According to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 88% of marketers have successfully reached their goals of creating brand awareness and building credibility and trust through content marketing.

And 80% have achieved their goal of educating their audience.

Herein lies the problem.

As evidenced in the CMI study, the “goals” of content marketers are awry. Worse, their content strategies are based upon a false premise.

You see, brand awareness is nice, but brand awareness doesn’t pay the bills.

New customers pay the bills.

Think about your keyword rich SEO blog for a moment. It was created so you have a good page ranking on Google, right?

But then what?

Once a visitor comes to your site, they’re supposed to do something, right?

Are they supposed to get an education, or… are they supposed to buy something?

Today’s content marketers, since they are focused on brand awareness and not new customer acquisition, have abandoned an incredibly important part of the revenue cycle.

The end game: leads, conversions, sales.

But the poor performance of your content marketing is not their fault either, they’re just doing what they think they’re supposed to do.

According to dictionary.com, content marketing is “marketing that tries to attract customers by distributing informational content potentially useful to the target audience, rather than by advertising products and services in the traditional way.”

See, your team is simply following the content marketing “rules”, and because of this, their goals are askew.

Marketing for brand awareness and education is nice, but brand awareness and education don’t pay the bills.

You need new leads, new customers, and new revenue.

So, is there a way to utilize content marketing to actually get new customers? To grow your business?

Yes, and yes!

It’s called direct response content marketing…

And if your content team can master this artform, it will be a gamechanger. It’s practically guaranteed.

So, what exactly is direct response content marketing? And why is it so much more effective than traditional content marketing?

Well…

Instead of simply defining it, we’ll show you.

Let’s say you’re in the business of selling child car seats. Your content marketing team will undoubtedly create a 500-750 word “informational,” keyword rich, SEO article all about car seats. And perhaps you’ll even pay for its distribution.

Maybe this article is titled “10 Simple Steps to Install a Car Seat.”

This article will cover, step-by-step, how to install a car seat. It’ll educate the reader on proper installation, where to best place the car seat, and perhaps highlight the important features of car seats.

Step 1, step 2, step 3…

Now, maybe this content has achieved a great page ranking on Google, and you might have even made a YouTube video out of it. But chances are, you won’t sell many car seats.

Why is this?

Like all traditional content marketing efforts, your content wasn’t written to sell, it was written to educate, to be ranked, to be seen. And that’s about it.

But with direct response content marketing, you can achieve page rankings, page views, new leads, new customers, and sales.

In fact, according to Grandview Research, the global direct response sales market was valued at $189.71 billion in 2021 alone.

But…

If you Google “How Much Revenue Does Content Marketing Drive” you’ll get a not so surprising result…

There are no results. Literally, none. Go ahead, give it a try yourself.

You see, a masterfully crafted direct response content piece is designed to sell products while looking like a traditional content marketing piece.

But it’s crafted in a way that puts the reader in an emotional state. It’s not simply written to “teach” the reader something in hopes they remember your brand…

No.

Master direct response copywriters hook their readers by triggering feelings, not by offering practical information or product features. These triggers are purpose built into the copy, at very specific points, with the sole purpose to illicit a sale.

And when done with skill, the reader never knows they’re being sold anything.

Simply put, great copywriters have the ability to put the reader in a state where they’re ready to buy exactly what your offering, immediately.

In car seat sales, there’s nothing more important to the reader’s emotional state, than the safety of their child.

Do they really care about a step-by-step installation guide? Or do they want the best advice on how to keep their baby protected in case of a rollover accident?

Do they care about features of car seats, like the bottle holder?

Or do they care about the benefits of the bottle holder… like how your child has access to food all throughout a four-hour drive?

Clearly, when a reader is thinking about their baby being happy and quiet for four hours, rather than “learning” about a cup holder, they’re more emotionally tied to what their reading.

And are much more likely to purchase your product.

That car seat you sell, maybe it’s been proven to firmly secure your child in a 35 MPH T-bone collision…

It’s responsible for saving hundreds of children a year…

You see, it’s not just a car seat, it’s a life saving device…

And for the best benefit of you and your child, you should install it exactly like this… Oh, and by the way, we have it on sale, right now!

It doesn’t matter what vertical your business operates in, whether its B2C or B2B, direct response content marketing is a proven winner.

While the goal of traditional content marketing is page views, brand awareness and education, the goal of direct response content marketing is pageviews, new customers and sales.

Now, you may be thinking “this sounds great and all, but how do I fix my current content marketing strategy? How do I turn visitors into customers?”

Well, there are only two ways to go about it.

You can either retrain your content team on the art of direct response copywriting (unfortunately this could take years) …

Or, you can go the cheaper, easier and faster route.

To get the most effective content, you should partner with a firm that specializes in direct response content marketing. A firm that knows how to trigger readers to take action. A firm that turns visitors into customers.

Think about it for a moment. Do you want to educate your prospective customers, or do you want them to buy something?

Of course, you already know the answer to this.

It’s why you should partner with Virtua Brands, the masters of direct response content marketing.

We turn your visitors into your customers.