How To Get a Better Return On Your Content Marketing

A customer is reading your website. Keep them there!

Content marketing is one of the top ways websites improve their Google profile and draw customers to a site. This is a business’s opportunity to convert a potential customer into a paying one, but the content a business presents on their website must have value.

You can’t throw just any content up onto a website and hope it’s going to keep a customer there long enough to be interested in your product or service. You need to provide a web visitor with something.

Here are some great ways to get a better return on your investment in content marketing.

The journalistic approach

There are news items, and then there is journalism. While a news item may report straight facts without much in the way of context, a piece of journalism is more in-depth. It connected the dots between news items. It identifies patterns and trends.

The best journalism pieces try not to insert any judgment or opinions, but they do try to give a much larger picture of events as they happen. You can do this as well with your content.

Don’t just announce a new product or service. Include how that product or service fits in with your business as a whole. Suppose your content is meant to be informative SEO-driven content, such as a construction company writing about the ten best eco-friendly design practices. In that case, you can add depth and meaning to the piece by tying it into the community you serve.

The human angle

People love people. People are reassured knowing your company isn’t only about a product or service. They want to know some of the people involved. Spotlights on employees, customers, and wins make excellent copy that keep folks reading. Even stories of failures — so long as there is some kind of takeaway — are good to have in your content.

This is why most web design gurus encourage the use of stock images of smiling faces on front websites.

Show you did some research

Ever visit a website hoping to find useful information only to find the most common, general bits of information imaginable about a topic? I mean, sometimes we don’t need to know all the research about a subject, but we do expect a little bit more meat on that bone.

Including research, case studies, or expert insights on a topic gives a piece more gravitas and encourages the reader to take both what you’re saying and what you’re selling more seriously. And specificity can be useful.

Last month I wrote a piece for a client about tax deductions for rental property owners. One item I brought up was about something called a “pass-through tax deduction.” It involves how much someone can claim on a rental income for a property spread out over time based on what was paid for it and so on. The details aren’t necessary for this article, but I made sure to note in the client’s article that this tax deduction is currently set to expire in 2025.

That’s an important detail if you’re reading that article in 2026.

So show your work. Don’t get overburdened by it, but don’t skimp either. If you show your reader that details matter to you, they’ll matter to them.

Educational value

Do you know what I really appreciate about some websites?

Answers to my questions.

This past week alone, I’ve need information on air fryers, playground equipment, and air filters for my furnace. I found some great information on how often I need to change the air filters in my home (answer: more often than I have been). I consumer report site helped me pick a new air fryer by comparing different models on one site. And I got some pretty good suggestions on how to secure my kid’s swing set to the ground.

For each question I found an answer to, I stayed on that web page long enough to find the answer I needed, and then longer as I checked out other questions or checked the site to see if they were selling something that would help me. (Long story short, my new air fryer should be here tomorrow because Amazon. Someone picked up an affiliate commission,)

The point is that how-tos, FAQs, and other pages with practical, useful information make a good impression and have a measurable impact on how your website visitor chooses to purchase a product or service. (I may go back and buy some air filters after I double-check my furnace model.)

Rich content keeps readers on a page and makes them more inclined to do business with you.

The common theme throughout all this…

If you were to find the one common theme in all of the above, it’s the idea of engagement with your audience. Sure, you could create content that just sits there, but that’s not enough. Not these days. You want visitors to stay and read. You want them to click links. You want them to buy what you’re selling.

Engage your audience. Convert them into customers.

Repeat.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to share more with you via my Bi-Weekly Word Roundup newsletter sent to subscribers every other Sunday. It will feature news, productivity tips, life hacks, and links to top stories making the rounds on the Internet. You can unsubscribe at any time.