23April 2019
Have you heard about content marketing but continue to overlook it? Well, it’s time to make the decision to do more content marketing in 2019. The truth is that you cannot achieve marketing success without content. It’s a generous source of SEO (search engine optimization) and helps improve your web ranking among other things. Web design may change; SEO may change, but content will always remain the king.
Without content, your website is ineffective. Still think content marketing is all about putting together a few posts for your blog or adding more pages to your website? It is so much more than that.
What Exactly Is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is 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 customer action.
So first and foremost, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach – not just haphazardly posting items to your social media feeds.
Second, your content must benefit a clearly defined audience.
And Third, your content must be valuable, relevant, and consistent.
Content marketing is the heart of marketing in today’s fast-paced digital world. You need content marking for:
- Creating brand awareness
- Connecting with your target audience
- Building trust
- Selling your products/services
- Showcasing your authority
Great content marketing begins with a strong keyword research plan. Your content needs to be written for what your audience wants.
Businesses have been harnessing the power of content marketing for years. If you haven’t started investing in content marketing, 2019 is the perfect time to start doing so. Today, most marketers are leveraging content marketing to create more visibility, build SEO and generate more revenue.
Below, you can find 7 reasons why you should be investing more time and resources in content marketing:
1. HELP GROW YOUR AUDIENCE AND ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY
Content marketing is a great way to grow your audience. By using high-quality content, you will be able to attract more people to your website and increase the number of followers you already have. Sharing credible, authoritative and helpful content will encourage people’s trust and faith in your brand.
Apart from that, sharing high-quality content helps people see you as an authority in your industry, which in turn helps to grow your credibility.
2. ATTRACT NEW TRAFFIC
The more content you produce the more chances you will have to organically appear on the search engine page for various keywords. People are more likely to find you on SERP, social media, and wherever your content is shared. Note that the more you show up in organic search the more people will trust you versus only seeing you in ads and promoted content. Nobody likes to be sold to and 40% of internet users already use ad blockers so content marketing enables you to attract traffic and build customer relationships by putting your brand in front of your customers in a way that helps them.
3. BUILD SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION FOR YOUR SITE
SEO is constantly changing but despite that, one thing has remained the same over the years. Backlinks remain the most powerful Google ranking factor. If you want to substantially boost your site’s SEO and improve your Google rankings, link building through your content is one of the best ways to do it.
Consumers turn to search engines for solutions to their problems. Sometimes your best opportunity to win new customers is to be there when they Google it.
A 2018 study from SparkToro found that Google sends 10x more traffic to the average website than Facebook. So, content marketing dramatically boosts organic website traffic.
4. HELPS BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
Building a relationship with your target audience makes it more likely they will want to work with your business. Before making a purchase, people realize that they have a problem that needs solving. They take time to research and find someone who can help them with their problem and then decide which solution is best for them.
A well-constructed content marketing system helps your potential customers by educating them on what they’re searching for.
5. INFLUENCES CONVERSION
When you leverage content marketing, it becomes easier to make sales conversions. Customers find it easier to purchase from a seller they trust. After building a relationship with your followers through your content, you can use the same strategy to influence them to take action by using well-written, high-quality content with a Call-To-Action to encourage sales. Boosting website traffic is meaningless if it doesn’t result in more sales.
Content marketing helps transition sales from forcing a customer to buy your product or service to being a valuable resource for them once they are ready to buy.
6. HELP GROW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING
Each potential customer that finds value from your site becomes a potential advocate for your brand.
Many of these readers will follow you on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram so they can stay up to date on future articles. In return, many of these readers will also share your content with their friends and family on social media, which helps to exponentially grow your following over time.
7. HELPS BUILD COMPOUNDING ROI
Helpful, well-written articles have the potential to significantly increase your qualified website visitors each month. In addition, other websites like to link to helpful information sources. Each of these links helps to drive more qualified website visitors to the article that it’s linked to, as well as the other pages on your website, increasing the return on investment (ROI).
As you can see, effective content can help build customer relationships. It showcases your expertise and gains trust by highlighting important topics that affect your target market. Well-crafted content can drive traffic to your website and social media accounts, boost your performance on search results, and give consumers the opportunity to share your content with their friends and family. There is just no better long-term marketing plan than content marketing and something every business doing business online needs to be doing.
