Content marketing is critical in building authority, trust, and gaining new customers. It helps all businesses build brands to connect with their target audience better. Whether a brand wishes to communicate on digital or traditional print media, a content marketing strategy is a top priority in brainstorming sessions.
This article will highlight what content marketing is and its benefits.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing involves drafting and sharing original content online through websites and social media posts. The intention with content marketing is to garner interest in the services or products a company offers and not explicitly promote the brand of said company.
The Importance of Content Marketing
Content marketing is crucial for brand building as it helps the brand connect with its target audience through trust and engagement. According to Marketing Insider Group, most companies spend over 25% of their budget marketing their content. Organizations can use content marketing to answer any queries on the mind of their niche audience. In doing so, they build authority in their industry, trust, long-term relationships, generate leads, and improve sale conversions. With that said, let’s discuss the benefits of content marketing.
1. Content Marketing Helps With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Link Building
SEO is the process of using originally drafted content to improve a website’s ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Writing high-quality user-focused content is an integral part of SEO and content marketing. They both require consistent and fresh content. That is because search engines like Google constantly scour the web to find new, accurate, and high-quality information to index and show their users.
In addition, you can use content marketing to build links. Link building is an integral ranking factor. Tactics like guest blogging and infographics are the most commonly used for building links. If you struggle with link building, you can explore the best link building services in USA provided by the best agencies.
2. Better Traction on Social Media
Having a large following and creating viral content are two different things. Many businesses on social media platforms do not get much engagement on their posts despite having a large following.
Quality content can help you improve the engagement on your posts and make sure that the next time you post, it goes viral.
3. Capture Your Audience’s Attention
High-quality content helps capture the attention of your audience. It is an asset that allows you to provide a worthwhile and productive experience to your potential customers and keep them coming back for more. They will regularly check back for more because they know that you regularly provide them with content that answers their questions and provides great value to them.
Also, consistently marketing quality content will enhance your brand’s reputation, helping you gain the trust of your valuable customers.
4. The Building Block of Every Digital Marketing Strategy
One of the most crucial benefits that content marketing provides is that it takes care of many components of your digital marketing strategy. Think of content marketing as the heart of digital marketing. Without it, digital marketing will not be very effective.
Additionally, the content that you produce can help with multiple platforms like:
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Social media posts
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Email Marketing
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Pay-per-click ads
These platforms can also increase your website’s traffic. For example, consistently posting quality content on your social media will captivate your potential customers and make them want more. They will then visit your website to do so. So, make sure that your site is optimal because this visit will determine whether they engage further.
5. Nurture Prospects
Using captivating pieces of content in your emails can help you get your prospects to take action by guiding them along the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel refers to a series of stages in a customer’s journey.
6. Generate Quality Leads
According to HubSpots’ team manager of the Academy Acquisition Content Team, Lindsay Kolowich, “content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include [call-to-action] CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.”
Additionally, quality content builds trust and authority. People are most likely to buy from brands they trust than unknown brands.
Think about it, will you buy from someone you do not know?
7. Improve Your Business’s Visibility
SEO is an integral part of increasing your business’s chances of being seen. Of course, this ties into what we mentioned before: writing content that is relevant, fresh, and user-focused because that is the only type of content search engines want.
In addition, consistently producing quality content will help your website’s pages to get indexed by search engines, which increases the chances of them showing up when people search for relevant information. It will also help your website rank higher, which is critical because there is much information available to users. Still, only the top listings have any chances of getting visitors.
Research indicates that over 90% of website traffic gets generated from the first page of Google.
Lastly, having your website in the top rankings shows people that your business is authentic.
8. Impressive Return on Investment (ROI) on Content Marketing
As mentioned before, businesses have invested heavily in content marketing, and it has paid dividends.
So, how good is content marketing?
Content marketing is highly effective in bringing in many website visitors and leads. Consistent creation of quality content can boost your website traffic, which in return increases the conversion rate.
Additionally, Demand Metric reports that 6 out of 10 people buy a product after reading content about it that is relevant and accurate. In addition, they also reported that:
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Around six out of ten people enjoy reading relevant content about brands.
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Eight out of ten people feel like they can trust a brand after reading their content.
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After reading relevant content, seven out of ten people feel close to an organization.
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Content marketing is more cost-efficient than traditional marketing methods as it costs 60% less.
Conclusion
Content marketing is an integral aspect of growing your business and should be at the heart of your digital marketing strategy. It allows you to generate more website traffic, leading to an increase in lead generation, which leads to a higher conversion rate. Quality content and a great content marketing strategy help your brand capture your audience’s attention and keep them coming back for more.
