Why you shouldn't neglect content marketing to promote your project

We have repeatedly heard from our clients that they do not need any blog on the site and they do not want to invest in content.



Using this case as an example, we want to show why you shouldn't neglect content marketing to promote your project.

Brief description of the project promoted

Project for the sale of travel services, air tickets and train tickets.

The goal set for us by the customer

Increase in the number of airline tickets.



Start of work



The contract was signed at the end of the summer of 2017, and we started work, namely, to develop a strategy for promoting the project.

Project problems

Before starting any work, we usually collect information about the project and its competitors, and then analyze it. This project is no exception. They acted according to the established scheme. 



During the audit, a number of problems were identified that had to be dealt with:

• There is a lot of competition (however, as elsewhere now).
• A little-known and unreported brand.
• Paid advertising, despite all the efforts, was expensive and did not pay off well. 
• Project conversion was very low, sales were small.
• The traffic to the site is small.
• SEO: according to high-frequency, commercial words, the site is very difficult and expensive to promote due to the high competition.

Why we chose content marketing 

We thought for a long time about different options for promoting the project, studied all the opportunities and experience of competitors in the market.As a result, we decided to abandon standard methods like annoying banner and contextual advertising, where all competitors were already present, and focused on content marketing.

People trust information more than a call to buy.

Standard types of advertising for the most part impose a product or service on a person, and the content tells about them. The main goal of content marketing is not selling, but informing users, building some kind of trusting relationship with them. People are looking for information that will help answer their questions - after all, there can be a lot of problems when preparing any trip: where to go, where to stay, how to draw up documents and, finally, how and where to buy tickets ... Therefore, we decided to provide users with high-quality, unique and mandatory useful materials. 



The hypothesis was this:



A person comes to the site for information, gets what he needs, and unobtrusively and gradually remembers the brand and services that the site provides.



Over time, more and more people who have gone through all the stages of informing develop a positive brand image. And when the need arises like “buy a plane ticket”, they more and more often remember the client's website. 



In addition, unique content is essential for SEO because: 

• there is a natural growth of the link mass, 
• positions in search engine results improve, 
• behavioral factors improve,
• traffic from search engines increases. 

Content Requirements: Basic Principles We Followed

Requirements for texts

• Only high quality, original and unique texts.
• No politics or negativity.
• Not only a thorough study of the texts, but also special attention to their design.
• Banned all materials that promote smoking, alcohol or drug use, and gambling.
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• It is advisable to use horizontal photos of at least 800x450 pixels.
• Photos of people in their underwear or completely nude are prohibited if they have a pronounced sexual nature - even when the images are partially or completely blurred or censored.
• Photos with scenes of smoking, drinking or drugs are prohibited.

Content subject

At the very beginning, we planned to write only about airplanes and airline tickets, but a little later it was decided to expand the content of the content to trains, railway, travel and tourism. 

Content formats that we produced for the customer's project

• Articles (overview, with instructions for travelers and useful tips, collections of interesting facts, seo articles, etc.).
• Photo reports, photo galleries.
• News.
• Infographics.
• Video.
• Podcasts.
• Tests.
• Polls.

Each content format solves its own problems, for example: 

1. Overtly pop content is essential for social media traffic and recommendation systems.
2. Complex, analytical materials are of interest to a serious and sophisticated audience. 
3. News is necessary for variety, in order to show the relevance of the site.
4. Polls are needed to generate material for writing analytical articles.
5. Tests are useful for increasing the depth of your browsing.
6. SEO articles (based on collected keywords and CY) are important for traffic from search engines.

Problems that we encountered in the course of work

1. Copywriters



Our staff did not have a sufficient number of free copywriters to implement the assigned tasks to reach the agreed volumes of content. I had to start looking for them.  



The problems with finding copywriters are usually the following:

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The search for copywriters for the project was carried out non-stop.



We received a lot of responses for each vacancy: during the first day after its placement, on average, about 300 people responded. But in the end 99% of them dropped out.



At the moment, we still managed to assemble a good team for this particular project - at the moment we have quite good copywriters, a separate layout designer and proofreader.



2. Selection of illustrations for articles and news



The customer categorically refused to buy photos for articles and news on paid stocks. Therefore, it was necessary to figure out where to get illustrations for the articles ... so that we didn't get anything for it? ;) It was decided to use free photobanks and stocks, illustrations from open sources with the obligatory indication of the source, as well as our own photographs brought from travel.



In addition, there are a number of problems that we usually face when working on all projects:

• There are very few people who have a sense of which photo to choose, how to crop and process it. Explaining this is also a difficult task, since there is a lot of subjectiveness here.
• Sometimes articles contain a lot of images, for each you need to indicate the source. This work only seems simple, in fact it is quite laborious.

 

We reveal a few small secrets



Here are a few secrets from the working document that are given to our specialists at the beginning of work and help them choose more winning photos:

• Photos should be of the highest quality, bright. Less gray and faded shades.
• It is better if there are large details in the photo - especially when it comes to photos for announcements. 
• Photos of announcements for different articles should be different, different types. You need to select them especially carefully, because 90 percent of the photo depends on how many people click on the article and read it.
• Due to compression, a red or pink image is sometimes very blurred - you need to monitor this moment on the site. 

It might seem like there is a lot of confusion in this list of recommendations. However, our working paper contains specific examples taken from the client's website, which we do not publish here, and which help the copywriter quickly understand the essence of each item from the list of recommendations.



3. Limited functionality of the site



In the course of work, we encountered the fact that not all of our ideas could be implemented in the project due to the limited functionality of the customer's site. But, fortunately, the client easily agreed to the revisions.



As a result, we have expanded the functionality of the site, adding to it:



1. The ability to use in articles:

• photo galleries,
• video,
• audio files.

2. Multiple RSS feeds for broadcasting content announcements to different sites.



3. Setting up auto-publishing of content in the social network. 

Sharing content

It is irrational to publish quality content on only one site. There are a lot of services and thematic sites for sharing articles. Due to this, you can increase audience coverage, increase brand awareness on the web, get additional traffic to the site and find new customers.



Therefore, we made a plan for content sharing and a list of sites.



The latter were connected and developed gradually. At the moment, the list of sites where the project's content is broadcast is as follows: 

• Facebook.com.
• Vk.com.
• Twitter.com.
• Ok.ru.
• Instagram.
• Telegram.
• Yandex Zen.
• Pulse mail.ru.
• Subscribe.ru.
• Livejournal.com.
• Pinterest
• Google Discover.
• GoogleNews.
• Flipboard.com.

Podcast sites:

• Yandex.Music.
• Google Podcasts.
• Apple Podcasts.
• Vk.com.
• YouTube.
• Anchor.
• Pocket Casts.
• RadioPublic.
• Spotify.
• Breaker.
• Overcast.fm.

All sites work in different ways, the effect and benefits of each are different. But we want to write a separate case about this.

Content production budget

We started with a budget of 60,000 rubles. per month (about 20 articles were produced).



Now the budget for the content of the project is about 200,000 rubles. per month (50-60 content units are produced per month).



Someone will say: expensive. But don't let this amount scare you.



Read on, and you will understand why a customer can easily part with this amount for content production.

Content promotion result

There will not be many words in this paragraph, we will just show screenshots of statistics from Yandex. Metrics. The conclusions, we think, are obvious.



Screens of widgets from Yandex.Metrica



We use them to constantly monitor the effectiveness of our work.



The positive dynamics of the project development is clearly visible on the widgets. Dynamics of total traffic  Dynamics of branded traffic  Content marketing has led to an increase in brand awareness and, accordingly, traffic for brand queries has grown. Dynamics of direct visits

What's up with SEO?

For high-frequency commercial words, although there is a constant increase in positions, we have not yet achieved the first pages of search results. On the other hand, a carefully worked out semantic core, analysis of low-frequency queries and the production of relevant content allowed us to get excellent traffic dynamics from search engines. (We also plan to write a separate case for SEO).



Dynamics of traffic from search engines



The graph shows a stable growth, and the best growth is traffic from Google. Links Good quality content is often reprinted by other sites. And our work on tracking their direct links to the customer's site also gave excellent results and led to a significant increase in link mass.

















At the very beginning of work on the domain of the customer's site there were about 1 thousand external links, at the moment there are already about 28 thousand (!)



This screen of the graph of the growth in the number of external links was made from the webmaster at the moment. Unfortunately, there is no way to set a period of 2 years.

And what about ticket sales?

Dynamics of purchases of air tickets from direct calls Dynamics of purchases of air tickets from search engines Dynamics of purchases of tickets from branded queries Ticket sales on the customer's website have grown many times over 2 years. Along with the growth in ticket sales from search, direct and branded visits, the conversion to ticket sales from other traffic sources, for example, paid ones, also increased. Thus, the cost of attracting customers has decreased tenfold. Increased brand trust and increased user loyalty to the brand unambiguously contributed to the increase in conversion on all traffic channels simultaneously.

A crisis

The crisis due to the pandemic hit the tourism segment hard. But we are not used to giving up, for us the crisis is , first of all, new opportunities.



In March 2020, traffic began to drop sharply. We had to take emergency measures. As a result of brainstorming, a number of actions were taken to restore traffic to the client's site. We decided to expand the list of topics, SY, connect new platforms for sharing announcements of published materials and hire new copywriters. The result exceeded all our expectations ...



And although the air tickets are selling very poorly now, look at the dynamics of traffic to the site.

Cherry on the cake

Side effect - traffic monetization and content ROI

Content marketing has a nice side effect - making money from selling ads. 



Traffic monetization was also entrusted to us. As a result, at the moment the client covers all his expenses for our services with income from traffic monetization. That is why, even during the crisis, he did not stop work on the production of content and did not break the contract with us.



Conclusion



Take your time to conclude that content marketing is not right for your business. Think carefully about this option for promoting the project.



From experience, sooner or later almost all Internet projects come to a kind of dead end, when, whatever they do, the dynamics of business growth becomes unsatisfactory, when the standard methods of promotion do not give the kind of development that we would like. Content marketing has unlimited growth points.



And although the work on the content promotion of the project does not give instant results, it allows you to maintain the effect for a long time.