What Is Content Marketing And Why Is It Important?
Content marketing is far more than some words on a web page. It’s a strategic approach that focuses on creating and distributing only the most valuable and relevant content to attract your target audience.
Today, it’s regarded as an important cornerstone for businesses in every industry. Yet not everyone understands why it’s so beneficial. If you haven’t yet explored the endless possibilities of content marketing, we’re here to tell you exactly how it can add value to your brand.
What is content marketing?
To truly understand the importance of content marketing, you first need to understand what it actually is.
Content marketing is all about creating and publishing valuable content to inform your audience. This could include anything from fun blog posts to informative case studies that turn your products or services into an engaging story.
The ultimate goal is to increase brand awareness, attract new prospects and eventually convert them into loyal customers – but that isn’t all that content marketing is capable of…
What are the benefits of content marketing?
If you’re asking yourself “why is content marketing important to my business?”, you only need to take a look at some of the benefits:
1. Generates more leads and customers
Whether you sell beauty products or cloud solutions, content marketing is a fantastic way to generate more leads for your business. Putting a strong content marketing strategy in place will not only help you reach your target audience, but it’ll also nurture those leads until they’re finally ready to make a purchase.
Done right, your content marketing efforts should help you build trust, which will eventually convert potential customers into avid supporters who come (in time!) to admire your brand.
2. Improves brand reputation
One of the most notable benefits of well-written content is its ability to improve the reputation of your brand. When a customer or lead reads informative content on your website or social pages, they begin to understand just how valuable and appealing your business truly is.
Engaging content generally gets people talking positively about your products and services. The more value you provide through high-quality written content, the simpler it is to build strong relationships with your customers – and the more likely they are to spread the good word about you.
3. Optimises content for search engine algorithms
Valuable content is all well and good, but did you know that search engines actually reward businesses for publishing it? Content plays a massive role when it comes to helping your brand improve its search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking. So if you want to improve your online visibility, you’ll need to understand how to create optimised content as part of a content marketing strategy.
Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, but one thing that remains the same is their preference for relevant content. By posting content that’s useful to your target audience, and therefore keeps them on the page for longer, you’ll be able to build brand authority and rank higher for the keywords they’re searching for.
4. Helps you gain social media traction
Writing and publishing content that appeals to your target audience isn’t just good for Google, it’s good for social too. Today, content marketing and social media marketing go hand in hand. Without valuable content, your social channels will likely go unnoticed. Or, they may not get the right kind of attention you were hoping for.
Content marketing gets more conversions than any other form of marketing, which is why it has become such an integral part of social media – this being an important platform to reach customers at all stages of the buying cycle. But this success depends on the success of what you publish. So ensure that your strategy includes various types of content, including blog links, infographics, videos, quotes (reviews and testimonials), industry news and polls.
5. Is a cost-effective channel for leads
One of the main benefits of content marketing is just how cost-effective it can be – especially compared to traditional marketing channels. To be more specific, content marketing costs around 62% less than traditional marketing methods.
While there is of course the initial investment, content marketing allows you to reach the people who are genuinely interested in your products. How? By tailoring it specifically to your target audience.
6. Can be tailored for every step of the buyer’s journey
Technology has now made it much easier for businesses to engage customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey. The marketing funnel can be used to visualise the entire journey that prospects will go through before making a purchase. As a brand, it’s essential to create valuable content that encourages people further through your sales funnel and nurtures their relationship with you.
Think: what does someone need to move from the awareness stage to the consideration stage, or from consideration to purchase? Once you’ve answered these key questions – maybe you need to show off your USPs, or break down some sales objections – you’ll be able to create an effective content marketing strategy filled with custom content that supports the journey from start to finish.
7. Sets yourself apart from competitors
Creating great content that’s actually worth reading is an excellent way to set yourself apart from your competitors. This is especially important for small businesses in an overcrowded niche, although it certainly isn’t an easy task for anyone.
Writing plain old content is simple. The difficult part is creating content that’s valuable, well-written and properly formatted. While this takes time, creativity, and possibly a bit of risk, publishing informative and insightful content when everyone else is taking more of a scattergun approach will help you stand out.
8. Supports your other marketing strategies
The fantastic thing about content marketing is that relevant, consistent and quality content supports all of your other marketing strategies. Whether you prefer to focus on PPC advertising, social media or email marketing, your business absolutely needs to create quality content.
Let’s suppose that you want to build a new social media campaign that promotes your latest product. How do you expect to engage your audience? Ad targeting options and a decent cost-per-click budget will only get you so far. You need to combine it with content that captures the attention of your prospects, and pulls them into your marketing funnel.
Want to boost your content marketing efforts?
At Making You Content, we’re passionate about creating engaging content for various channels, including web, social media and email. Over the years, our expert wordsmiths have helped hundreds of clients across the UK – and globally – get the results they’re looking for from their strategies.
Ready to kick-start your content marketing? Get in touch today to learn more about our services.
