Industry: Pet care
Content: Daily articles
Highlights: Top two categories drive 73 percent of blog traffic
You might be hesitant about creating blog content that doesn’t tie directly back to your products and services – you’re supposed to be marketing the brand, after all. But the secret to a bigger search presence and more impressive results may be simple – talk about what matters to your customers.
One of our clients worked with us to create lifestyle content for its company website, and over time it’s become clear that its target audience is finding the company and engaging online through those articles.
Out of four blog categories on the site, the two that are focused on human-interest stories (heartwarming pet-owner reunions, surprising narratives about animals) and pet tips drive the most traffic – 73 percent. Looking closely at the category breakdown, 55 percent of the posts are doing the heavy lifting for the entire section.
Using analytics to refine a content strategy
Since discovering which subjects people pay attention to and click, the content strategy has been shifted to put even more emphasis on selecting the right topics and crafting the most interesting headlines. Overall, they’ve found that the sweet spot for traffic is a medium-length article that takes two to three minutes to read, partnered with a catchy headline.
Nudging readers through the sales funnel
In addition to refining the content itself, the strategists are also working to drive the most value from visitors who are clicking on these titles. Readers are primarily navigating to the site through social networks, which is great for engagement and building brand awareness online. But since these people are going directly to the posts referenced on Twitter, Facebook, etc. the site has to take an extra step to get them to product-focused landing pages where they can convert. Some options include:
- Adding custom calls to action that point visitors toward relevant pages
- Giving readers the option to join a mailing list for similar posts
- Building a strong internal-linking system that connects blog content to main pages
The primary goal of most web marketing strategies is to build an audience – and this company has clearly done this with its lifestyle content. Consumers are distrusting of overly promotional content, so it’s important to tell stories that entertain and inform first before you steer them toward places where they can learn more about your products and services.
What this company does so well – and what all marketers looking to drive traffic and generate leads online should take away from this strategy – is to elegantly blend the readers’ wants and needs with the business’ goals for a united campaign.
- Not sure how to create lifestyle content for your brand? Here are tips from our editor that any company can use to engage readers.
