Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain audiences by creating and sharing relevant brand stories and other valuable articles, videos, podcasts, and other media online.
Content marketing focuses on informing, educating, or entertaining the target audiences. By doing this, the brand establishes expertise, promotes awareness, and keeps its business in the minds of the consumers.
Studies show that companies with blogs generate 67% more leads than companies without them. These companies will earn 97% more inbound links, 55% more website visitors, and 434% more indexed pages in Google.
It is important to note that with the advancement of the digital age, content has become an essential part of any marketing strategy.
However, it is important to note that content marketing is a long-term investment that needs more patience to pay off. But if done well, content marketing pays with a high ROI over time.
Why should you then consider content marketing?
Generally, content marketing is about offering benefits and adding value to the consumer rather than only marketing a brand. This process can include blog posts, eBooks, how-to digital videos, and podcasts.
1. Builds Customer Awareness, Generates Leads, And Increases Conversions
The approach promotes a brand and encourages its audiences to take action by visiting the website.
For example, the top goal of content marketing is to get the readers to take a step toward becoming a customer, such as requesting more information, signing up, ordering a purchase, or donating funds.
With a good content marketing strategy and plan, you can build a sustainable relationship with your clients for numerous sales.
2. Enable You to Build Authority On Your Platform
Publishing informative, well-researched content means your business will make you appear more authoritative and trustworthy. Thus, people consuming your content will start to build an impression of your brand.
Unlike social media marketing, where the channels of focus are distantly controlled and owned by large corporations:
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, among others, a content marketing platform are your ownership and control.
3. Costs Less Than Traditional Marketing
By contrast, content marketing is a better investment than traditional marketing because it costs less to maintain yet offers a higher Return On Investments (ROI).
Because traditional marketing tends to rely on advertising, which runs on a pay-to-play model, and the moment you stop paying for ads to appear where you want them, they disappear, taking away your visibility with it.
On the other hand, content marketing costs are centered more on the up-front expense of content creation. Once a piece is created, published, and distributed, you do not have to keep paying for its existence or visibility.
Thus, content marketing is more successful, especially over time; more sustainable, and the return on investment tends to compound as published content gains traction, traffic, leads, and conversions.
4. You Fully Own Your Content
Publishing on your website means you own all the content that lives there. That is not true with social media; you do not technically own anything you post or send from these channels.
For instance, if a social media company ceases to operate, boom! Your content goes with it.
Therefore, focusing on social media channels for your online presence is risky. It is like building a house on a rented piece of land.
If your account gets hacked, shadow banned, or taken down randomly, your content, audience, and means of communicating with them will disappear.
Furthermore, social media platforms are constantly changing their rules about how their algorithms work and which posts to prioritize in their feeds.
Thus your brand content visibility is entirely dependent on the quirks of these corporate companies.
As a result, content marketing is a better choice and a more sustainable option for long-term growth.
5. Content Marketing Brings in Higher Quality Leads
High-quality leads are people coming to your brand website who have a higher chance of converting into customers. These people usually fall into two categories:
They know your brand and are familiar with your expertise and what you sell. They are willing and ready to buy. Or, they know they have a problem, understand the solution they need, and want to find the best option available at all costs.
Therefore, content marketing help to pull this type of lead to you through Targeted Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Because Search engine optimization and content are a powerful combination, especially when done right through;
Keyword Research and Targeting
Targeting keywords with the right search intent in your content will bring in leads looking for the answers or solutions to their problem(s) provided by you.
Of course, different keywords will bring in leads at various stages of the consumer’s journey while interacting with your content.
- Awareness stage: Through your content, the customer must realize and be aware that they have a problem and want more information.
- Consideration stage: They must understand the problem and be eager and ready to find the best solution.
- Decision stage: They know the possible solutions and are ready to choose the right one.
Please note that in the searches, people use specific terms or wording that give clues about how close or far away they are from making a purchase.
People who fall into the decision stage are much closer to buying than people in the awareness stage. So do your targeting very well.
6. Encourages Storytelling
Consumers would rather see content than ads. Reports indicate that 62% of B2B buyers read at least 3-7 pieces of content before talking to a salesperson. And 70% of people would read an article about a company rather than see an ad.
More so, do not forget that people enable data on ad blockers on their devices more than ever, with more than 290 million active users per month as of 2023.
Therefore, it is clear that marketing cannot look the way it used to because modern consumers have entirely different interests, expectations, habits, and perspectives that affect their buying decisions.
Consumers now like to research before any purchase from a seller for quality, prices, discounts, and other added value comparisons. They now love to be informed about the best options. They also prefer to shop with brands they like and trust that have similar values.
Content marketing addresses all these things, giving consumers content when and where they need it.
The bottom line is that content marketing is the present and future of marketing because:
It is how consumers prefer marketing, which not only nurtures them but also builds loyalty and improves customer retention for higher leads, is more cost-effective and sustainable than traditional marketing, and brings in ROI.
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