If you want to improve your brand awareness, increase leads, as well as educate and interact with your customers in a cost-effective way, then content marketing is a great way to achieve these goals.
Do you already have a marketing strategy but haven’t used content marketing yet? In this post we will explain what content marketing is and why it is beneficial for businesses.
What is Content Marketing?
To define what content marketing is, you first need to understand what content is.
What is Content?
Content is any type of information, material or media. E.g., video is a form of content.
Content used for marketing is shared with the purpose of educating, entertaining, inspiring or capturing the attention of a target audience.
So, what is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is the creation and distribution of suitable, consistent, and handy content – such as blog articles, social media posts, videos, emails, guides, whitepapers, podcasts, webinars and so on, to current and potential customers, to engage or attract them to a business. The eventual goal is to encourage customers or leads to take profitable action.
Why is Content Marketing important?
Customers quickly tire from being bombarded by advertisements. Content Marketing puts the customer at the centre of a brand’s messaging, by focusing on how to solve their pain points and subtly promotes a brand’s offer through useful, high-quality content.
Content Marketing is important because it:
Increases organic visibility
By creating content that is relevant to your audience’s needs and wants, you rank higher in search engines, drive more traffic to your website, and increase brand awareness.
Builds relationships with customers
People usually buy from businesses they know, like and trust. Content Marketing helps to create that trust by creating content that is related to your audience’s interests, and prompts them to interact, share and communicate directly with your business to provide feedback about your products/services.
Creates more conversions
Content Marketing allows businesses to show customers that they understand their needs and care about solving their problems, which improves conversion rates.
Educates people about your products/services
Content Marketing gives businesses the opportunity to offer valuable information to audiences on topics that interest them and is relevant to a business’s offering too. This improves brand awareness and engagement.
Improves authority
Showing your industry expertise by sharing high quality content as well as your knowledge and opinions, makes you appear more trustworthy of giving honest and helpful information.
Encourages loyalty
Consistently sharing excellent and thought-provoking content enables your business to grow relationships with your customers. In time, this is likely to increase the loyalty customers feel towards your brand. Additionally, if their loyalty towards your brand is strong enough, customers have the potential to become great supporters/cheer leaders for your business too, bringing even more customers to your business.
Including Content Marketing into your wider marketing mix allows you to connect with your target audience, create more leads and ultimately results in more conversions for your business by letting your customers get to know you and your brand. Chat to us about how to get started today.