Create Valuable Content Marketing with a Resource Center

Content is often talked about as the king of marketing, but that doesn't mean you should stop pushing yourself. With your HubSpot website you have a near-limitless number of ways to execute content strategies and promote products or services with articles, blog posts, videos, and more--but if you're looking for an even higher level way to create content then consider building a resource center!

Not only will visitors to your website benefit from the valuable resources you showcase in your resource center, you can also uplevel your sales process by providing links straight to a resource to help answer specific questions or concerns your lead may identify along the sales journey.

But, what is a resource center?

A resource center, or knowledge base, acts as a central hub for your educational content for your leads and clients and sets you up as an authority in your industry. Other benefits of a resource center include:

• Helping to improve search engine optimization and lead generation
• Educating your audience and allowing your site visitors to find relevant content quickly while keeping visitors engaged with your business
• Enabling your site visitors to share your content through email and on social media
• Improving the efficiency of your support team. Watch as your support team’s productivity increases when they aren’t answering repetitive questions and are able to focus on unique support cases.

The content for your resource center could be articles, tutorials, videos, or infographics. What is important is that it’s easily accessible, so your customers can rely on it to learn best practices and get their questions answered.

What can you accomplish with your resource center?

• Show your customers you care about them. A resource center is meaningful to your customers and helps them continue to be successful with your services and products. This keeps them happy and they are more likely to promote your business!
• Increase prospects and leads. A carefully planned knowledge base helps you build more pages with educational content that can attract visitors to your site. This helps to establish your business as an expert in your field. And, when you have strong CTAs on your pages, you’re able to guide visitors to a specific landing page, like a free consultation form to develop new leads.
• Help empower self-service. When you have an excellent knowledge base in your back pocket, you and your team can encourage your customers to use it to have some of their questions answered in a minimal amount of time.

Creating Your Own Resource Center

When you’re ready to build your own resource center, remember that it is an investment that will require your time and dedication.

Before you begin, make sure you understand how your users prefer to access information. Try experimenting with various content types and take feedback into consideration. Do your users prefer tutorials? How-to videos? Infographics or articles?  It’s better to focus on two or three types of formats really well than to create a ton of content with half of your effort put into it.

When you create individual pages, try to create a home base where your visitors can search for answers. The site search tool by Google is a good option. Also, be sure to keep the information focused and only answer one question per page.

Knowledge bases and resource centers are living breathing systems that are in need of constant maintenance. Accept and listen to feedback. HubSpot uses Tally to allow its users an easy way to submit compliments, criticism, and general comments. Be sure to respond to those who leave feedback - it helps them feel like they are part of your team.

Speaking of your team, it’s important that they are on board and are promoting your resource center. Provide a variety of access points by linking it to other articles and pages, too. Let your site visitors and customers know they can get their questions answered easily.

Building a quality knowledge base doesn’t happen overnight, but the long-term benefits to you, your business, your team, and your customers make it all worth your while.