Boost Your Content Marketing with PPC

We've all heard the mantra "Content is King", but content marketing has been getting a lot of attention recently. A quick Google search turns up a full page of paid listings as well as organic listings from CopyBlogger, Mashable, Marketo, etc. These articles talk about how to create good content, but more importantly, they focus on how to get that content to spread. Well, here are 3 tips to boost your content marketing with PPC.

Know Your Audience

Hopefully you created your content with a specific audience in mind. We'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you did. Newer PPC platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. offer demographic targeting. Therefore, the way that you defined your audience when you created the content now becomes the targeting criteria used in your PPC promotion. Your audience is 25-45? You can target just that age bracket. Your audience has a college degree? You can target just college grads. Your audience likes a particular book or genre of movies? You can target that too.

By knowing your audience you can ensure that your marketing dollars are only spent getting your message to the right people.

Go Where Your Audience Goes

Given that Facebook has over 1 Billion users, it's safe to assume that your customers use Facebook. So what makes Facebook so great for content marketing promotion? That question was asked during a recent #ppcchat Twitter chat and here are a few of the responses:

• Easier funnel entry (likes), plus better and better DR targeting, plus ability to cast wider net for cheap. - FBPPC
• Facebook is a place where people consume content. Fundamentally different environment. - Heather Cooan
• FB allows you to track other interaction with your brand (e.g. Likes, shares, comments, etc.) - Gil Hong

People on Facebook are browsing. They're waiting for the next cool thing to grab their attention, whether that's a picture, a link, a video, a friend's status or your ad. You already have the great content. This gets it in front of more people.

I recently spoke with Gea Elika, owner of Elika Real Estate in New York, about his recent efforts with Facebook. He created an infographic on his website around the question of Renting vs. Buying in real estate. Since he works in real estate, this is a very common question facing his customers. He posted it on Facebook and then promoted it with a $30.00 budget to users aged 25-37 in major cities like New York, LA, Miami and Chicago. Here were the results:

• Clicks - 834
• Page Engagements - 754
• Impressions - 11,454
• Cost/Engagement - $0.04

How many of you would pay $0.04 to have someone interact with your Facebook post?

Get Creative

Lastly, I would advise you to think outside the typical venues of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. For example, StumbleUpon offers a service called Paid Discovery where you can get StumbleUpon users directly to your site. The targeting is based on categories that you select, there is no minimum order size and pricing is very competitive. I've seen one infographic pay for 500 Stumbles and get several thousand as it gained additional thumbs up from users.

As you can see, there are lots of different ways that PPC can boost your content marketing, but if you start by knowing your audience, going where your customers are, and get a little creative you can promote your content in a very cost effective way.