When people hear the term content marketing, many believe it is all about blogging, writing articles, or using social media to bring awareness to your brand.
It's that and more.
It is how content is used. Content marketing is a way to build trust with your audience, connect with them, and keep your brand in front of them to increase their ability to remember your business.
Content marketing revolves around creating, publication, and distributing content to an intended interest group or target audience to get new traffic and bring awareness to your brand.
Keep reading to learn more about the ten reasons your business should invest in content marketing.
1. Builds Trust
As a business owner, others need to trust your expertise or ability to provide solutions to your audience's issues. Content marketing allows you to build that. More specifically, as you create and share content with your intended interest group centred around your products and services, your expertise will be evident. For this reason, individuals tend to have confidence in specialists or professionals that can help tackle issues.
2. Builds Brand Awareness
People cannot patronize your business if they know about it. Content marketing is the vehicle that positions your brand in front of people. It helps drive traffic to your website, your landing pages or social media accounts. Content marketing provides a way for you to showcase your knowledge time after time.
To illustrate, you could create a weekly newsletter to inform your audience of what's going on in your business. Highlight personnel of the week or trends in the marketplace. Your imagination only limits you. As your readers receive your weekly newsletters, it gives them an opportunity to get to know you better.
3. Organic Search (SEO)
When you enter your search terms into your browser, the search engines work hard to present the right information to you. As you create useful content for your audience that's not salesy, the search engine you are using (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) perceives that your content is helpful and offers solutions to the individuals seeking solutions. That type of content tends to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). It will continue to rank higher and longer if you continue to produce stellar content that's informative and educational.
4. Lead Generation
Content marketing is a highly-effective way to generate leads. Your prospects can lead to new customers. And that is exactly what your content should produce. Introduce premium content such as video courses, templates, or eBooks to draw them in further. Because without new leads, you can't generate sales.
5. Attract Buyers
Lead generation is just the beginning. But the result of converting those leads to sales is what matters most. Your content marketing will get your prospects to buy what you are selling.
Why is that?
The people that buy from you are already searching for the content you provide. Remember, the keywords you use in your content will make it easier for the people searching for your content to find it. Your ideal customer is already looking for what you have to offer.
Content marketing allows you to filter out those who are not interested in your products or services. For example, when visitors land on your website after entering specific keywords into search, they are more likely to click on your lead magnet since it will provide solutions to their pain points. That process is known as inbound marketing.
6. Lead Nurturing (Buyer's/Customer's Journey)
Leverage your lead generation throughout the entire customer's journey (i.e., awareness, consideration, and decision). Your content should keep the buyer moving along your sales funnel.
Awareness. Does your prospect have an issue with understanding what a content roadmap is? They begin a search using a "content roadmap," and it leads to your blog post. The prospect begins to read and learn more about what they are looking for and begins to trust your business. Within the content is a free eBook link that goes more in-depth about a content roadmap. The reader clicks on the link and ends up on your landing page. Once there, they enter their information to receive the free brand authority content.
Consideration. Your prospect has entered the consideration stage. They have read the eBook and found it useful. You suggest that your potential customer view a few videos that will further explain a content roadmap. Once considered, the prospect decides that your business can provide a solution to their problem.
Decision. Your prospect is prepared to do whatever it takes to learn as much as possible. As a result, the prospect buys the entire series on "What is a Content Roadmap." Welcome to the world of business. You now have a new customer.
As you can see, content marketing led your prospective buyer to your business and allowed them to purchase your products or services.
7. Make Your Content Shareable
Since you are considered the authority on your brand's products or services, it means that you know something others do not. When your content provides solutions to people's pain points, it will likely get shared by other businesses.
Social media is also a way to get your content shared. It is becoming a great source in the same way as search engines. Shared content places your content in front of many audiences, and as such, it is a quick way to get your message out and draw many more leads.
8. Provide a Reason for People to Revisit Your Website
The whole idea of connecting with your audience becomes a reality when your content educates, informs, engages, retains customers, and builds relationships. You are seen as the go-to expert, and for this reason, people will return to your site repeatedly.
9. Build Brand Authority
At this point, brand authority ought to be self-evident. Your content demonstrates your capacity to do things better than others. Your intended interest group is finding solutions to their inquiries from you; they simply need to realize that you'll furnish them with the ideal approach to tackle their specific issue. It's alright to show them again and again. You'll merely be fortifying your job as the business master with each video, digital book, blog entry, and so on. Indeed, even the individuals who never wind up purchasing your goods or services will view you as the expert in your field centred on the content you create.
10. Build Backlinks
When you produce great content, other businesses and individuals will want to link to your content to share with their audiences. With backlinks, you have the potential to increase your prospect reach. The genuine advantage is that this backlinking is one of the models the web search tools use to rank your webpage. If other authority websites such as NeilPatel.com or Hubspot.com are connecting to yours and more individuals are visiting your site through those connections, your page authority gets a huge boost.
Closing Thoughts
There you have it!
Ten reasons your business should invest in content marketing.
You have probably spent a lot of time and resources in building your business. Content marketing will make it grow even more. So, keep your marketing strategy up-to-date, and market your business consistently. There are many benefits of content marketing. It generates new leads, builds your reputation, encourages trust and faith in your brand, can influence your conversion rates, and provide passive income.