Like most things in life - content marketing drives the best results when brands give it time to take root. Check out the results this company saw.

Industry: Martial arts software
Content: Daily newsletter articles
Highlights: Newsletter content generates 101 percent more traffic YoY

Content creation may be the web marketing strategy du jour, but companies can’t treat it like a one-off campaign if they want real-world results. A lot of marketers want to see overnight success from their strategies – but there’s an old saying: It takes 20 years to become an overnight success … We simply suggest brands give their content a few months.

Brafton’s client demonstrates why a long-term approach is the best way to generate results when creating web content. Nine months into our content campaign, the site was already seeing 101 percent more traffic.

Daily updates draw website visitors

Content marketing works best as a persistent strategy. You build authority and credibility when you build an archive of resources around a topic over time, delving into new angles or presenting the latest trends. Imagine reading a newspaper that only contained one article … or visiting its website and seeing that it hadn’t publishing anything new in months. You may start to wonder if it’s really the best place to go for information.

Brafton’s client saw how consistent content is a competitive advantage and began working with our editorial team and strategists to come up with the best approach. The daily articles it publishes have proven effective at drawing new prospects to the site, and giving previous visitors a reason to return:

  • Visits to the site increased 101 percent year-over-year
  • 45 percent of organic traffic was made up of new users
Success story traffic data

Provide audience-centric information for a sales-ready crowd

Sure, you want more visitors coming to your website, but you also want to bring in more people who are really interested in what you offer. A big crowd doesn’t always mean more sales. You need to provide the information your audience is seeking to drive up conversions.

This company did that by publishing daily posts that spoke directly to its core audience – businesses looking for martial arts software – and it saw the tight focus pay off. The section of the site where custom content is published is the second-most visited on the entire domain, just behind the homepage, and the content was attracting a qualified audience.Marketers should be using content to draw in the right audience for sales.

  • 8 percent of monthly conversions (demo requests) were assisted by a daily post
  • organic traffic had double the conversion rate of other traffic

A single article contributed 8 percent of the site’s conversions in a month, and more than twice as many people who entered from organic search results requested sales demos than any other traffic source. The strategy worked exactly like it’s supposed to. When you identify the topics that resonate with core audiences and provide an archive of relevant information, you send all the right signals to prospects and search engines. They see that you’re a reliable resource and you become a stronger competitor in the field.

Crafting a well-oiled content marketing machine

Brands’ websites won’t get 100 percent traffic lifts by publishing a single stellar article. It’s about building momentum and showing you’re persistently at the front of the pack.

Companies running content strategies can see results much sooner than the nine-month mark, but they may not fully hit their stride until their campaigns have matured. A one-and-done content approach can give you immediate satisfaction, but a long-term strategy is really the secret to conversion-driven web marketing.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.