It’s not easy to gauge the power of content marketing for a brand or a business. It might, however, help you to do so by looking at the case study given below and understanding the value of content marketing and the positive impact it may have on a business:
Our client Girnar Global a study abroad consultancy, tasked us to come up with a content marketing strategy that would help them generate more leads and get more business. The obvious idea they had was to embed a blog on their existing website. We told them upfront it could be done after they decided to revamp their site (which was needed to make the site presentable and user-friendly) and we even did it later as it would obviously help shoot up the ranking of the site. However, what we suggested back in December 2016 was an entirely different thing.
Process
As they agreed to our suggestion, we started an independent blog ‘My Study Destination’ for them in the niche of education and career. Why?
The new independent blog could serve them with the following benefits:
1. This blog wouldn’t market ‘Girnar Global’ directly but would do indirect marketing by giving them a reference at only a few selected places and also, by placing a banner advertisement.
2. Besides generating more leads and client conversions, the blog could act as an additional source of income for our client through Google Adsense, Sponsored links and ads, and by offering services like career counseling, etc.
3. The primary objective was to communicate the fact to readers that the Girnar Global Study abroad consultants actually possess a lot of experience and in-depth knowledge in the field of their work to make it possible for their clients to live their study abroad dreams. And, using the blog as a platform it could be done in a much more convincing way.
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Adoption and Execution
Initially, for 1 year we focused on curating content that was majorly related to studying abroad. Later when the blog started gaining recognition, we diversified into offering a lot more on this blog than just study abroad content. Our content strategy focused on publishing 3-4 posts a week and every post would get published in the name of ‘Career Coach’ to emphasize that we understood well how sensitive the information we provide would be for students and parents. As a part of the Content Syndication strategy for ‘MyStudyDestination’, we even got articles (related to careers and jobs) published on the Entrepreneur.
Results
The ‘Career Coach’ thing worked and within weeks of launching the blog, the e-mails started finding their way to the Inbox with students in large numbers seeking help in getting their queries addressed. We would re-direct the relevant cases to our client for them to be taken for study abroad consultancy. So, the idea served them pretty well.
Besides, the blog got a famous Indiblogger 2017 Award in the category of Education. In a very short span, it has managed to achieve the Domain Authority of 23 and thus, there are frequent requests rolling in for paid backlinks, thereby, generating more money. Even more, the blog fetched a project and got to be a part of the famous campaign #DefinitelyPTE that was run by PTE (Pearson Test of English) in June 2018.
Even though it is quite hard to figure out the value of your investment as far as content marketing goes, the blog ‘MyStudyDestination’ which we run for our client allowed us to prove the value of content as a powerful marketing tool and even as a source of revenue generation.