The Secret to Volume Content Marketing (+ How to Be Successful at It)

Building and maintaining a consistent online presence is key to growing your business. One common strategy used by digital publishers to achieve this goal is volume content marketing. While the name and process can seem overwhelming, this approach pays dividends once established.

In this article, you will:

• • Understand what volume content marketing is and why it matters.
  • Discover the secret to successful volume content marketing.
  • Learn best practices to ensure your volume content marketing strategy pays off.

What is volume content marketing?

Content marketing focuses on creating high-value, relevant content for a brand’s target audience. This content often includes blog posts or social media posts, videos, e-books, podcasts, and more. 

Volume content marketing describes high-volume content creation. More and more digital publishers move toward this strategy with good reason: it works. According to Hubspot, companies posting 15 or more blogs per month gain five times more traffic than companies not posting at all.

Related Article: 6 Things to Know When Starting Content Marketing

The secret to volume content marketing

The secret to volume content marketing is three-fold: consistency, quality and value, and SEO strategy.

Consistency

Publishing regular, frequent content remains a top priority of a volume content marketing strategy. In addition to keeping your brand top-of-mind for your target audience, consistent publishing offers multiple compounding benefits:

• • It boosts organic traffic. With more content, the chance of a new customer finding your pages in their SERPs increases.
  • It builds brand awareness, visibility, and trust. Consistent publishing demonstrates your industry expertise and a give-and-take rapport. 
  • It increases the likelihood of finding qualified leads. Through increases in organic traffic and brand awareness, your content will reach more potential customers interested in your service or product.

The ideal posting frequency depends on a business’ size and goals. Humongous corporations with multi-thousand dollar marketing budgets and full teams will likely publish more frequently than a small business or startup with a fraction of those resources.

Quality and value

Consistent posting is one thing, but it won’t have the desired effect if the content is irrelevant or of poor quality. A focus on high-quality content adds value to your audience’s daily lives will keep people coming back for more.

Some examples of value-added content include:

• • Informational and instructional guides, especially if you can offer a unique perspective on the topic.
  • Thought leadership blogs, including insights and actionable advice.
  • Curated information roundups that provide a succinct report of research your audience may not have time to find themselves.
  • Infographics, videos, and social media posts highlighting information relevant to your audience.

To create high-quality, value-added written content, answer the following three questions:

1. 1. Who is the target audience? What challenges are they facing and how can your content help? Be as specific as possible in audience insights and potential solutions. Note this can change depending on the topic and industry.
   2. How long should it be? The ideal blog post length varies depending on the searcher’s intent. In general, writers should aim to meet the reader’s needs without including too much “fluff.”
   3. How will this content stand out from competitors? This question remains imperative to ask for high search volume topics and keywords. To stand out from currently-ranking content, discuss with your team how the piece of content you’re creating adds to the conversation instead of regurgitating existing info in a different voice. 

SEO strategy

Consistency and value compromise two-thirds of the puzzle and SEO completes it. Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) ensures your target audience will find the optimized content you create.

A few SEO tips for optimizing blog content include:

• • Conduct keyword research. Consider the topic of your content, related subideas, and what phrases you’d like the content to show up for on search engines.
  • Write a catchy title and a compelling call to action (CTA). The title will bring readers in, while the CTA will persuade them to engage with your company.
  • Incorporate visuals. Not only do search engines tend to favor images and videos; media-rich content also breaks up walls of text for better readability.
  • Consider the overall reader experience. If your content is relevant, clearly written, and visually appealing, people are more likely to click into your blog posts (and stay there).

Establishing and maintaining a volume content marketing strategy that prioritizes consistency, quality, and SEO elements may challenge large teams with other client commitments, so businesses can (and should!) outsource the content creation process to volume marketing agencies.

Related Article: How to Decide What Content to Create

Why volume content marketing works

High-volume content creation gives your business more opportunities to get in front of a wider audience. Consistent quality blogging increases your keyword rankings and organic search traffic — and more indexed pages mean more potential for ranking high in SERPs.

If you’re still on the fence, let these blogging statistics convince you:

• • Businesses that write for marketing purposes see 13 times the return on investment (ROI) of businesses that do not.
  • Companies regularly posting blogs produce 67% more leads per month than companies that do not.
  • After reading high-quality content, 34% of buyers will make a spontaneous purchase
    (And the more high-quality content you create, the more chances you’re creating to achieve this outcome).
  • Thirty-two percent of readers agree “accuracy is among the most crucial factors in quality content.” Nearly 24% of readers say “bad content quality destroys a blog’s credibility.”

How to be successful at volume content marketing

Now that you know why volume content marketing works, you’ll also need to understand the best practices within it. Implementing the below strategies will ensure the best possible results from your volume marketing campaign.

Create a list of goals

First, brainstorm the big picture: what do you want out of your volume content marketing campaign? Perhaps you’re seeking more brand awareness, a higher number of qualified leads, and/or increased sales from products or services. Once you have the “macro” of your campaign, you can get into the “micro” by developing a list of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals. The more detailed you can be with these goals, the better.

To get started, ask yourself the following questions:

• • What specific outcome am I looking for, and what action(s) do I (or others) need to take to achieve that outcome?
  • What type of content (e.g., topic, medium, length) do I want to create?
  • How many pieces of content do I want to publish per month?
  • How long will it take me to create each type of content? (For example, social media posts and other short-form content types will require less time and planning to implement than a long-form blog post.)
  • Can I achieve these goals with my current team and publishing schedule?

Study your competitors

If you want to stand out from your competitors, you’ll want to see what they are doing. Launch your search engine of choice and get to studying! Look up both your targeted keywords and other companies offering similar products or services. As you browse, consider the following:

• • What articles are performing well on Google for the topic/industry?
  • What are those articles doing right? Where are they lacking?
  • How can my content improve upon what’s available?

Taking the time to conduct this research can give you a framing point for the type of content your audience wants — and how you can deliver it.

Know the funnel position of your content

The marketing funnel helps companies visualize the customer journey. By understanding where in the funnel a particular topic sits, you’ll better know how to create content that resonates with your audience and moves them to the next funnel.

In the initial stages, or the top of the funnel, prospective customers are learning about your organization and may view you as one of many options. You don’t want to be too “sales-y” in this stage — instead, focus on providing broad, valuable information to encourage the reader to return.

As you move to the middle of the funnel, you’ll reach prospective buyers: those interested in your brand and what you have to offer who aren’t ready to commit to your company yet. Written content at this stage should target potential customers’ specific needs and speak to how your products and services may provide a solution.

At the bottom of the funnel, your audience is about ready to commit. Take a direct sales approach by highlighting the specific details and benefits of your products or services. A reader who’s been nurtured through the funnel would likely receive this information well but first-time web visitors shouldn’t only see “bottom-funnel” on their first visit.

Show your brand’s personality

While people may search for a product or service, they’re really choosing a brand they resonate with to support. Allow your brand’s personality to shine through in everything you create. The best content infuses personality into both authoritative, informational articles and lighter, more informal how-tos. 

Content that provides value in addition to humor, relatability, or real-world applications becomes top-of-mind for consumers. 

Build your content calendar

Once you’ve conducted the necessary research and established your goals, you’ll need to build a content calendar (if you don’t already have one). A content calendar can give a bird’s-eye view of your volume marketing strategy and ensure everything goes out on time. 

This is especially important in volume content marketing, since you’ll be publishing frequently and may have many hands on deck!

When building out a content calendar, choose a format that works well for you and your team — and can scale as your content strategy evolves. Options include an editable calendar template, a spreadsheet, or an online management tool. 

Analyze the results of your efforts

Once you’ve given your volume content marketing campaign some time to take off, analyze the results and compare them to the original goals you established. Consider tracking metrics such as website traffic, number of leads generated, or revenue generated from sales. Review which pieces of content performed well (and which didn’t) and try to understand why; timing, frequency, and visibility can all factor into how well a blog post does. Give content between six and eight months after publication before digging into data.

Once you’ve analyzed the results of your efforts, use that information to develop an action plan to meet your current and future business goals.

If you’re looking to scale your content efforts, Lightning Media Partners is here to help. Our volume marketing agency specializes in outlining, writing, and editing high-volume, high-quality content. Contact us today to discover how our volume content marketing services can help your business reach new heights.