you’re providing solid answers to their question, the ones they need answered to make an informed decision, we are increasing the value of their experience.
User Experience with Solution based content
We want to enhance their User Experience. What do I mean by User Experience?
Specifically, what I am referring to are “call to actions” or” CTAs”.
A CTA can be to click on the banner on your blog sidebar to get more information, or it could be a coupon for a special “Hot Water Heater Installation Season Savings Discount”.
In other words, now that you have traffic, you can now offer to sell them something, or even further their awareness.
This furthering of awareness could be the fact that until they came to your website because of your solution-based piece of content, they had no idea you even existed.
No really.
Going back to our case study, this client has over 500 other licensed contractors in his area. So, for you or me to know all of them, is nearly impossible. But when they show up in the search as #1, we will begin to notice the client by name and location once we finish reading the article.
The CTAs help make your website traffic “aware” of who you are…and begin helping you associate “answers” and “helpful” to “Your Company.”
It becomes a powerful mental process…think of black swish? Who do you think of?
Can Creating Solution Based Content be Powerful? No doubt. In closing though, I want to stress, the opposite is also true.
When a company or entrepreneur creates bad content it creates no awareness, no traffic, and no sales.
Bad content today is content that I refer to as “chest beating” content. As customers, we do not want to hear about how great you are. We only want to know, “can you solve my problem or answer my question?”
Your goal should be to make great content. Because in our example, we provided you the traffic from the past 3 months. Yet this article has been live for over a year, and they have had a new “solution-based” article and video posted every week (not all getting #1 positions, but mostly all on the first page), answering the questions our customers need answered on their way to making a decision.
If you’re not sure where to begin, or if you’ve been making content that’s not getting results, we invite you to look on this page for the FREE 5 Day Workshop – Turning Clicks into Customers.