Let’s face it, marketing your business has significantly changed from the tactics used even just five years ago. Combine that with the fact that the security industry is a unique entity in and of itself, it’s sometimes difficult to apply new strategies that work in other markets. While content marketing isn’t new, some companies are just now understanding the idea that content is king.
2018 marketing statistics in North America illustrated that 91 percent of B2B businesses invested part of their marketing budget for content marketing. The study also showed that 65 percent of companies using content marketing said that its success has increased because of several factors such as higher quality content, spending more time on content marketing strategies, and the fact that they could measure results better.
One reason why content marketing has become so popular is the switch from print media to digital and that a vast amount of purchasing happens online. Measuring how engaging an audience finds content can be achieved by comparing the shares generated by a website on social media with its traffic.
IFSEC Global studied these statistics for 30 manufacturer websites and found that those that didn’t use content marketing effectively had lower social media engagement and website traffic than those that did. They also discovered that security content was shared on LinkedIn more than any other network and that long-form content was shared the most. Wednesday or Thursday were the best days of the week to publish content on. List and how to articles were the most popular forms of content.
How Content Marketing Helps
When you think of how you first heard about a company or product today, it’s often from some sort of social media engagement with a friend or co-worker. You may have even performed an internet search on a problem or product because we all know that anything can be found on Google, right? Marketing today requires you to build a relationship with your audience so that you can establish your position as an authority and warm them up to buying from you. It can generate many leads.
It’s vital in the security industry to effectively connect with your prospects that you provide actual examples to illustrate how your solutions will solve their problems and the importance of your businesses in the industry whether its personal security, selling security products, or even cybersecurity. Providing content that shows how your alarm saves people from break-ins every year and makes their family safe or how an organization can benefit from a surveillance system explains how they can benefit from your product. Let’s discuss some types of popular content marketing for the security industry.
Blogs
Probably one of the most popular content marketing options, blogs reach buyers at every stage of the process and appeal to the majority of them with engaging and easily digestible content. Creating universally relevant evergreen content is the key to success. Not all of your pieces must be evergreen, of course, but increasing that relevant content brings more readers and converts more of them to leads.
Topics like X Ways to Utilize Surveillance Equipment Effectively or How to Make the Outside of Your Home Safer are good examples. Up-to-date news articles that keep your audience coming back to you for the latest news in the industry is another type of information to provide. These types of content really establish your position as an expert who can be trusted. Its information like this that warms your audience up to buying from your business.
According to a HubSpot marketing report, B2B businesses that published 11 or more posts each month have nearly three times the traffic that those only blogging once a month or none at all have. When you update your website more frequently with content that Google likes, it helps boost your company’s website in search results. Readers then view your site as a trusted and credible resource.
Case Studies
Case studies are critical tactics for B2B businesses per the Content Marketing Institute. They target those further along in the buying process that already know what they need to solve their problem. Using client quotes in the case study make them credible and persuasive. This is key to making them convincing.
When creating your case studies make sure you illustrate how your security-product or service successfully impacted your client with pertinent data. Results should be clear like “X number of thefts stopped.” This may be a good time to use a video as they are more engaging and allow potential customers and clients to view success as it develops. Videos are popular ways today for people to consume content because of the unique way that they show the story.
Whitepapers
Whitepapers can mean different documents to different industries. In the tech world, they explain the concept behind new technology or in business they may be reports that are more product-related. While they are created similarly to eBooks, they aren’t the same.
HubSpot provides the best definition. “A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution.” Content marketers use whitepapers as advanced guides for solving a specific problem or educating readers on a particular topic. They are considered downloadable content and are often used to grow email lists as people must provide their email to receive the whitepaper.
The whitepaper typically focuses on the buyers in the middle of the process. Often, the whitepapers won’t attract your audience, but they’ll stay as a result of the information provided. When creating whitepapers, you must understand your buyer persona, evaluate competitors, and perform keyword research to ensure that the data provides value to your audience.
Content is Here to Stay
Content creation is the future of marketing. One 2018 study showed that 55 percent of inbound marketing strategies involved blog content creation, second only to SEO optimization. Purchasers looked at between three to five pieces of marketing content before buying. Interestingly, HubSpot noted that 90 percent of leads from their blog and 75 percent of their blog views actually came from old blog posts.
Content marketing costs 62 percent less than ads and generates more than three times the amount of leads. The security industry needs to embrace content marketing because it helps lead customers through the buying process. It also builds trust with them so that continue coming back to your website for the latest information. When the customer chooses to buy, the will do so from you because your content established you as an expert in the industry. Investing in content marketing is well worth the money as the statistics have shown. It will drive more qualified leads to your website and convert them to sales.
