The internet is a funny place, filled with cat memes, silly videos and animated gifs. The internet is also a great place to market goods and services. In fact, the world of e-commerce was generating more than $1.2 million every 30 seconds in 2014. That’s nothing to snicker at! The stacks of cash generated by online presence and sales are probably higher today.
Your company’s bottom line is no joke. You know that establishing an online presence that oozes thought leadership credibility is one of the most important things you can do to improve your bottom line.
So how do you get your company in on some of those tidy e-commerce and brick-and-mortar profits? Through witty, engaging and well-written content on your website.
Show Me the Money
The more blog posts you publish, the more traffic you will see on your website, according to HubSpot. They say that publishing 16 or more blog posts each month will bring in nearly 3.5 times more traffic than publishing zero to four posts in a month. That traffic turns into leads: publish 16 blogs a month and you can expect about 4.5 times more leads than if you had published up to four that month. And, as you know, leads can turn into sweet, sweet cash for your company’s coffers.
Online marketers categorize leads into two main groups: organic and pay-per-click. Organic leads are the ones that come directly from your website, while pay-per-click are those that come from the text or banner ads you buy. Publishing quality content on your website helps create organic leads that may convert to sales.
The conversion rates are nothing to snicker at – Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says that the average rate of organic traffic-to-leads conversions is about 16 percent. It also lists a 14 percent average lead-to-sale conversion rate. In other words, about 16 percent of your organic traffic will convert to leads, and about 14 percent of those leads will result in sales. There is nothing funny about those conversion rates!
The CMI web page goes on to discuss a return on investment (ROI) formula that you can use to estimate just how much money your company can make by investing in quality content on your website.
When used with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, quality content can help your company appear at the top of the page on Google, Bing and other search engines. Well-written content can also help turn you into one of the internet’s most important – and silliest – catch phrases, a “thought leader.”
Thought Leadership: A Silly Catch Phrase That Can Boost Your Bottom Line
Posting interesting, timely and useful information attracts web visitors who are already interested in your product or service. Publishing a steady stream of engaging and insightful blogs, articles, white papers and web pages also establishes you as a “thought leader” in your industry.
While the phrase “thought leadership” sounds like something from a 1950s zombie movie, being a thought leader simply means you are the go-to person or company in your field of expertise. Thought leadership builds trust, and trust can turn to gold.
Thought leadership through content marketing builds trust, but many B2B and B2C marketers overlook its potential as a moneymaker. In fact, researchers from LinkedIn and their partners did a survey of B2B marketers and customers to determine the true value of thought leadership, and they found that B2B marketers were totally missing out on the financial potential of thought leadership. Specifically, the researchers found that only about half of all B2B marketers believe that thought leadership builds trust in an organization. A whopping 83 percent of customers surveyed, on the other hand, said they believed thought leadership builds trust.
Don’t be like the marketers in the LinkedIn survey – embrace the power of thought leadership and boost your company’s bottom line by producing a steady stream of innovative and engaging content. After all, publishing quality content on your website can help you laugh all the way to the bank.
Lynn H has been a professional writer, providing exceptional content online and offline, for nearly 20 years. In that time, she has penned thousands of articles for doctors, universities, researchers, small businesses, nursing organizations, sole proprietors and more. She writes everything from blogs to white papers; her specialty is putting complex scientific concepts in simple terms. She specializes in medical writing, creating informative and engaging content for professionals in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, medical manufacturing, chiropractics, optometry, emergency care, plastic surgery and others.
