In these last eight years, Cristian Ángel Rennella has been running over 100 experiments (108 and counting, when he last checked), and he is not even a scientist.

He is a Marketing Director, and since 2008 he has tried absolutely everything in order to learn precisely what works, and what doesn’t when it comes to content marketing on the Internet.

Based on all the lessons Rennella has learned over the years, he wants to share with you the four tactics that have given his company the best results, which he recommends implementing, regardless if you have a small start-up or a big company.

At the end of the day, you won’t find a better strategy than the hard work of trial and error in order to discover what will give you the most successful results for your company.
I really hope that the tips I’m going to share will make your work less stressful (and expensive).” Cristian Rennella

#1 – Your users have questions, don’t let your competitors provide the answers

The starting point is for you to understand that 81% of your potential clients research the internet before making a purchase. Most of them use search engines such as Google to make a decision. In this phase, they have doubts and questions, but most of all they have a problem, and they want it to be solved. This is where your content marketing strategy needs to come in on the scene.

If you are capable of developing valuable content and help users, they will consider you as a reference point, and you will be their first option when it comes time to making a buying decision.

To implement this tactic successfully, what we did was to create a Q&A section where the questions were created organically by the users’ doubts/curiosities, and the answers were given exclusively by experts working for our company. Who is better than your own specialized employees at answering questions regarding what you do?

In this way, in the future, when new users ask Google similar questions, your website will be the first link that shows up on the results page.

Here is how it works in our company:

This method for content marketing represents 27% of our monthly visits, reaching 6,885,000 users. For us, this represents 344,250 sales, equivalent to a revenue of $2,650,725 per month.

A well-known example of this way of doing content marketing is StackOverflow, who dedicate themselves solely to giving answers to programmers, creating excellent results. With these millions of daily visits from developers as a starting point, they generate leads for those looking to recruit new professionals.

Advice: In our experience, if you want this community of questions and answers to grow organically, it will be difficult because 94% are questions and only 6% of people give answers. Furthermore, you must take the time to sift through all the new content to avoid spam.
The best way is to invest in one person on your team that can answer the questions one-by-one with high-quality content, in proper form, and in a timely manner.

#2 – Focus your efforts on generating more and better comments

With each passing day, more and more people do a quick search on their cell phones to check on users’ reviews before finalizing their buying decision. 67% of consumers are influenced every day by online commentaries related to what you are selling.

For this reason, your second strategy for creating content should be concentrated on getting your users to share their experiences on the internet.

What worked best for us was retargeting those who bought our product for the second time. Knowing those were recurring clients satisfied with what we were selling (would they buy from us twice if they were unhappy?), we offered them a 35% discount on their next purchase if they would spend 5 minutes to share their positive experience with us.

It took some time to collect all the feedbacks, but when on our landing page we could brag show to our potential clients that we have 76,548 positive comments and only 7 negatives, this generated an increase in our conversion by 476%!

You will be greatly compensated if you invest in this alternative for content marketing.

If you would like another example of this tactic of giving current users an incentive for them to publish comments, I suggest looking at what Beepi (a tool to buy and sell cars online) did with pictures, videos, and testimonials in their Love Stories section.

Advice: It is also important that you ask your users to leave their feedback not only on your own website but also on Yelp and other third party sites that you do not manage or control so that the new potential clients can see that you are not manipulating the comments.

#3 – You are responsible for telling your story and continue sharing it as you grow

The third content marketing tactic we used, is based on creating content not just on your own site but also on distinct news sections of third party sites so that you can share your story, your challenges, triumphs, and errors.

I am surprised by the number of companies that fail to do this valuable work of showing the world what they do and how they do it. You have to give informative content to those in the media who know little or nothing about your company. Carrying out this work and taking advantage of it as a strategy for content marketing is your responsibility.

For example, it’s a few years that in our company has been implementing innovative ways for increasing productivity, such as a 4-day work week, with no bosses and working remotely.

We have shared our case history through content marketing as much as we could, and it created new visits and new sales. But there’s more: we have reached investors and contacts which we otherwise never would have been able to reach.

You can also do this through your own blog, the one that you set up on your company’s website. An example of a company that does this well is Groove, which has a section called

An example of a company that does this well is Groove, which has a section called Startup Journey where they share contents that range from how to have 1-on-1 meetings with all of the members of your team, to how and why they decided to invest in a company.

Over the long run, this is the content marketing method which gives the best results because, eventually, those that follow your start-up’s story will be your best evangelizers.

I found out about the company just mentioned through a colleague’s tweet, who shared one of their articles about what they did to make their start-up grow. Over time I got to know them more and more from their blog, and when our own company had a need for a Help Desk tool, they were my first option -and the ones that we are still using today.

Advice: the best way to implement this form of content marketing is to be totally transparent about your triumphs as well as your errors. There is nothing that creates more empathy than when someone shares how and why they messed up and are willing to help others who are in the same situation.

#4 – You should educate

The final strategy for content marketing is that of educating your potential clients about the industry in which your company specializes and which you know to a perfection.

Let’s suppose that you heard that email marketing is a good alternative to generate new clients for your business. The first thing that you do is going to Google and typing queries: What is email marketing; its advantages, its disadvantages and, finally, how to implement it? During this whole process of research, your company must be present and show up as high as possible.

This is what MailChimp does with its specialized guides that cover the whole nine yards: How do I start? How do I do trials? How do I segment the audience? How can the process be automated? etc.

In our case, we decided to structure our car insurance page splitting it into different sections, one for each brand. In this way, we were able to “educate” our customers, giving to each client the specific and most complete set of information to know everything about the car they own or are about to buy.

This generates 42% of our monthly traffic, which is equivalent to 10,710,000 visits and, in turn, creates 413,112 sales equal to monthly invoices of $3,180,962.

Advice: The key to the success of this content marketing technique, is focusing on those users who know nothing about the industry in which you offer services. If you can turn Google users with no knowledge about something into happy “students” with answers to all their questions, they’ll develop a deep trust in your knowledge and in the potential of making business with you.

As we saw in the example of email marketing, if you can teach someone the fundamental steps and the advantage points to be gained, when they want to implement it, your company and the services you offer will be their first option.

If you can go beyond written words, it’s even better. MOZ, for examples, uses video tutorials about inbound marketing to generate new clients.

Conclusion

Once again, there are thousands of options for implementing content marketing, but there is only one road to finding the best alternative for your company: trial and error.

Based on our own experience, I’d suggest you start today by trying out one of the four options that I shared in this article. Don’t try them all at once, implement one at a time and test, until you know which gives the best results.

If you have success with one technique, then you could start trying other options (while you leave the first choice with the designated resources) so that you can continue growing. On the contrary, if you are not successful, eliminate the option you tried, collaborate with your team, and try something new.

These experiences and knowledge was shared by Cristian Ángel Rennella, Director of Marketing at EMT for Latin America. Developer of strategies and campaigns for high-impact start-ups in Argentina and Brazil”