Content marketing has been gaining traction for years. It's one of the best and most effective ways to find, connect and convert potential customers. Plus, leads from content marketing are 13 percent cheaper.

What is content marketing? It's exactly what it sounds like. Your brand consistently creates relevant content to attract a defined audience in hopes of converting them into customers.

Below are four expert tips to see a jump in your traffic, leads and conversions.

1. Answer the questions your customers ask

One of the best ways to improve the quantity and quality of your leads is simple. Answer the questions you know your customers ask.

Talk to your sales team, customer service reps and anyone who spends significant time talking to your customers. Have them share the top questions they hear before customers make a purchase. Then, answer every single question on your company's blog or website.

Why? Next time someone is considering buying and Google their question, they'll end up on your blog. There, they'll get their answer when they want it, and you have a captivated audience.

This series of blogs will be one of your most read if you tackle the top questions your brand gets asked. Yes, that means even answering the hard questions about price, pros/cons about your product or service and how you stack up against competitors.

2. Create more than just blogs

Blog posts are the foundation of content marketing. Now, take it a step further.

Publish different types of content to better know your audience. Different readers, depending on their demographics and position in the buying cycle, gravitate toward different types of content.

Spice it up and try some of the below content types:

  • lists
  • infographics
  • interviews
  • reviews
  • case studies
  • videos
  • free guides
  • how to's

3. Seize your brand's voice

Every minute of the day, there are 48 hours of YouTube video uploaded, 684,478 Facebook posts shared and 27,778 new blogs published on Tumblr. Never before has there been so much content competition.

So, how do you make your brand's content stand out? Start by defining your target audience as specifically as possible, everything from demographics to behaviors.

Then, use the one tool that is entirely unique to your company: your brand's voice. Every piece of content created by your company should encompass your voice and style.

4. See what works and do more of it

The beauty of content marketing is that it's driven by numbers. That's right, no more guess work.

Look at analytics and data on leads to see exactly what content topics and formats are performing best. Analyze both the ones getting the most traffic as well as the posts with the most leads and conversions.

Then, test the waters. Try different publication times/days, vary your content types and experiment with content topics. To really make your content marketing more successful, use the numbers to do more of what works.