If you are one of those people who is sceptical about the value of content marketing, know this: it is the best way to market your brand online and stay ahead of the competition.
Getting noticed online is difficult these days without demonstrating value to your audience. This is where content marketing brings home the bacon, giving you greater visibility.
A content strategy could save you as much as 62% in advertising costs in comparison to a traditional marketing strategy, so neglecting it is as good as lowering your brand into the depths of online obscurity. A lack of knowledge about content marketing is acceptable these days, as you can always outsource the job to a content marketing agency.
We will be outlining 15 reasons why your marketing strategy is better served if you incorporate content marketing into it.
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Content Marketing goes a step beyond blogging
Content marketing focuses on driving a pre-planned agenda – marketing a select type of products/services. A cross-section of content marketing examples includes whitepapers, speaking engagements, recorded videos to market your product or service, webinars, and many more. Do not limit yourself to just blogging in choosing the best way to market your content.
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Content marketing is ahead of the pack in investment returns
The fact that content marketing costs less than traditional advertising methods has already been mentioned. Online marketing tools offer the opportunity to monitor traffic and surfing behaviour to help you determine if your strategy is working. This enables you to learn how to improve your content for better reception by your audience.
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It benefits all stages of the sales funnel
Every prospect or potential customer is at different stages in their decision to buy any product at any given time. Content marketing allows you to be able to address each section of your audience with information that nudges them one step closer to purchasing your product or service. To do this, you must be persistent in your resolve to gently guide them on the path to the realisation that purchasing from you is in their best interest.
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Content marketing favours lead-generation
Every brand, whether they outsource their content creation to a content marketing service or do so in-house, will agree that generating new leads can be frustrating. Content marketing makes this fairly easy, with its wide reach and options to subscribe in a few clicks as opposed to sending correspondence to do so. Reports from Curata back up claims that content marketing generates new leads, with 74% of participating brands saying the same thing.
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Your search rankings improve as a result
If your website gives accurate information coupled with the right presentation, you stamp your proficiency in the hearts of your audience and improve your search rank when enquiries are made about a subject your content is centred on. Search engine algorithms determine whether to send your page higher up or down the results ladder based on a set of ranking criteria, for example, domain authority, bounce rate, and so on.
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Content marketing boosts web traffic
Marketing your product could come off as boring to your readers, but when you throw in useful tips that they find valuable in their field of interest (which your articles cover), you build trust with them and they can easily refer friends or share your links to make your post go viral. Content marketing will improve your online visibility.
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You get to build a following with content marketing
This is done with a well-crafted content strategy. Remember that every reader is on different levels of the sales funnel, so to close a sale you need to keep them coming back. With the variety of content strategy services available today, this is not hard to do. You just need to understand your audience, demonstrate adequate knowledge of the subject of your content, connect and interact with them, and you will see your influence and followers grow over time.
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You learn more about your audience as you create content
With content marketing, you can always learn what works best with your audience because of how easy it is to use web analytics to learn more about their response to your content. This is easier with content marketing than with traditional marketing strategies. You can create polls, go through the comments section, and generally boost your rate of engagement with your audience to achieve this.
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It’s a quick way to connect with new customers
With content marketing, over three-fifths of your target audience are likely to be exposed to a new product every week. Try engaging other influencers or professional content marketing services to help you break the ice. The key here is to seek engagement from the followers of micro-influencers, as they are more likely to convert.
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Content marketing opens doors to influence in your industry
Quality content, when every other prerequisite is in place, will reward a content marketer with influence and widespread reach. If you deliver on the demands of your followers, you will earn readers’ confidence and you can easily connect with audiences in different geographical locations within/outside the country you live in.
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You can build brand loyalty
Because content marketing focuses on the audience and trying to offer them the best value, a strong relationship is often built between a brand/content marketers and the audience. This creates loyalty in your regular readers, who will defend your brand when necessary. You need people in your corner for when it matters most in the future.
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Content marketing tells your story as you see fit
One of the advantages of content marketing is that it allows you to tell the story of your brand and manage public perception. This is why big companies sell a brand experience rather than focus their marketing on their products.
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You can reuse old content
This is another plus with content marketing: you can always switch up a few things with your content and send it out again, good as new. This is something two-thirds of marketers do to maximise their articles. This means you do not have to overburden yourself with the pressure of creating new content all the time. If you do it correctly, you can make the most of the time and money spent developing some of your best content.
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You shouldn’t let the competition have all the fun
Ignoring content marketing is as good as giving your competitors a head start in the race for the scarce resources of the majority of the market. You cannot be serious about your brand if you are refusing to use content marketing whilst 37% of your B2C competitors plan to increase their content marketing. You need to give them a run for their money and get those sales over the line.
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Big brands could do your job for you
The emphasis on good content is because once you gain traction, it becomes like a rock rolling down a steep slope – everything in its path gets rolled in, too. If your content is that valuable, you can get other websites to promote it for you by plugging your links into their articles, which will do wonders for your page rankings.
Content marketing does not have to be complicated or expensive. If your team is too busy to invest their time in a content strategy, you can outsource to a content marketing agency. They will take the stress off you and achieve a lot more within a limited time scale.
If you would like content strategy advice or information, contact us today and we will be more than willing to help.