There is no disputing the popularity of content marketing among B2C and B2B marketers alike.
Every day, consumers are inundated with text, image, audio, and video content via email, social and text from nearly every organization we engage with online or off.
Content is everywhere!
However, you may still be questioning whether or not content marketing is an appropriate strategy for your own business.
When done properly, content marketing does require a significant initial expenditure of time and resources from strategy and ideation through to drafting, publishing, distribution, and measurement.
Identifying your audience and giving them the content they want takes time. Some marketers still question the ability of content to deliver a return on investment or don’t understand how its value can be measured.
Here, you’ll find 10 serious benefits organizations like yours can realize from developing and implementing a comprehensive content marketing strategy.
1. Organic Search Authority And Visibility
One of the primary reasons for adopting a content marketing strategy and producing content your consumers want to read, like, and share is to develop domain authority on the keywords and phrases your organization wants to be found for in search engines like Google.
Maintaining authoritative content is a core principle behind how Google determines search engine rank.
In some categories, content must exhibit Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness or E-A-T in order to even be considered for top search engine positions.
Consistent, high-quality, relevant content can both establish your visibility in organic search results, which in turn builds brand awareness (among other beneficial marketing byproducts detailed below).
Of course, establishing yourself as an authority on any topic is not a simple or quick task. It’s worth getting right, though, as the long-term benefits can be enormous.
2. Increased Organic Traffic
Simply put, content that ranks higher in the search engines attracts more clicks from those looking for the top-ranked answers to their queries.
Further, since this traffic is based on consumers searching for specific answers it is highly targeted and properly tailored content with strong calls to action can lead to prospects quickly becoming customers
3. Increased Referral Traffic
Relevant, high-quality, and high-ranking content is also more likely to gain the attention of other website owners looking to better inform their audience or build their own authority through association.
As such, quality content will attract valuable inbound links from relevant third-party websites, which will in turn further add to your growing authority.
These links from relevant sources have the dual effect of driving both traffic and authority for your business, which in turn can have a positive effect on your rank.
All of these components, beginning with the content you create, are effectively intertwined.
4. More Social Engagement
As stated, all content should be created with the goal of having it read, liked, and shared.
The latter are both signals of social and organic authority or social proof. To this end, content creators should be diligent in including calls to action within their content and providing easy ways for readers to share content either via social media or otherwise.
Additionally, the creation and distribution of high-quality branded content open up two other increasingly important channels – user-generated content and influencer marketing.
Today’s consumers, and particularly those who are in a younger demographic, will quite often take to social media (particularly Instragam and now TikTok) to back the brands, products, and services they like and trust. Their followers, by extension, are likewise more likely to trust and purchase from brands validated by their peers.
The same principle relates to influencers and their loyal followers.
Influencers have their own personal reputations to uphold. As such, they are only going to work with those brands that reflect their values and generate high-quality, engaging content.
5. Targeted Content During The Customer Journey
A well-defined content marketing strategy accounts for the provision of content to support your consumers throughout their buying journey.
Content created for each stage of this journey from awareness and consideration to conversion, retention, and advocacy enables your consumer to confidently complete each stage.
At the same time, it builds long-term trust in your business and brand.
Content marketing is very much a growth strategy. Here are a few different ways content moves the needle:
- Awareness content primarily designed to educate users is the first step in driving them to your website or other online points of presence. (e.g., blog and social posts, whitepapers, infographics).
- Consideration content enables your users to gain a deeper understanding of your specific offerings relative to others available to them. (e.g., case studies, webinars, reviews).
- Conversion content helps your prospects validate their decision to actually choose your solution over others. (e.g., demos, free trials).
- Retention content bolsters and supports your offering with continuous value adds and helps your customers ensure they have made the correct choice (e.g., help documentation, customer newsletters).
- Advocacy content shared with now solidly entrenched customers entices and enables them to share your offering with other potential customers from a position of trust (e.g., referral requests, testimonials, webinars).
6. Higher Conversion Rates
When all of the above benefits are taken into account, quality content marketing campaigns tend to convert at a higher rate than most other marketing techniques.
Targeted, trusting consumers are much more likely to buy than those who have been temporarily swayed by a catchy three-line ad or clickbait headline.
To reiterate, people generally choose to purchase from brands they trust, and trust is developed over time via relevant, authoritative content.
As noted, strong and clear calls to action incorporated into your blog posts, articles, videos, and other content will aid in progressing your prospects through to conversion.
7. Multi-Format Content
The beauty of most content is it can be repurposed and reproduced in multiple formats for sharing across multiple platforms and channels furthering your potential reach and brand awareness.
For example, a single case study can initially be created as a traditional combination of text, tables, and images, but then repackaged and shared in video, infographic, blog post, social post, social ad, podcast, or print formats.
By establishing a set process for repurposing content you can introduce time and resource-saving efficiencies to positively affect your bottom line.
8. Evergreen Content
While creating fresh, new content is challenging and generally labor-intensive, there is also an opportunity to save significant time by leveraging evergreen content.
While core concepts may remain constant, environmental changes frequently require updates to the specifics of product and service offerings.
As time passes and situations change, there is always the potential to take existing high-value content and update it to reflect the “new normal.”
Brands have had to be particularly agile over the past 24 months in order to react to changing social and societal norms.
Those who do so successfully benefit from time savings, as well as boosts in customer trust and loyalty based on their willingness to be empathetic and flexible.
9. Original Research Data
A key content resource for every business is access to its own unique source of product, service, and/or customer data.
The benefit of leveraging this sort of data is it can be used to generate useful and actionable insight-driven content such as research reports, case studies, and whitepapers for consumers, partners, and other key stakeholders.
Since this data is unique to the organization, it can become a differentiating factor and is less likely to have competition from an organic search perspective.
10. Long Term Cost Savings
While the short-term cost of producing content may be relatively high, the long-term cost is comparatively low versus other strategies like paid advertising.
Creating and distributing content is typically a one-time effort, though we already referenced re-use and multi-formatting options. Paid search and social ads, on the other hand, have ongoing cumulative costs every time someone clicks.
Further, any worthwhile paid advertising strategy requires at least a multi-week commitment and a relatively significant budget for testing and optimization; particularly depending on the level of competition.
Get Strategic About Your Content
A majority of organizations are already creating a great deal of content, but are perhaps doing so in an ad hoc or haphazard way.
By developing a content strategy around what content to create, for who and where to effectively distribute it, you can ensure your efforts are rewarded with the benefits presented above.
After all, it’s safe to assume we all believe we are indeed the authority on the topics we want our customers to recognize us for.
In most cases, we need only apply the proper attention and rigor to attract more qualified eyeballs, leads, and business.
More Resources:
- The 5 Ws (& 1 H) Of Content Marketing
- 100 Types Of Content: The Definitive Guide For Marketers
- Content Marketing: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide
Featured Image: Sammy/Shutterstock
SEJ: Premium Era
