← Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
218 // 5 Data Driven Reasons to Adopt a Smarter Content Marketing Strategy in 2025
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Faith Hannon
Hey there pals. I'm going to shoot you straight. Social media is not a lead gen strategy. Did you know your Instagram post disappears in less than 24 hours? But the right SEO strategy, It keeps bringing leads for years. If you want more leads with less effort, you need to get your happy tush into my free training. More leads in less time. In this training, I'm showing small business owners like you exactly how to build a lead gen strategy that works without spending endless hours creating content that disappears in a day. So the real question is, are you showing up where people are actually searching? If not, let's change that stat. Really? What if you could get consistent, sustainable leads without posting daily? Keep your content working for you even when you're on vacation and know exactly what your audience is already searching for. In this faux free training, you will learn the number one shift you must make in your content marketing to attract leads consistently, the proven system to maintain a traffic generating machine in just two hours a week, and how to build a lead generation strategy around what your audience is already searching for. So you show up exactly when they need you. Plus, live attendees are eligible for some sweet prizes. So click the link in the show notes or go to faith hannon.com more leads and save your seats. See you. Okay, so in case you just skipped over the intro like a lot of people do, I know I'm guilty of it too. I want to make sure that you don't miss the invitation to my live training that I'm putting on just for y'all on how to get more leads in less time. The training is live at 12:00 noon on March 26th. It's a Wednesday. It's just going to be an hour. It'll be fun because I'm a goofball and it shows up and you will definitely learn something. If you don't learn something, coffee's on me. So make sure that you're signed up for that live training. It's only offered once it's live. Be there or be a square. Do we even say that anymore? I don't know. But today in this episode, I want to get into some really nitty gritty, data driven math elite level stuff to help you make really smart decisions with your marketing budget. And if you're like Faith, I ain't got no budget for nothing. Well, you do have a budget of time. Okay? Even if you're doing all of the work yourself, you still need to spend your time wisely. And the fact of the matter is, sometimes we get so Deep, deeply in the habits of what we're doing. You know, whether it's habits in our personal life or business or whatever, sometimes we really need to take a step back and look at, is this working? If not, let's fix it. And so today we're going to go through five reasons why you might need to rethink your marketing strategy in 2025. And yes, I know the fives are the five in 2025. Overused all over the place, and I do not care, because who doesn't like numbers that sound good together? But let's dig in. So I feel like I have been neck deep in research and reading studies and reading data about social media marketing versus blogging versus, you know, YouTube and podcasts and just content marketing in general. I feel like I'm just swimming. Numbers are swimming in my head from all of the research that I've seen in the last several months. So what I want to do for y'all today is I want to help you just think through five areas that should be influencing your decision on where you spend your time and your money, or just your time, or just your money and your content marketing strategy for your business. Because we know that business owners are. You have to market, right? Marketing is king. Content is king. You have to consistently build an audience, consistently remind people that you're there. It is no longer a build the shop and they will come world, right? Especially with online businesses, if you are not continually reminding your people that you're there, continually providing value, continually serving them, then they just forget that you're there for the most part, right? Like, we know that this is part of running an online business, and most online businesses are. Are using social media for their marketing, right? Been there, done that, got the T shirts. Not my favorite thing. But that doesn't mean that it's a terrible plan. I'm not here to say that you should never, ever use social media for your business growth. That's not what I'm here to say. But I do want us to look at some facts. Okay. Okay. So according to Social Insider, most businesses post roughly once per day on Facebook and about five posts a week on Instagram. And then a lot of Companies post on LinkedIn about six times per week on average. And those studies are from Social Insider and hootsuite. So we know the businesses are posting on social media. Right? Great. We got that. But is that the most effective? Right. What's. What's working? What's not working? How long are these things working? So I want to talk through Content marketing on social media versus blogging. And I want to look at five areas within that, five areas of data within that, that blogging versus social media discussion to help you make informed decisions. Okay, so we're going to look at content lifespan. We're going to look at cost per acquisition, we're going to look at conversion rates on SEO versus pay for pay per click. We're going to look at trust and authority, and then we're going to look at speed. Okay, Factor number one I want you to consider in your content marketing strategy is content lifespan. And I want to talk specifically about blogs versus social media because I get that social media feels easier in so many ways. You can just like snap a selfie, throw a caption in there, go on about your day, right? Like, it feels way easier. And so sometimes we are really tempted to just be like, oh, I gotta go the easy route. But y'all, I want you, I want to talk to you about this. Okay, so the average lifespan of a blog post is approximately two years. Now, I have seen blogs generate traffic for way longer than that. So some statistics say the lifespan air quotes is two years. Some other statistics say that the content half life is right at two years, meaning that the half, like half of the traffic that that piece of content is going to get is in two years. Okay, so half life content lifespan, we're probably going to use those interchangeably in this discussion because they're used interchangeably a lot in the research, but that's okay. Now, social media platforms, okay, Instagram has an average half life span of 19.75 hours. So that means that within 20 hours, roughly, your posts are, they will have gotten half the traffic that they're ever going to get, half the eyeballs that they're ever going to get. And it just goes downhill from there. Facebook is 76 minutes, X is 43 minutes. Now keep in mind that is compared to a blog that has a half life shelf life of 1.95 years. Or let's just say two years. All right, so what does that mean? What's the takeaway? Faith is you can spend your time and your money and your effort on social media. Yes. And I'm not saying you should abandon it all together. That's between you and the good Lord and your marketing advisor. But if you can take that time and money and effort that you're spending on social media and put it towards high quality SEO friendly blogs, then you're going to see traffic leads for years and years and years and years. And so I actually Have a case study from a client of mine. They so this particular client, great products, great company, great people, love them. They also have a giant social media following that was pretty much left untouched for a long time until we came in and helped them. And btw, we don't typically do social media, but for these people we did because I love them and that just is what it was. But anyway, so we have one blog in particular that we wrote for them that it's consistently in their top 10 ranking pages, you know, month after month. It was a very research heavy blog. It took a lot of research, a lot of reworking, more back and forth, if I remember correctly, than typical blogs that we write for them. But it consistently lands in their top 10 views per month, month over month. So I looked at their overall traffic for the past year and that one blog has generated 3% of the traffic to their website. Now you may be like 3% isn't much faith. And you know what? It isn't a ton. But what if you thought about like, oh my gosh, 3% of my overall traffic can come from one thing. I can write one really high quality piece of content and get 3 more percent traffic and then 3 more percent traffic and 3 more percent traffic. And guess what? That blog is a little over a year old. It's going to keep producing traffic, keep generating leads because it's written on a topic that doesn't go out of style, it's not trendy, and it's written in such a way to be evergreen, to be, you know, know, truly evergreen content that generates traffic and leads month after month after month. So what if you, as your, as a business owner, you took just a hard and fast look at the time that you're spending on social media and reallocated that to writing one really great blog a month and increasing your traffic even by 3% a month. Right, like over time. That really adds up. All right, now area number two I want to look at is cost per acquisition with social media versus SEO. A social media advertising, excuse me, versus SEO. Okay, now in the case of this one client that we've helped with their social media, again, they have a very large social media following. It is absolutely a pay to play game with their social media accounts. Like we've created really great content and just posted it organically and absolute crickets. And then I actually hired a Facebook strategist to help put together a plan for them. Show me how to do it, do all the ads, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we get traffic with ads, but we only get traffic with ads. The second that we stop, the second that you stop paying for ads, your traffic disappears. Your leads disappear. Now, I'm not saying that paid advertising doesn't have a place. It does. It's like putting seed in the ground to grow grass versus putting sod in the ground, right? Like, sod is going to show up quick and it's going to be there. But those seeds that you sow with organic content and organic SEO, like, they keep producing year after year after year. And SEO might feel like a bigger investment of either time or money up front, but again, it keeps generating leads, keeps generating traffic month after month after month. So some quick stats for you. So Facebook ads, the average cost per click is 83%. 83 cents. Excuse me? And the average cost per lead according to WordStream is $23.10. Instagram cost per clicks range from 20 cents to $2 with an average cost per thousand impressions of $6.70. TikTok ads, average cost per click is a dollar and cost per million is $10. Now, again, I'm sure there's varying statistics all over the Internet, right? But LinkedIn ads, average cost per click is $5.26. Now, I'm going to talk a little bit about conversion rates with SEO versus pay per click now because obviously social media is a little bit different audience. So let's think about your SEO strategy with organic content versus your paid per click strategy with, hey, I just want to get found on Google, but I want to be, you know, make sure that I'm going to get found valid strategy. All right. I actually was running an analysis for client a couple months ago and just playing around with the numbers. So what I did for this client is I was like, okay, here's a list of keywords that we need to rank for, that you need to rank for. And here's what it would cost for you to run ads to this. Here's what it would cost for you to have us write a blog for this. Here's, you know, probably where we can rank for this. Here's how much money you could get or how much traffic you get with paid versus organic. And we just ran this analysis for. And one keyword in particular that she needs to be ranking for search volume for that keyword is 1900 searches a month. Okay, so we're talking Google traffic, right? Cost per click for that word is a little under $10, $9.98. Okay, so people are paying for this keyword. It's a valid keyword right now based on what I know about her brand and our writing strategy, our SEO strategy for her, blah, blah, blah. I was like, you know what, I can probably write a blog for her that's going to rank about 8 in this, right? Let's, let's be realistic. Probably not going to outrank some of these big guns. Probably about eight. And I looked at the paid search potential rank and I was like, well, you know, we could probably rank number one in the paid paid search, right? Show up in the ads. So then I just ran the percentages based on how many people generally click on which ad position and how many people generally click on each search position. Now obviously your title, your meta description, these things influence, you know, how many clicks you get versus the average. But let's just look at average numbers right now. So over the course of a month with this particular keyword, she could expect about 40 clicks with organic traffic because in the eighth position, that generally lends to about 2% of the clicks. Now, paid traffic in the first month, ironically, is about the same 39 clicks. Her estimated ad spend would be about $400 for all of those clicks. Okay, and her potential. So to have that blog written would cost more in the first month, right? So the first month it's like, man, it'd be cheaper to run ads. But, but, but, but, but, but when you look at those costs over a year, her estimated ad spend to keep getting traffic for that ad would be over $4,700 versus the cost per blog. It's written once and it stays there and it keeps generating traffic for a year. So that based on her current click through rate and her like the rate that people subscribe to her email lists, all those things, her cost per lead with organic traffic versus paid traffic is X. There's exponentially different. Okay, so these are the things that I want you to think about when you're like, ooh, do I want to buy ads? Do I want to do SEO? Do I want to do social media? What do I want to do? And there's nothing that's saying you can't do both paid advertisements, pay per click and SEO. Just know that as soon as you stop paying to play, you lose those clicks versus SEO. Content is going to keep generating leads organically for years to come. Okay, so now let's talk about the next factor, which is trust and authority. So this is a fun one to just think through, right? Like we can talk about statistics all day long, but I also want you to use your brilliant, God given brain because I want you to Think about the la, the last time that you went to make a large purchase, whatever large is for you, right? Unless it is like a 2030, $40, 50 item. Like, I'm probably me. I'm not gonna just go off of a social media recommendation if I'm spending what feels like, you know, a lot of money in that moment, no matter depending on how cheap I'm feeling. I am not gonna just go off of the social media recommendation. I'm gonna go look things up on Google. I'm gonna compare options. I'm gonna look at their overall website. I'm gonna say, ooh, does this feel special? Spammy? Does this feel, you know, legit? Like what, what's happening here? Right? And the statistics back that up. According to Power Digital Marketing, high ranking, high organic rankings are perceived as more credible and trustworthy by users as they are earned through relevance and quality rather than payment. Also, according to Power Digital Marketing, SEO enhances a brand's credibility and authority among users, as organic search results are often viewed as more trustworthy compared to paid advertisements. Y'all, we have, we have all been exposed to advertisements literally our whole lives. We, we understand, we get that somebody is paying money to be in front of our eyeballs. And so while advertisements definitely serve their place, I am not against advertising. I'm saying that to create a comprehensive holistic marketing strategy, you should not rely solely on advertisement. Okay? Now, fun fact. Consumer behavior says that approximately 70% of users prefer clicking on organic search results over paid ads because they have a higher trust in organic listings. And that's according to mailchimp. So I just want you to think through your marketing strategy, right? Like, don't put all of your marketing eggs in the paid basket or the social media basket, because as soon as you stop paying to play, you gone, baby. And those social media posts are disappearing in hours. Hours. Hours. Okay, so now let's talk about speed, because this is one of the things that I hear, I hear so much, right? Like, I don't have time to blog. I don't have time to write long form content or create any long form content. I just have time to, to do social media. And I get that because social media feels really easy because our phone is in our hand all the time and we can, you know, take a quick video, throw some text over, bada bing, bada boom, we're done, right? I get that. And social media does. Your social media posts are going to show up in front of your user faster than your blog content, but it's only going to show up in front of a fraction of your users. So overall social media, social media engagement is around 2, 2.5% depending on the platform. Meaning that even if you have hundreds of thousands of followers, you're not getting your content in front of hundreds of thousands of people. For example, if you had. For example, if you have 20,000 Instagram followers and your engagement rate 2.2%, which is what the average was across the board in Q3 of 2024, if you have 20,000 followers and a 2.2% engagement rate, only 440 people are seeing that post. So yes, they're going to see it faster because it's going to rank faster, but fewer people are actually going to see that content than you probably think are seeing it. Now, when it comes to blog content, you're not going to post it and rank in Google in three seconds. It's just not generally how it does. Now Google typically takes between four days to four weeks to index a new site or a blog, a new blog. And one of the things that I teach students is to submit that blog for indexing like that individual link for indexing like asap. As it's done, just make it part of your workflow. I have found that that helps things to to show up more quickly. Now if you are a brand new website just building your street cred, it's going to take according to Clear Scope IO, it generally takes three to six months to start ranking on the first page of Google. As long as provided that the content is well optimized and targets keywords that are low to medium competition. Now if you've got a really competitive niche then you're looking at more like 6 to 12 months. So yes, it does take longer for SEO content to rank. Start driving traffic and start driving leads. Absolutely. SEO is not the microwave of marketing, but it is long term. It is long term success and there's a long term strategy that can really, really help you succeed. So just to recap because I know we covered a lot today, there are five reasons that you need to consider shifting your content marketing strategy to being SEO focus friendly. First, number one, the content lifespan of blogs versus social media. The average blog about two years social media less than 24 hours cost per acquisition with SEO versus social media advertising. Once you create the SEO content, whatever that costs you to create or have created for you, it's there and it stays there and it keeps working for you versus social media advertising. It it's a pay to play game and you have to pay for every view and Every click, essentially, that you're getting. And then we want to Talk about SEO vs PPC. SEO vs paid per click, right? Your conversion rates on the money that you're spending to have that blog created versus your paid per click advertising. You have to pay every month to get that advertisement scene versus your SEO content that you created. Once it keeps working for you for months and years, then trust and authority was another factor we considered. SEO enhances a brand's credibility hands down. All right, People are going to the Internet to do research, check out your brand before making big purchases. And the fifth factor that we wanted to consider is speed. Yes, social media content gets seen faster. Blog content does take longer to rank and get seen by your ideal person. But again, it keeps working long after your social media content is in the graveyard of old posts. So tomorrow, y'all, we're gonna dig into the two ditches of blogging and how to avoid both of them. It'll be much less Math Elite podcast. So if your brain just feels like it exploded with all of these numbers, I understand. I promise tomorrow will be less Math Elite of a podcast. But it's really important that you know, hey, I really am investing my time and money wisely doing SEO. And tomorrow we're going to talk about how you can avoid the two main ditches that SEO content or blog content in general falls into. All right, we'll chat with you tomorrow. Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your website. If it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things, courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website, faith hannon.com until next time. God bless and I'll talk to you soon.