If content is king, then what would premium content be?
Content marketing itself is increasingly important for businesses to embrace in a digital world. Think of your website (or even your social media accounts) as a planet. Your content being the gravitational pull that generates traffic and engagement.
Then, of course, we leverage that traffic and engagement to fuel conversions, which equates to sales and boosting our bottom line.
The most common types of content include:
- Blog articles
- Graphic illustrations
- Videos
- GIFs
What is premium content?
Premium content then is original information that is valuable enough for website visitors (or social media users) to provide their contact information to get it.
To be more specific, premium content:
- Answers common questions you encounter in your industry
- Dives deeper into a topic to deliver knowledge
- Offers tips and advice that can be acted on
- Addresses challenges that your customers and potential customers face
- Is relevant to the needs and wants of your customers and potential customers
How you package your premium content can vary. Some common types include:
- Webinar, which is a video web presentation typically hosted by an expert in the industry sharing a presentation slide deck. It can be presented live and/or recorded and available long after the webinar is over.
- eBook, which is a PDF that’s usually about a few dozen pages long. It’s very visual with professionally designed pages (including a cover). It’s ideal to include your pitch and contact information at the end of an ebook.
- White paper, which is an in-depth evaluation of a topic in PDF format that includes expert research and is usually six to 12 pages in length.
- Template, which gives customers or potential customers frameworks for creating something (like a content calendar, for example). This is usually offered in PDF format.
- Interactive tools, which help measure or assess something (like a special calculator, for example). You might need to do some programming for this type of premium content.
Of course, to access premium content, visitors should fill out a web form with their name and email address at the very least. But it’s up to you if you’d like to collect more information up front, such as company name, profession, phone number, zip code, etc.
Just keep in mind that the more information you require, the lower the conversion rate of your premium content (no matter how appealing it might be).
After submitting the web form, users should immediately receive the premium content through a link or email.
5 ways to leverage premium content in your marketing
Beyond the tips below that are specific to marketing your premium content, check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing as well.
On your website
The homepage of your website is prime real estate to promote your premium content and is often the most trafficked page of many websites.
You also can use pop-up or slide-in ads on your website. The advantage of these is that they can appear on any of your web pages after a set amount of time.
Plus, very simple in-line links within other content can also be helpful. You can highlight and feature selected portions of your premium content in blogs, for example.
No matter how you promote on your website, make sure that your call-to-action button is bold and attention-grabbing.
Email promotion
Depending on your goals, email promotion may or may not make sense. If lead generation is the goal, then you would be promoting your premium content to contacts you already have.
But if it makes sense to do so, you can share teasers of your premium content in your regular email newsletter and other marketing emails.
Social media
Organic social media posts are a great way to promote your content to potential leads you’ve never come into contact with before. You can even encourage your staff to share the premium content link on their social media channels. And paid social media campaigns can help you target your ads even further to those who are most likely to engage with you.
You can use Google AdWords to target the promotion of your content to internet users based on their search intent.
In addition, you can try Google Display Ads, which allow you to target websites, apps and videos that are part of the Google Display Network.
Print advertising
It may sound archaic, but there might be some print advertising opportunities to explore, depending on your target audience.
We recommend including a QR code in your print ad so that those interested can easily give you their contact information and download your content.
