How do businesses benefit from effective content marketing?
When browsing the internet, we’re quite literally bombarded with advertisements that often block quality content, and prevent it from reaching us. With all this negative marketing, businesses are unable to make their products as attractive to customers as they would like. With this in mind, it’s essential that content marketing is carried out effectively so that it can have a positive impact upon target audiences.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the production and distribution of material such as blogs, videos, social media posts, and infographics. Rather than directly promoting a brand, it instead stimulates the interest of users in the products and services being advertised.
Two audiences are predominantly targeted for business marketing - businesses and consumers. Based upon your aim, there are various types of content marketing strategies:
1. Blogs
2. Videos
3. Infographics
4. Case studies
5. E-books
6. White papers
7. Checklists
8. Interviews
9. Social media posts
What do content marketing tools do?
Effective content marketing leads to improved SEO, but what is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is a marketing strategy to improve the quantity and quality of website traffic through organic search engine results. In simple terms, it ensures that your website is among the first few results to appear on the search engine results page.
SEO and content marketing are like peas in a pod; you can’t have one without the other. Often, the two strategies are considered as separate entities, but the two concepts overlap, and while content marketing adopts a more holistic approach, SEO has a narrower focus and is more technical. As such, the benefits of SEO and content marketing are similar since their approaches and goals are the same.
Why do businesses engage in content marketing services?
• To build trust.
The more content you begin marketing, the more you establish your authority in the field. People prefer hiring experts to solve their problems, and if you can showcase your expertise to visitors, it automatically improves their trust in you and your brand.
• To build brand awareness.
While content marketing improves the quantity of traffic to your website, achieving consistent quality is equally important. With the right strategies, your website can generate better leads.
• Organic search.
On the first page of a web search, the first five organic results make up 67.60% of all the clicks., this means that if your page appears as an advertisement, or in lower rankings in the search result page, your website traffic reduces. With effective SEO, it is possible to improve the site's ranking and ensure that it is one of the first five results in organic searches.
• To build backlinks.
Depending on your linking site, your audience can be multiplied as many as 500 times. Backlinking is a model that search engines use to rank your site; more visitors clicking on your site through backlinks, improves your pages authority.
How do businesses benefit from effective content marketing?
There are innumerable benefits to content marketing irrespective of whether it is a B2C or a B2B content marketing strategy:
• Content marketing drives more sales.
Every customer goes through three stages before purchasing your product or service - awareness, consideration, and decision. Well-constructed content marketing will bring your customers one step closer to purchasing by educating them on their research. It makes them more likely to buy your products and services rather than those of your competitors.
• Content marketing helps put sales on autopilot.
Cold outreach is a time-consuming process without fulfilling results. With the majority of your efforts put in content marketing, it allows potential partners to reach out to you when they are ready to work with you. With content marketing tools, you help them find the right solution to their problems, and instead of forcing customers to buy your products, marketing acts as a valuable resource where customers approach you when they are ready to buy from you.
• Content marketing amplifies your credibility and brand awareness.
With effective content marketing, you can demonstrate your content in a way that provides insight into your strengths. Combined with SEO tools, you can increase the visibility of your brand to reach a more varied audience, and help establish your authority in the field, while attracting potential customers to your products and services.
• Content marketing opens a channel of communication.
Each customer who walks away with a positive outcome from your brand, becomes a potential advocate for your products. As your content is promoted and shared across numerous social media channels, you automatically begin connecting with people, providing you with the opportunity to answer customer questions and provide reliable information.
• Content marketing makes life easier for your management team.
Your customer service and sales team probably answer the same set of questions every day. Instead of answering each customer separately, compile a list of frequently asked questions into a blog post or website content, and include recent statistics. By displaying this on your website, it can now act as your best spokesperson, 24/ 7. This also helps you use your human resources more effectively.
• Content marketing generates leads and improves conversion.
Every time a user goes through your website, it increases the likeliness of them purchasing a product or service from your site. Also, placing calls-to-action in your content generates new leads for your sales team directly, while providing consistent quality content also seals the deal for customers, helping them to make an informed purchasing decision.
• Content marketing decreases your marketing costs and compounding value.
Content marketing is incredibly cost-effective, safe, and available for anyone in the industry. All it demands is patience in return for improved compounding value. The first few months of your content marketing may not yield a visible result, but the next few months are guaranteed to bring growth and added benefits.
• Content marketing provides value with no strings attached.
Often, businesses are only interested in helping potential buyers. Though it may seem to be profiting them, in reality, it creates a negative impact on customer relationships and leads. With content marketing, you can provide interesting and informative content to your customers without expecting a return. This increases the engagement of customers who may not be ready to buy your products yet.
Who can help you with content marketing?
If you are willing to invest funds for content marketing, many companies in the market can provide you with professional services. They help your data reach the target audience, and campaign your content on the appropriate social media platforms to improve traffic in those areas; directly translating to improved website traffic. They assess and evaluate your content before applying the most suitable content marketing tools to advertise it, and with their professional expertise, you can rest assured that you will receive the most profitable returns.
How effective is content marketing?
While going through content marketing strategies does help businesses make their decisions on advertising, how do we understand the effectiveness of these strategies?
There is nothing better than statistical evidence to prove the potency and efficacy of content marketing:
1. 69% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy. This clearly shows that investing in a well-structured content marketing plan is linked to higher profits and success. Considering how cost-effective content marketing is, as a content provider, you must consider investing your time in establishing effective marketing strategies.
2. 76% of marketers use organic traffic as a measure of content success. This clearly emphasizes the need for SEO tools. Content marketing is indispensable if you wish for high-ranking organic search traffic. It not only helps you establish your brand authority, but it also attracts a varied audience.
3. 82% of marketers who blog notice positive ROI from their inbound marketing. Blogging is a critical factor in the growth of any business. It engages potential customers and leaves a lasting impression on them, and as such, is a powerful content marketing tool. Statistics clearly show its positive effect on ROI.
4. Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. The benefits of content marketing are well-known among industry experts. The above statistics clearly show how successful this type of marketing is as compared to traditional marketing. With lesser costs, you have more funds at your disposal to invest elsewhere in the company. Content marketing is a win-win situation for both the customer and the marketer.
Every form of marketing comes with its own challenges. To effectively market your content, you must maintain consistency in the articles you curate. Additionally, you must increase traffic with content syndication and produce high-quality variable content within a limited period. There is also a threat from increasing competition and constantly changing social media trends. While these challenges may sound daunting, with experience and guidance from content marketing agencies, you can learn the best marketing strategies for your company.
In business, time is money; so don’t waste any more of your valuable time and start researching your content marketing strategy now!