Content marketing has proven to be insanely effective and can be integral to building the trust that inevitably leads to conversions. Content marketing as a “strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable consumer action.”
The importance of content marketing in digital marketing relates to its ability to increase the volume of quality traffic to your website. Content is king in creating awareness and generating quality leads which sustains healthy sales growth. Strategized and properly executed content has the power to pull your audience to your business’s website, which is ultimately the place where they will convert into leads, and then sales.
The most effective way to drive traffic to your website is through the content that you develop for your blog, for SEO and for your social media marketing. While there are plenty of important elements that live under these categories, it all boils down to the quality of your content.
What is Content marketing?
Content marketing is about showing the world that you’re awesome at what you do. As a digital marketing agency, we refer to the practice of creating great content for use in online marketing activities as content marketing.
The goals of content marketing are to:
- Grow a community of interested buyers
- Build trust
- Boost engagement with current customers
- Establish relationships with prospects
- Generate leads
- Increase sales
Here are 5 specific reasons why you need a content marketing strategy right now.
1. Establish your brand identity
The choice between brand awareness and lead generation can feel like a boxing match. ‘Awareness’ fights to increase the size of your audience, while ‘lead generation’ limits your audience to a group of people who are willing to trade their contact information for your content.
The good news is your brand doesn’t have to let awareness and lead generation duke it out. With a potent written strategy, the two goals can complement each other. Brand awareness is often necessary for lead generation to be effective, and content used for lead generation can reinforce customers’ awareness of your brand.
2. Improves your organic search ranking
Creating content and adding it to the website improves search ranking in organic search results, leading to more web traffic.
How? Consistent updates to a website and social media platforms with content improve page position in organic search, putting a site further up in search results. Moreover, content allows for more opportunities to rank for more keywords, which also improves position in search ranking. The more relevant keywords used on a webpage, the more users will go to that page and stay on the website. When Google or other search engines identify that, the search engine will feed the website more frequently to common search users, understanding that the particular webpage is valuable.
3. Build trust with your website visitors
Great content is a powerful tool in building trust as a business.
Consumers read your content, and from it, gain an understanding of your business, your values as a company, your brand. As they read, they form opinions and will align with your brand if they like how you are presenting yourself.
Your brand comes to life for them. This helps you to establish a positive brand reputation before they’ve made their first purchase. Developing great content builds your business reputation over time. Of course, once you start, you need to maintain consistency with content creation.
The trust you build helps your business establish a positive brand reputation. This can keep you top of mind when the consumer is ready to buy.
In addition, when your leads and customers start to see that you are consistently publishing content across platforms, they may come to see you as a leader in the industry. Publishing content through third-party publications or sharing your content with influencers can also help you further build trust within your target market.
4. Turn fans into customers
Within the parameters of your a written content strategy, there should be content created specifically for generating leads and sales.
Turning Facebook fans into customers depends heavily on your ability to promote your content through Facebook ads. Components include:
- Well-developed ideas
- Ad text/copy
- Images
- Video
- Landing Pages
- Calls-to-Action
- Lead forms
5. Maximize your ROI
Did you know that “content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads?” In my opinion, content marketing may be pound-for-pound the most effective marketing strategy of all time.
Content marketing really levels the playing field, and small companies can often compete with much larger ones, as long as they’ve got a smart, well-thought-out campaign.
By carefully charting your course and developing a comprehensive strategy, you’re almost guaranteed to lead to a favorable outcome.
Conclusion
A robust and successful content marketing strategy uses organic search, digital advertising, and social media to amplify quality content. Regardless of who creates your content, the benefits are consistent: increased brand awareness, deeper audience engagement, increased conversions on-site, and higher brand loyalty from your constituents.
