Content marketing is basically a form of marketing that is focused on creating, publishing, posting, sharing and distributing content among a wide base of the audience for awareness.
According to a survey in 2018, about 91% of B2B businesses reach their potential customers through the use of content marketing. Moreover, Pew Research(1) shows that 26% of adults in the U.S. are always online.
It is mostly used by every business owner
Purpose of Content Marketing
Content marketing helps the customers to create a substantial and sustainable customer base, to pass on valuable information to the consumers and to produce a sense of willingness to purchase the products.
The main purpose of content marketing is to attract prospects and then, to convert those prospects into potential customers to widen the customer base. It happens by creating, publishing and distributing valuable content about the products and the business itself.
Content marketing has a direct relationship with trust. It does affect sales but not directly. The main idea of content marketing is to give something remarkable to have something remarkable in return.
Learn more about the top 10 content marketing trends for 2020
Top 35 Benefits of Content Marketing
There are many advantages of content marketing. This is the reason why 85% of people(2) are online and always reading useful content. But many marketers fail to understand the benefits of content marketing for B2B.
Well, here we are jotting down the top benefits of content marketing:
-
Content Marketing Makes You Money
Adequate research demonstrates that enterprises who share rich content and are involved in content marketing experience conversion rates about 600% higher than the companies who are not involved in content marketing.
It requires a lot of time and consistency but in the end, it always pays off and earns you profit.
-
Generates Sales More Efficiently
Posting and publishing effective content on your website and for your company can help you to generate more sales efficiently and in a short time. That content will help you bring more traffic to your business website and more traffic means an increase in sales.
In fact, research has shown that a company that posts 16 blogs per month gets 3.5 times more audience and hence, generates sales more efficiently.
(Also Read: Practices for Choosing the Best Content Marketing Technology)
-
Pulls in Unexpected Customers
Every buyer goes through a whole journey before buying. First, they need to recognize their challenges regarding the product and then look for potential solutions. Finally, they will make their final decision based on their research.
By providing useful and compelling content, you can pull in unexpected customers into buying products more easily. You just have to convince them by words.
-
It Is Cheaper as Compared to Alternate Forms of Content Marketing
Content marketing is the most thought-provoking and cost-efficient marketing method than any other outbound and traditional marketing tactics.
It can be started easily as people read blogs, messages, descriptions, and articles even while walking.
Digital content marketing reduces the amount of money spent on publishing, posting and distributing content.
In fact, it costs 62% less than any other outbound traditional content marketing technique.
-
Builds Valuable Relationship with Your Customers
This benefits of Content marketing is a perfect way to nurture your relationship with your customers. One of the best ways to build a healthy and strong relationship with your customers is to provide them with useful, compelling, engaging and informative text.
When you educate your customers about the current and general affairs or educate them about your products, you are fostering a good consumer-seller relationship with them. Relevant content is the key to build consumers your strong advocates.
-
Helps to Make Personal Connections
There are many times for a business to show the human side of the world. But your content might allow you to make personal connections and networks with your customers and your qualified generated leads. You can showcase your brand and your voice through content marketing.
You are free to post content or maintain a blog about personality traits, general topics, articles related to your products and business.
Furthermore, you can also share videos, images and other types of content to make personal real-world connections with your valuable customers.
-
Boosts Customer Engagement
Increased engagement of the customers is one of the top benefits of content marketing. The best way to generate leads (3) and to increase the conversion rate is to provide them with helpful and informative text on the relevant and related topics so that they can have a platform to talk from.
Sharing your content on social media websites is the best way to promote your brand and to engage with your customers on a bigger spectrum.
-
Works with Any Industry
By qualifying yourself as an expert in content marketing, you can use it for sharing about your industry as well. This would make you an industry expert. Consumers like to research their problems and like to discuss them. If you help them to understand their challenges, it would help you to grow in the industry.
And this does not apply to any specific industry but every kind of industry.
-
Helps Content to Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And Online Visibility
Many customers take help of the search engines when they need to search for a product or a service. Search engine optimization is a process that ranks your website higher in the Google search engine if it has a heavy traffic flow.in fact, it ranks it first in the search engine results page.
The better the content you post, the highly ranked your website will be. For instance, if a person searches for ‘a pedestrian fan’, Google will provide him with hundreds of results but will only rank those related to his query.
-
Improves Your Customer Experience
Sharing content will automatically allow the customers to engage with you. They would give you feedback and reviews regarding your products or services. This is a great way to improve your customer experience.
-
Content Marketing Is Recyclable
Content and blogs are sustainable and recyclable. They are like a present which keeps on providing results.
Research shows that the content produced organic search over a long period of time. It simply means that it never expires. According to other research, content marketing increases 38% of all the traffic.
-
Content Marketing Spurs Creativity
Content marketing is not a boring activity. In fact, you get to unleash your writing and creative skills. You need creative and compelling content to attract customers. If you are creative enough to attract customers through your content skills, then you can definitely learn in this field a lot.
-
Establishes yourself as a thought leader
Whether you’re a business owner or content marketer, posting useful content on a website will make you look like a thought leader. From general articles or blog posts to technical things in your niche, you have a better chance of explaining things to your targeted audience as well as new employees. Sounds good?
-
Increases sales
This is by far the most important perk of content marketing. The main objective of any content marketing strategy is to derive new customers, engage them, and make more sales. When the audience finds value on the website, it builds trust and they’re convinced to use your services/products.
-
Positions you as a helpful resource
Most of the time, people are looking for answers on the internet. Consider your own an online leather jackets store. You post blogs about different leather types, their benefits, and how to choose one. Not all the users reading the blog would buy them, but they’ll surely come back in the future if they want.
Thus, positioning yourself as an informative website in a search engine is a good tactic.
-
Can enhance your brand image
When your content marketing strategy is set to help your potential audience, it also works towards your brand image. Helping customers through content marketing will spread word-of-mouth – enhancing your brand image.
-
Helps beat your competition
Make a list of your top 10 competitors and determine what strategies are they using to engage more customers. You’ll notice 9 out of 10 competitors will probably be using content marketing. Thus, now is the right time to beat them at their own game – post content they’re missing.
-
Attracts people with a real interest in your brand
Content marketing revolves around the brand and its core objectives. It is evident that people interacting with your content are interested in your brand and will choose you over your competitors in the future.
-
Improves employee attitudes and confidence levels
As discussed earlier, the benefits of content marketing boosts your conversion rate. When you get around a decent number of sales, your employee attitudes and confidence levels will increase – skyrocketing success.
-
Help grow a long-term audience
Make sure to add most of your audience on the website, social media, and landing packages to your subscriber list. Ask your audience to turn on notifications, subscribe to your email list, and follow on social media to grow a long-term audience.
-
Establishes selection criteria and a framework for decision-making
Posting useful and SEO optimized content on landing pages, social media, and content marketing for business will give you a clearer idea of the audience’s interests. Thereby, you’ll have a better chance of making the best decisions about your products and their marketing strategies.
-
Content marketing creates informed buyers
Through content marketing, your buyers will know what they’ve signed up for when buying your product/service. It does not only create informed buyers but also avoid any future problems. You wouldn’t want a client to buy a product anticipating something else than what it actually offers, would you?
-
Gets people’s attention
Businesses who are not able to get people’s attention because of tough competition can make use of content marketing tactics. Creating and posting content that your competitors might be missing is another way to grab people’s attention and make them your future customers.
-
Can increase email response rates
There are many content marketers piling up their email lists through landing pages. Sending emails redirecting to useful content, offers, and deals can drastically increase email response rates. Thus, content marketing can be put into action using email marketing.
-
Content marketing encourages virality
Want your products to go viral? Any viral news, product, or service in the world is by use of content marketing. Take the chance, do effective marketing, and if your product has the potential, you’ll be able to sell it in ways you can’t even think right now.
-
Reduces your dependence on external sources
Tired of spending a lot of paid ads, influencer marketing, and other paid marketing mediums? Well, now is the right time to boost your organic traffic. Content marketing has always been the first choice of marketers to reduce the dependence of any business on external sources.
-
Influences purchasing decisions
Talking about your products and within the nice on social media and website makes you seem like an expert. Thus, it can influence people’s buying decisions – increasing your conversion rates.
-
Gives you the opportunity to find out what’s important to your customers
When researching for new content, ideas, and trending topics in the niche, you have a better chance of finding out what’s important to your customers. Believe it or not, getting close to your customer’s interests can help you customize your products and services to generate more sales.
-
Improves your social media presence
If you haven’t employed social media in your content marketing techniques, you’re already a step behind your competitors. Make sure to post useful, quality, original, and trending content on your social media accounts. If your website has a decent number of organic users, you can redirect that traffic to improve your social media presence.
(Also Read: Top Content Marketing Techniques When Creating Infographics)
-
Lowers advertising costs while increasing ROI
The ROI of content marketing is a lot higher than paid marketing. This is because people are interacting with content with their intent, thus, you have a better chance at converting them anytime soon.
-
Content marketing turns shoppers into buyers without the hard sell
The same is the case with turning the audience into buyers and regular customers. It has never been easier to sell than luring people to useful content, describing the benefits of your product/service, and conniving them to hit the “Checkout” button.
-
Let’s you tell important stories about your brand
Telling stories about your brand does not only improve your brand image but also creates a sense of trust with customers. You can make a video as well as textual content to share how you grew up as the business entity you are today. Podcasts are also a great option to share important brand stories.
-
Helps counter negative reviews
Every business has to deal with negative reviews. Even the most trusted companies get these. But with a huge audience base, hundreds of testimonials, and fan following on social media will be enough to counter these few negative reviews.
-
Helps you manage your online reputation
If you’re able to counter a few negative reviews, you have a better chance of managing your online reputation.
-
Encourages customer interaction
Content marketing encourages more customer interaction with the business. Setting aside the buyer activity, people will stay connected to your brand through useful content you share with them on your website, social media channels, and email.
Effective Content Marketing Strategies
Here are some effective content marketing strategies:
- Build a targeted landing page
- Segment the audience to increase the engagement
- Know your audience’s preferences
- Thinking tactically and focusing on facts
- Target the millennials and youth with great content
Content Marketing Challenges
- Consistency in posting the articles on the blog
- Not knowing which article to curate
- Producing awesome content with a short time period
Conclusion
The benefits of content marketing apart from driving traffic to your website are immense. People use content marketing as a way to polish their creative skills and to enhance the customer experience, brand visibility and customer engagement of their business.
Related Articles:
Why Technology Companies Should Have a Content Marketing Strategy
Resolving the 5 BIG Content Marketing Setbacks
Top Content Marketing Software to Increase Brand Awareness
Best Practices for Choosing the Best Content Marketing Technology for Your Business
