My 6-Step Content Marketing Formula That Drives 3,549 Visitors

Writing a blog post is easy.

If you don’t write often, you may feel otherwise, but just follow this and you’ll be good to go when it comes to writing. Or, you can just watch the video below.

But still, you write a blog post and then what do you do?

Well, I’ll tell you this… most people forget the “marketing” in content marketing. Most people write content but don’t do a great job of promoting it.

Here’s the thing: I figured out the perfect formula to promoting content.

Best of all, it’s not complex. Heck, it doesn’t even take 30 minutes. It’s so easy that I broke it down into 6 steps.

And just to give you an idea before we dive into the formula, it’s so effective here is the traffic to my latest blog post.

35,492 visits in a week isn’t too shabby. The post didn’t do exceptionally well and it didn’t tank. It was just an average post.

Now you probably won’t see the same results as me as I’ve been doing this for a long time, but your results will be much better than what you are currently getting. Hence, I used the number of 3,549 in the title as you should be able to drive 1/10th of what I am generating.

So, let’s dive right into the formula.

Step #1: Optimize your headline

8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 out of 10 people will click through on your headline to read the rest of your article.

No matter how well written your content is, promoting it won’t be effective if no one likes your headline.

Now I know what you are thinking… I’ve already published my article, is it too late to change my headline?

Nope, you can always change your headline, just try not to change the URL of the article once it is already published. And if you decide to change the URL, use a 301 redirect.

There’s a really simple way to come up with headlines that work. Heck, it doesn’t even take more than a minute or two.

Just head over to Ubersuggest and type in the main keyword or phrase your article is about.

You’ll see a report that looks something like this:

Now I want you to click on “Content Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You should now see a report that looks like this:

This report shows you all of the blog posts around the web that contain your keyword or phrase within their title. And it breaks it down by social shares, backlinks, and search traffic.

You can use this to see what is working in your space.

Ideally, you want to look for headlines that have thousands of social shares (or hundreds if you aren’t in a popular industry), at least 10 backlinks, and more than 100 estimated visits. Just like the example below.

Making your headlines similar to ones that meet those 3 criteria will increase your odds of getting more traffic.

Step #2: Add 3 internal links

The easiest way to get your new content more love is to build links.

Yes, links are hard to build, but internal links are not… plus they are still effective.

I rank for competitive terms like “digital marketing”…

A lot of it has to do with internal links. I link to my main digital marketing page within my sidebar and within my content.

Every time you publish a new blog post, I want you to go into your older content that is relevant to your newly published blog post and add a link to it. Do this to 3 of your older blog posts.

This helps with indexing and it also helps your new content rank higher on Google.

Step 3: Share your content on the social web carefully

The problem with social media marketing is that people think they can just share their content on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn and it will automatically do well.

Sadly, it won’t because billions of URLs have been shared already.

In other words, we just tend to ignore most of the links people share.

But there is a simple way to stand out and get thousands of visitors from the social web, just like I get.

So, what’s my secret?

Well, I will give you a hint. Just look at one of my most recent posts on LinkedIn:

And here is one from Facebook:

Do you notice a pattern?

I’m evoking curiosity. In other words, I am piquing your interest and if you want to know the “solution” you have to click through to my site.

With the LinkedIn post, I tell you that marketing is going to change next year. I also make a point to say how it is going to change in a way that nobody is talking about.

I do this because we all can assume marketing will change. But by saying it is in a way nobody is talking about, it evokes curiosity. And if you want to know how it will change you have no choice but to click through over to my site to read the rest.

With my Facebook post, I also evoke curiosity. I talk about a Google algorithm update, but I hint that I have an answer to leveraging Google’s latest algorithm update. And if you want to know what it is, you have to click through over to my site.

Whenever you post on the social web, evoke curiosity if you want people to head over to your site.

The easiest way to do this is that every time you share one of your articles on the social web, add a few sentences above the link that helps pique peoples’ interest.

Step #4: Message everyone you link out to

It’s common to link out to other sites within your blog posts.

Heck, sometimes I even link out to my competition.

If you don’t ever link out to other sites, you are making a big mistake. It helps with authority and trust.

If you are using stats and data within your article, you want to cite your sources. This brings credibility to you and it helps brand yourself as an expert which can help with Google’s medic update.

Now, when you link out to a site, go and search their email address. You can typically find their email address on their website.

Or if you can’t find their email address, look for a contact page on their site, you’ll typically see a form that you can fill out.

Whether you find an email address or contact form, I want you to message each and every single site you link out to with a message that goes like this:

Hi [insert their first name],

I just wanted to say, I love your content. Especially your article on [insert the name of the article you linked out to].

I linked to it from my latest blog post [insert URL of your blog post]. It would make my day if you checked it out and even shared it on your favorite social network if you enjoyed it.

Cheers,

[insert your name]

When I send out these emails, I am getting 50 to 60% of the people to respond and share my content. But of course, my blog is popular, so for me, it isn’t too hard. But it hasn’t always been that way, and I’ve been leveraging this tactic for ages.

On the flip side, I also use this tactic on a few of my blogs that are in other niches and don’t use my name (no one knows I own them) and I am seeing success rates around 20%.

Just make sure you don’t use this tactic to ask for a link back. Your success rate will be slim.

Step #5: Send an email blast

These last two tactics produce a large portion of my results, and you shouldn’t take them for granted, no matter how basic they may seem.

If you already haven’t, start collecting emails from your site. You can use free tools like Hello Bar to create popups or sliders.

Hello Bar will plug into whatever email provider you are currently using.

Once you are up and running, every time you release a new blog post, send out an email blast.

Here’s an example of one of my email blasts.

It’s so effective it generated 13,544 clicks.

I’ve found that you can drive good traffic from emails as long as you do the following:

1. Scrub your list – if someone doesn’t open your emails over the last 30 or 60 days, remove them from your list. It helps keep your emails in people’s inboxes.
2. Send text-based emails – if you look at the email I sent, I keep it simple. No images, nothing fancy, just text and a link back to my site. It’s that simple.
3. Evoke curiosity – just like how I explained with the social media posts, your emails won’t do well unless you evoke curiosity.

As you write more content you will get more traffic, which will cause your email list to grow. That will also cause you to get more traffic. 🙂

Step #6: Send a push notification

I don’t know why so few sites are leverage push notifications. It’s so effective I believe I will get more traffic from push notifications in 2020 than I will from email marketing.

To give you an idea, when I analyze my competitors in the marketing arena, only 3 out of 19 use push notifications.

In other industries, the percentage is far worse, which means there is more opportunity for you.

Here’s how push notifications work….

Someone comes to your site and through their browser, they get a message if they want to subscribe to your site.

A portion of your visitors will click “allow”. With NeilPatel.com, roughly 5.4% of visitors are currently clicking “allow”.

You can send push notifications and get subscribers using a free tool like Subscribers.com.

And then when you write a new blog post, you log into Subscribers.com and click on the “Create Notification” button. From there you will see a screen where you can enter the title and description of your latest post.

As you can see from the image above, you’ll notice that I use an “icon” image, a “large” image, and I show “custom buttons.”

Using those 3 elements is the key to getting the most traffic from push notifications. Here are some of my stats from using Subscribers.

I’m getting roughly 6,000 visits from every push notification I send. That’s not too bad.

And if you are curious about what a push notification looks like, here’s what people get when I send it out.

What’s cool about push notification is no matter what website someone is on, they will see a message similar to the one above, which will bring people back to your site.

No dealing with spam filters or messages not going through. Plus, if someone isn’t online when you send a push notification, the next time they use their web browser they will see your message.

Conclusion

Promoting your content doesn’t have to be hard.

You don’t need “advanced” tactics or anything that is out of the box. The basics work well, and I have been using the above formula for years… literally.

Now, I know there are other things you can do to promote your content, but let’s be realistic: we are all strapped for time. And I’ve found the ones I’ve mentioned above to produce the biggest bang for the buck.

So, what other simple ways do you promote your content?

The post My 6-Step Content Marketing Formula That Drives 3,549 Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

Marketing Trends for 2020: Here’s What Will Happen That Nobody is Talking About

The new year is right around the corner. And I know you are already prepared because you read this blog and tons of other marketing blogs, right?

But here is the thing: I also read most of the popular marketing blogs, follow all of the marketing YouTube channels, and listen to the same podcasts you do.

And I’ve noticed that very few people are talking about what’s really going to happen in 2020.

Sure, they will tell you things like voice search is going to account for over 50% of the search queries next year but all of that stuff has already been talked about.

And there are actually more interesting trends that will affect your marketing that no one is really talking about.

So, what are these trends? What’s going to happen in 2020?

Alright, here goes…

Trend #1: Companies who rely on Google Analytics will get beat by their competition

We all love Google Analytics.

Heck, I love it so much I log in at least 3 or 4 times a day. And here is the kicker: I get so much traffic that my Google Analytics only updates once a day.

I really need to break that habit but that’s for another day.

You are probably wondering, what’s wrong with Google Analytics?

There actually isn’t much wrong with it. It’s a great tool, especially considering that it’s free.

But here is the thing… marketing has been changing. New channels are being constantly introduced, such as voice search.

And transactions no longer are as simple as someone coming and buying from you and that’s it.

These days there are things like upsells, down sells, repeat purchases, and even checkout bumps. On top of that, there are so many different ways you can generate revenue for your online business, such as partnerships, affiliate marketing, and even webinars.

This has caused companies to start using analytics solutions that tie into their database better, such as Amplitude.  Or better yet, you are seeing a big push into business intelligence.

A central place where you can tie in all of your data and make better-informed decisions so you can optimize for your lifetime value instead of your short-term income.

In 2020, you will see more companies adopting business intelligence solutions… from paid ones to free ones like Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t checked out Data Studio, you’ll want to start now because it is easy to pass in all of your business and marketing data into one place. For example, you can pass in more granular data from your Facebook ad campaigns into Data Studio while that would be a bit difficult to do with Google Analytics.

Trend #2: Companies will optimize for voice search, but not for revenue

According to ComScore, over 50% of the searches in 2020 will be from voice search. But that’s not really a new trend… everyone has been talking about that for years.

So, what’s the big deal?

Optimizing for voice search is a great way to get your brand out more, but how is that going to convert into sales?

I haven’t seen too many solutions so far when it comes to capitalizing on your voice search traffic, but so far there is Jetson.ai.

If you aren’t familiar with Jetson.ai, it makes it so people can buy from your site using voice search. It doesn’t matter if it is Alexa or Google Home, they work with most of the popular devices.

What’s cool about Jetson.ai is that it can learn from each customer and customize the interactions.

For example, if I keep ordering the same toothpaste from a specific store using voice search, Jetson.ai keeps track of that so you can easily keep ordering the same product over and over again with little to no friction.

Heck, it’s easier than logging into your computer or pulling out your phone to make a purchase.

Trend #3: Your lists won’t convert as well, so you’ll have to look for alternative communication channels

Email, it’s something we all use in the corporate world.

But here is something interesting when it comes to marketing emails… I’m in a group with a bit over 109 email marketers across different industries in different parts of the world.

And can you guess what we are all noticing?

Our open rates are staying roughly the same and that’s largely because we all know how to clean and optimizing for deliverability.

But our click rates are going down.

So far as a group we have seen our click rates drop by 9.4% in 2019.

That’s crazy considering as a group we have over 146 million email addresses.

Now does this mean email is dead?

Of course not!!!

Email is here to stay and will be here for a very long time.

But what companies will have to do in 2020 is to leverage more communication channels.

Chatbots will take off drastically. Not necessarily the Intercom’s or Drift’s of the world but more so the solutions like ManyChat and MobileMonkey.

ManyChat and MobileMonkey leverage Facebook Messenger and as they connect it with Instagram and WhatsApp it will get even more popular.

In addition to chatbots, you’ll see more people leveraging tools that allow push notifications like Subscribers.

It’s so powerful, here is the impact I’ve been able to generate from push notifications so far using Subscribers.

You can wait till next year to lever chatbots and push notifications, but I’d recommend you start sooner than later. 😉

Trend #4: Moats will almost be non-existent, other than brands

You’ve probably heard the word “moat” before. If you haven’t, just think about water around a castle.

Back in the day, they had water all around the castle and they used a drawbridge to get in and out of the castle, so it would protect them from invaders.

With your business, you may have a moat. It could be a feature, your cost structure, a technological advantage, or even a marketing advantage.

Over the years, moats in the online world have slowly been disappearing.

It’s easy for anyone to copy these days. So, what’s separating you from your competition?

Something could work right now, but it won’t last forever…

But do you know what will still be a strong moat in 2020 and even a stronger one in the future?

It’s branding.

People buy Jordan shoes because they love Michael Jordan. His brand is stronger than ever even though he hasn’t played in the NBA for roughly 16 years.

His shoes are so popular, it’s helped him boost his net worth to over a billion dollars. Plus owning a basketball team doesn’t hurt either. 😉

But what’s interesting is he’s made more money after retirement than he did as a basketball player.

And it’s not just Jordan who built a strong brand… so have the Kardashians.

Kylie launched a billion-dollar company according to Forbes and it was all because of her personal brand. Her cosmetic company isn’t doing anything revolutionary. She just has a strong brand… and good for her for monetizing her brand.

The same goes for companies like Nike, Ferrari, Tesla, American Express… and the list goes on and on.

It’s why companies are spending over 10 billion dollars a year on influencer marketing.

Just look at my agency NP Digital. It’s literally one of the fastest-growing ad agencies out there. And when I look at all of my competitors’ numbers, we are growing at a much faster pace because of my brand.

Yes, we have a great team, but again, that really isn’t a moat as a lot of agencies have great teams. It’s my brand that gave us a really fast kick start and continues to hopefully push us up.

You’ll want to build a brand in 2020. Whether it is personal or corporate, it’s the best moat you can build in marketing. Plus, it will help you with Google’s EAT.

Trend #5: Marketing will become a more even playing field, you’ll have no choice but to use automation

When I first started off as an entrepreneur, I turned to SEO because I couldn’t afford the big ad budgets as my competitors.

Heck, I couldn’t even afford to run any paid ads.

Over the years, the playing field has become more level.

There are credit card companies like Brex that make it easier for startups to get approved for larger limits and you may not have to pay them back right away.

There are financing companies that will give you cash to spend on marketing, so non-venture funded companies can more easily compete.

There are even companies like Lighter Capital that will give you loans without all of the headaches based on your existing revenue.

And to top it off, software solutions are now starting to integrate AI to give better recommendations. From Clickflow and RankScience to Distilled ODN… everyone is trying to use AI to make SEO and other forms of marketing.

Heck, BrightEdge can even automate your SEO (or at least a large portion of it). According to them, their automated SEO solution increases page views per visit by 60% as well as provides 21% more keywords on page one​.

Keep in mind their clients are really big (their software starts in the thousands of dollars per month) so they would probably see better results than most companies, but still, you will start seeing many more software companies leverage AI.

Even with Ubersuggest, I’m working on creating AI that does the SEO for you so you no longer have to spend endless hours while, at the same time, saving you thousands of dollars.

In other words, the marketing playing field is getting more even. And if you want to do well, you are going to have to leverage AI and automation.

If everyone else is using it and you aren’t, you are going to get crushed because it will make changes faster and more accurately than a human. Again, it’s the only option you’ll have if you want to continually compete.

But don’t worry, there will be affordable/free solutions that exist, it’s just a matter of time. 😉

If everyone is leveraging the same AI marketing technology, how can you beat your competitors?

Well, it will come down to everything else… price, customer service, upselling, operations, sales… All of the small stuff is what’s going to help you win.

Trend #6: There will be no more silver bullets, we will all have to optimize for marginal gains

A lot of businesses were built off of one marketing channel.

Dropbox grew through referral marketing. Invite more friends, get more free space.

Facebook was built off your email address book. Facebook used to tap into it and invite all of your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf.

Companies like Quora and Yelp were built off of SEO. All of those rankings really help drive their businesses.

But you no longer can build a business through just one marketing channel. Good channels now get saturated extremely fast.

Even if they work and cause explosive growth, it will only last for a short while before your competitors jump on board and make it harder.

Marketing is now heading in the direction of being about “marginal gains.”

There’s a British cycling coach named Dave Brailsford. His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.

And he’s right, that’s how you win a race.

The same will be with your marketing. There will be a big shift from people focusing on one channel and trying to find the “Holy Grail of marketing” to working on slightly improving each area of your marketing.

From split testing your title tags to get a few ranking improvements to adding checkout bumps to your order page so you can spend a little bit more on your paid ads to using Google Data Studio so you can better optimize for your lifetime value…

It’s all about the little things. That’s what is going to add up to winning.

That’s what you’ll have to shift your mindset to in order to win in 2020 and beyond.

Trend #7: Personalization is the new marketing

The problem with marketing as it exists today is that 95% of your visitors will never convert into a customer. And that’s if you are lucky.

Chances are you are more likely looking at 97% plus of your visitors never converting.

The big reason isn’t that your marketing sucks or that all of those visitors are junk and unqualified.

It’s that your message doesn’t fit every single one of your visitors.

But through personalization, you can convert more of your visitors into customers.

A basic example of this is Amazon. When you go to Amazon, they know your patterns and what you typically buy so they show you what they think you want to see in order to boost their conversions.

And it works! When I log into Amazon I see tons of household supplies because that is what I buy the most often. I never buy dog food (which is smart because I don’t have a dog) so I’ll never see ads for dog food.

Businesses are also trying to personalize each and every single experience both online and offline. 

Companies like Amperity are trying to create a customer relationship engine so you can better serve each of your customers, whether it is online or offline.

Marketing is going to become a game of personalization. With ad costs and even general marketing costs rising, you have no choice but to figure out how to convert the 97% of your traffic that just never comes back.

You’ll see a big push for this in 2020.

Conclusion

I know a lot of the stuff I mentioned above isn’t talked about a lot and they aren’t popular marketing topics that everyone wants to hear… but it is the future.

These are trends that will come true, some already are, and you have to adapt for them.

Here’s the beautiful part, though. You just read this, and now have a chance to act on the information before your competition. So, make sure you go and do so.

I want to see you not only succeed but I want you to beat your competition. And I believe you can, whether you are a big company, or just starting off with very little to no money.

So, what do you think of the trends above? Do you see any marketing trends that will come true in 2020 that few people talk about?

The post Marketing Trends for 2020: Here’s What Will Happen That Nobody is Talking About appeared first on Neil Patel.