Over three million blog posts are published every single day. Regardless of the competition, content marketing has become vital tool for a successful marketing strategy. Today’s buyers love valuable free content that is relevant and compelling.
Content marketing helps brands convert prospects into buyers. It’s a strategy that educates people without selling your products and/or services.
With limited resources and a vast number of competitors, you may find it overwhelming to do what it takes to drive organic traffic to your website.
For this reason, many companies are expanding their reach to additional resources that can help accelerate and enhance content creation.
In fact, 89% of B2B companies use content marketing. Furthermore, 39% of those respondents plan to increase their budget.
As businesses consider content marketing valuable, it’s important to understand what it does for your company.
Let’s explore the benefits you can expect when incorporating content into your marketing mix:
Amplifies Your Brand Awareness
Worldwide, over 4.2 billion people are on the Internet. Many of them are looking for the types of products and services that you offer.
However, how many of them have gotten the chance to discover your brand? By creating comprehensive content, you’re providing value and a reason to know who you are for these prospects.
If they read your content and find it engaging, they’ll think more highly of your brand.
Brand awareness is an important aspect of running a business. It directly impacts how many clientele you acquire.
Make sure to publish content that is useful, relevant, and informative. Strong content allows you to showcase your business and what you represent.
Brand awareness isn’t about whether people can recognize your brand name. You should focus on making your target audience understand why your business is unique.
Share information about your business. Make it clear what sets you apart from competitors.
For example, take advantage of the About page on your website. Describe the culture of your business and what makes it special. Help reduce any friction in their decision making process by showing they should select your company instead of the next best option.
Provides Outstanding ROI
To get your message in front of as many members of your target audience as possible, you should absolutely focus on creating and sharing content.
More than 70% of buyers prefer to learn about a product or service through content rather than ads. Almost half of all marketers plan to use content to reach their target market.
If done correctly, content marketing can be a great strategy to boost your return on investment. When you share your blog posts on social media, you can also expect an increase in inbound traffic, brand awareness, and customer engagement.
Content marketing is an ideal strategy, because it doesn’t cost much. The longer the content stays live on your website, the more that content is to get shared and earn links.
In other words, content represents a flexible form of marketing. It has the potential to recoup all the time and money you’ve invested and more.
How should you approach content marketing? Create remarkable content that adds value to your audience.
You can take advantage of a wide variety of content types, including:
- Blog posts
- Articles
- Case Studies
- Infographics
- Videos
- eBooks
- Slideshows and presentations
These are great options for marketing your business and increasing traffic on your website.
Be sure to choose the right platform and invest in a long-term strategy for it to become fully effective.
Helps Improve SEO
Google serves up results on more than 63,000 searches per second. Each of those searches represents a possible opportunity for you to get in front of new prospects.
You can maximize this opportunity by producing high-quality, search engine optimized content for your marketing efforts.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to perform better on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
To bring in new visitors, focus on publishing informative content on your blog. When people search on Google, they seek answers to their questions.
When you provide them with content that answers their burning questions, you stand to enhance your online visibility as a whole. Do it right, and Google will present your content in their search results.
If new visitors find your content helpful, they will be more likely to purchase your product or service.
Keep in mind that search engines also consider the quantity and quality of your content.
One study showed that the top ranking pages on SERPs tend to have the highest word count. The average content piece showing on page one includes more than 2,000 words!
Does longer content rank better automatically? Not necessarily.
Don’t waste time on articles that lack substance or have poor quality. Half-baked content will only push prospects to leave your website.
If Google sees that your engagement metrics are very poor (as is typical with badly written or concepted content), they are likely to drop that piece down in the SERPs.
However, substantial and detailed content is longer. It makes sense that higher content word count correlates with the top search rankings.
Nurtures Relationships With Customers
It’s vital that you nurture customer relationships in order to encourage repeat business and turn them into brand advocates.
A great way to do this is through customer loyalty. Provide value to your target audience through quality and engaging content.
Ask bloggers, content creators, and influencers to write about you and share your content.
In this way, your target customers can develop a more personal relationship with your brand.
As your piece gets higher circulation and shares, you stand to gain credibility. A five star rating is highly effective at increasing your trustworthiness, particularly with people who are just researching you and your offering for the first time.
Educate your target market through your choice of relevant topics. Once you get them onto your list, keep them updated through email marketing.
By writing relevant content, you’ll build and foster strong relationships with members of your audience. They’ll start relying on your website as a primary source of knowledge.
A thoughtful email greeting or a personalized blog post can move readers closer to a sale.
Get to know your audience, and publish articles that are appealing and authentic. this is how you can earn their trust.
If they start reaching out, this portrays that you’ve succeeded at building a meaningful relationship with them.
Cost Effective
Blogging is very low cost, because it only costs the time it takes to decide on a topic, write/edit the post, publish it, and then promote it online. Because of this, content marketing is cost effective and can also offer compounding returns.
Consumers prefer to read how-tos and guides than blatant traditional advertising messages.
According to Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing. It even generates more than three times as many leads.
Conversely, even a basic level of traditional advertising can cost up to $6,000 per month. In Canada, you can spend as little as $1,000 per month for a digital marketing agency.
Most marketing companies offer article writing / content generation services as part of their expertise.
You’ll find advantages to using a digital partner. For one, their staff should be comprised of content marketing experts. They should also know how to optimize your content for search engines.
Even more importantly, you’ll be working with their writers over time. Therefore, they’ll understand your customers’ behaviour better, in order to create content tailor made to their needs.
This type of marketing yields great results in the long run. Once you start publishing content, it will stay live on your site and (ideally) continue to generate sales for years.
Conclusion
Content marketing opens up new opportunities for your business to grow. It offers a genuine connection to your audience through words.
You may not see significant changes in the first few months. Don’t despair — any positive indicator such as an increase in website traffic means you’re on the right track.
Building a following takes time. Be consistent in your content marketing efforts and eventually, they will come.
The bottom line is to produce valuable content that can turn your consumers into lifelong customers. Find a reputable digital expert to help you create a stellar content strategy.
In a world where ads bother people, it takes but a single helpful article to market your brand. If these benefits sound appealing, start developing your content marketing strategy today.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain, sourced from Diggity Marketing.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Katrina Fernandez
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