Why is content marketing important?

Why is content marketing important? In today’s world, content, media, and technology keep evolving and in regard to this, companies and brands are evolving how they market and showcase themselves. This evolution is most especially inspired by consumers who are currently looking beyond simple advertising tactics from brands. Customers now seem to crave more unique and engaging content from brands. This has become the new trend in the business world and in order to match this, brands from across all industries have resulted in content marketing to strengthen their online presence.

Content marketing has indeed become one of the most popular methods of digital marketing. It has undoubtedly become a powerful tool that can help businesses and brands increase their web traffic, create awareness about their brand and boost their sales. In fact, according to today’s marketing experts and business strategists, “content marketing is the key to success in this increasingly digital age of the internet, e-commerce, and social media”.

Content marketing entails a lot of things and this article will explore what content marketing is, why it is important, and some ways that brands are utilizing it throughout different industries. However, before we dive into the reasons why content marketing is important, let’s understand what content marketing actually is and what it can entail.

Basically, content marketing refers to creating, curating, and sharing valuable content for free to build an audience, generate website traffic and leads, and ultimately convert them into sales.

It is important for every brand or business owner to set long-term goals when considering the kind of content to include in their content marketing strategy. The content marketing strategy as well as the content of a brand can make or mar it. Hence, a brand’s content should always add value to its image and reputation.

As a brand, your content should be relevant, interesting, and appealing to your target audience. It should be relatable and identify with the problems or emotions of your target audience while inspiring them to take action. Providing relevant content to your audiences can guide them in solving their problems and provide them with useful information.

Ultimately, quality content will not only attract prospects but also go as far as converting them into loyal visitors. In fact, highly-targeted content in its various forms, be it as text, images, videos, presentation decks, infographics, podcasts, or sending out emails as a marketing strategy can help you in several ways. It can increase your overall reach, improve the reputation of your brand, increase sales conversion, and retain your customers.

Content marketing has strategic procedures that involve basically 6 steps which include:

1. Listen and buyer personas
2. Decide on the theme and topic of your content
3. Create content
4. Promote it
5. Measure and evaluate
6. Repurpose

Why is content marketing important for brands?

1. Content marketing can establish trust with your audience
2. It increases the brand’s authority and builds a reputation
3. Content marketing enhances digital marketing and social media presence
4. It can generate leads and increase conversions
5. The effectiveness of your SEO strategy improves with content marketing
6. It increases sales
7. Content marketing is cheaper than the traditional marketing

Content marketing is a long-term investment, that will require creativity, time, and resources. Hence, you may be pondering and asking ‘How and why is content marketing important to my business?’. Here are some of the benefits of content marketing:

Content marketing can establish trust with your audience

One of the benefits of content marketing is that you can win your users’ trust just by regularly publishing quality content. Creating quality content helps establish trust with your audience and builds a lasting relationship. By giving out quality and useful content to your audience, you give them the impression that if you’re willing to help them for free, then you can be more than willing to give them the best when you’re paid.

It is important for your audience to trust you as this helps your business establish a positive brand reputation. Content-based marketing helps to keep your audience engaged and interested in what your brand has to offer both now and in the future. Hence, content marketing is important because through the content you produce and provide to your audience, you can create a positive experience and association for them that will leave a good impression in the long run.

It increases the brand’s authority and builds a reputation

With content marketing, you can build the reputation of your brand through increased authority. When you create a range of content for your brand, you build a worthy online reputation. You gain more respect from your audience based on your consistency with high-quality content online. This will consequently increase your authority and credibility within your respective industry.

Unique and quality content can help a brand stand out from its competitors and allows the brand to showcase its expertise. Content marketing gives you the leverage of positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. It is important to establish a sense of authority that features aspects of your brand’s authenticity. If your brand can be mentioned when a newspaper writes an article about your industry or is thought of when someone wants some information on a specific topic, then your brand will gain recognition and authority, which turns you into an industry expert.

With the right content marketing strategy, you can establish your business as a thought leader. When your content positions you as an expert in your industry, customers will choose your business over your competitors. In order to gain this authority in their industry, this is why brands have blogs, entrepreneurs’ guest posts for top news sites, and CEOs trying to land speaking appearances. All of these help to position the brand as an expert, which in turn leads to trust. Therefore, content marketing is important because, with it, you can educate your audience while proving you are an expert and can be trusted.

Content marketing enhances digital marketing and social media presence

Why is content marketing important? It enhances your digital marketing and social media presence. Like they say “Content is King“, this is because your content supports almost every aspect of your digital marketing strategy. As a brand, marketing across different channels and platforms, it is important to provide your audience with consistent, and high-quality content no matter what. You can promote your brand through various digital tactics with a well-thought-out and executed content marketing strategy.

Your content marketing can enhance your online and digital presence as well as increase your social media traction. With this, you’ll be able to acquire loyal followers across various social media platforms, which allows for better brand exposure. The content you put out there has the power to increase your followers on social media.

Content marketing and social media are a perfect match, as you can use social media to share your content. The leads you attract with your content will probably start following you on social media and will continue to see your new content as you post them. In addition, content marketing via social media is a great way to attract top talent. There are instances where several professionals or job seekers approach a brand based on the content they produced.

It can generate leads and increase conversions

The major reason why content marketing is important is that it generates leads and increases your conversions. For effective content marketing, you need to see your content as a map that will guide your target audience to your brand’s true value. In fact, it is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate new leads for your brand. With content marketing, you will be able to generate leads efficiently and effectively especially when you create contents that feature engaging call-to-action (CTA).

Your content marketing strategies can also influence your conversion rates. You can improve your brand’s conversions with content marketing because it gives you the opportunity to directly connect with and inform your leads and customers. Once customers have a strong idea about your brand and what it stands for, they are more likely to invest in what your brand is offering.

In content marketing, you can influence your audience to make informed decisions regarding your brand’s value proposition by providing consistent content. It is also important to note that the relevance of your content matters a lot because if your content is attracting the wrong leads then you’re wasting your time and resources. Hence, focus on engaging and quality content in order to attract new leads. Always look out for content that seems to get more engagement and evaluate why they get such engagement. Then, map out a content strategy that will align with your findings.

The effectiveness of your SEO strategy improves with content marketing

Content marketing is important because it can improve the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. It helps you optimize your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy and efforts. SEO plays a direct role in the accessibility and visibility of your brand online. SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results. Content marketing plays a crucial role in SEO, so it is necessary to create contents that highlight your brand’s value. More so, the more content your brand creates and publishes, the greater your online presence will be.

Americans alone conduct 20,000,000,000 searches per month. Thus, publishing content regularly is a sure way to win the love of search engines like Google, Bing, Brave, etc. Once these search engines position your content among the first search engine results, you will have access to an incredible source of free traffic. These search engines will play a major role in your business being found on the internet.

Hence, by creating content related to your industry, you increase the chances of a search engine showing your content to searchers. Therefore, content marketing allows you to create more opportunities for your brand to get noticed by your audience. And once your audience notices you, it increases your chances of developing a lasting relationship.

It increases sales

Why is content marketing important? it increases sales. Content marketing can attract new leads and increase the conversion you need for your target audience to patronize you. When you market your brand using good and quality content you can make sales. A well-executed content marketing strategy will always generate clients and sales. With more traffic to your website and more prospects or customers that trust you, you’re bound to make more sales.

It is cheaper than the traditional marketing

One of the reasons why content marketing is important is that it is cost-effective compared to traditional marketing. Compared to other forms of marketing like high-priced advertising campaigns, content marketing is cheaper.

However, there may be a need to invest in some equipment such as software for producing content, or hire content professionals to increase your production quality. But once you have these resources it’s possible to create high-quality content that can resonate with your target audience without breaking your budget. It is way cheaper than traditional marketing and significantly generates more leads.

Real-life facts

1. Content marketing provides conversion rates about 6 times higher than other digital marketing methods.
2. 61% of online consumers in the U.S. decided to make a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog. (Content Marketing Institute)
3. According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality. (Curata)
4. According to 72% of businesses surveyed, video content in digital marketing can help provide a great ROI and significantly increase conversions. (CrazyEgg)
5. Inbound marketers are able to double the average site conversion rate (from 6 to 12%), in part, due to their content marketing efforts. (HubSpot)

The above-listed are just a few of the stats that can convince you of the importance of content marketing to your brand especially when it comes to improving website conversions.

Types of content you can use for marketing

1. Videos
2. Blog post
3. Case studies
4. White papers
5. eBooks
6. Social media posts
7. Podcasts
8. Infographics
9. Influencer marketing

Nowadays, there’s an increasing number of internet users and e-commerce tends to be flourishing. Hence, digital marketing is outperforming traditional marketing methods and curated content plays a crucial role in this. In an ongoing effort to provide the best possible results to search queries, search engines keep refining their algorithms. Hence, providing good content is very important in today’s world, especially when you’re trying to grow a loyal audience.

No matter the business sector your brand belongs to, content marketing is important and has been seen as an effective way to bolster your marketing efforts. Virtually every brand with a successful marketing strategy uses content marketing in various shapes or forms. Now that you know the importance of content marketing, you may be thinking of implementing it or improving your current content marketing strategy. Here are the most popular types of content you can use for your content marketing strategy:

Videos

Creating videos is one of the basic kinds of content used in content marketing e.g youtube videos. Youtube is a vastly popular search engine on the web right now and can be used to reach out to new viewers. Videos can be very engaging and make it possible for you to show customers how your products work. You can improve your SEO rankings and increase engagement rates by using videos.

Blog post

Blogging is an excellent way to establish your presence online. Blogs are the quintessential mode of content marketing because they allow you to write articles that contain useful tips and information for your audience. The essence of blogging is to create useful content that is educational, interesting, or inspirational. This type of content marketing is usually useful for startups or small businesses because it allows them to strengthen their brand image and reach new audiences.

The advantages of blogs include:

1. Blogs allow you to write articles while connecting with current customers.
2. You can easily share blog posts via social networks.
3. Blogs are also search-engine-friendly because they are often indexed by Google and other search engines.
4. Blog posts usually include links to other websites which help promote your brand further.

eBooks

The unique thing about ebooks is that they’re downloadable. Instead of your target audience feeling like yet another blog post or video, a downloadable eBook feels far more like a real object of value. You can use eBooks in your content marketing strategy as lead generation tools, offering your users the chance to opt-in with their contact information in exchange for your information. More so, writing an eBook also gives you the ability to showcase your authority on a subject in a greater level of depth than a blog post allows. The popularity and perceived value of eBooks make them the favorite of most online marketers.

Social media posts

Social media offers a unique opportunity for brands to interact and connect directly with their audience and existing customers on a personal level. Through Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, and Instagram, brands can establish a social media presence and engage with their target audience.

Also, you can create contests or social campaigns that encourage people to share your brand online by sharing your images, articles, and other forms of campaign-specific content. Social media is a great tool for content marketing.

Podcasts

The essence of podcasts in marketing is to educate listeners about various subjects related to specific industries. This allows brands to reach out to potential clients while providing valuable insight into how their businesses operate.

Infographics

In digital marketing, the use of infographics has become increasingly popular. This is because they’re easy to understand and visually attractive. Infographic content can also be very engaging and interactive as they tend to be shared much faster than traditional text-based content. Additionally, they can also be incorporated into blog posts, eBooks, white papers, webinars, presentations, etc.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that involves a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. This type of social media marketing uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers. These influencers are individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche.

This type of marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following. Hence, any content they post about your brand, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.

Conclusion

In this digital age, content marketing is important for any brand or business, because it works for building trust, generating leads, increasing sales, and cultivating customer loyalty. In fact, it has become the new norm from the consumer side, hence, neglecting it would be riskier than investing in it.

The customer-centric reality we’re now operating in is fostered by content marketing. Therefore, content marketing is important for every brand, company, and business thriving to grow and remain relevant in the market. From well-researched white papers to podcast series to youtube videos to social media posts etc., content is changing the relationship between the brand and consumer.

Last Updated on November 5, 2023 by Nansel Nanzip Bongdap