In this competitive age, content marketing is an important activity that every online business must take advantage of. Why? Well, to begin with, it's easy to get started.
Moreover, when coordinated using the overall marketing strategy, it has been proven to provide enormous benefits.
Let's think for any bit – what does a business want? Profits, for sure. But to achieve that, you need to get a lot of things right – audience engagement, prospecting, driving sales, brand awareness, brand value, and also the list goes on and on.
What if I said, by making content marketing an important part of your business, you can realize all of the above-mentioned goals? Sounds crazy? It's not, actually. In fact, thousands of companies are doing the exact same things and reaping tons of benefits from it.
If you're a small business owner or completely new to content marketing, you might like to start by hiring a team of professionals to help you in your efforts of deciding target audience, creating and editing content, handling the SEO, in addition to tracking the results like web site traffic, onsite engagement, social media engagement, exposure, lead quality, conversion, etc.
Now, content marketing isn't cheap. If you're extremely low on budget, and hiring a team doesn't squeeze into your immediate goals, you can connect with a few product review websites or capable influencers to get the word out and put your product in front of the people.
In this guide, you'll learn what is content marketing and the benefits your business can receive by consistently producing high-quality content.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the process of strategically creating, publishing, and promoting relevant content (in a number of formats) to a targeted group of audiences to drive profitable customer decisions.
Do notice the word “strategically”. What this means is that you can't just go ahead and start posting pictures and videos on your social media channels or publish articles in your blog without thinking.
You call for a clear goal and a well-defined plan on how your content can move you closer to your company objectives.
Next, you must have a target audience in mind. Not everyone will be thinking about your product or your content. You have to do your research to learn about your demographics interests and needs.
And, the last thing to keep in mind is the relevance from the content to your desired audience. In case your content isn't adding any value to the audience, they will not care about it. Simple.
One of my favorite methods of consistently producing relevant and useful content is creating a topic cluster.
A topic cluster is really a group of content built round the main topic and multiple sub-topics.
Here's a good example – let's say you sell shoes online. A perfect example of a topic cluster for your niche would be:
- Best Shoes For Men
- Best formal shoes
- Best casual shoes
- Best white sneakers
- Best sports shoes
- Best Vans shoes under $100
This results in 2 things:
- Multiple topics for creating content
- When you link from sub-pages to the main page, it sends the signal to look engines to treat it as an authority page over the topic.
This improves your chances of ranking higher over time.
Benefits Of Content Marketing
Now that you know what is content marketing, here are some of its major benefits which will definitely convince you that it's well worth the investment.
1. Improve Brand Awareness And Reputation
In today's era, there are just too many options to choose from. Want to buy shoes? You got Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Converse, and more. What about smartphones? You got Apple, Google, Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus, and also the list goes on and on.
So, what makes people prefer one brand within the other? Trust.
Building trust will help you establish a connection and a relationship with your customers; which, in turn, can improve brand reputation.
When you strategically devise your strategy, you can use content marketing to consistently push top-notch and informative content. This can bring tons of high-quality traffic and links to your website; exposing your brand to your desired set of audiences that don't even know about it yet.
When people read your content, they form an opinion about your business. If the content is engaging and valuable, they'll form a similar image of your brand.
2. High Return On Investment
Content marketing, by no means, is a cheap activity. It requires time, effort, and money to consistently create and promote high-quality content. But, the returns you get make it worth the investment.
According to DemandMetric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3 times as many leads.
Good content is evergreen and should be considered as an asset. I am sure you must have noticed search results from years back when you look for solutions on the internet. If it's out there, it's bringing them visits even to this day.
Sure, there are some time-sensitive topics that become outdated pretty quickly, however your focus should be on creating long-lasting pieces of information that people can relate with for many years.
3. Improve Your SEO Efforts
If you run a business online, you must know about Seo or SEO.
To put it simply, SEO is really a set of practices that boost the visibility of your website on the web. And, excellent content will help you with your SEO efforts tremendously.
Good content can improve your search rankings and help you rank higher for the desired search terms. It can also help you build quality backlinks. This can improve your domain ratings. And, improved ratings can result in more visibility in your niche.
Providing value for your readers with the help of educational submissions are the best way to improve your SEO. Think about it, the more content you have, the greater keywords you'll rank for. The more keywords you rank for, the more traffic you'll get.
Additionally, all the extra content gives the readers a reason to stick around in your website; resulting in increased on-site time. This can definitely help improve your SEO efforts.
4. Showcase Expertise And Establish Authority
Do you need to rank higher on the search engines? A tried and tested method is to establish authority inside your niche. Well, how do you do that? Simple, by showing your expertise in the form of informative content.
Content marketing gives your brand a platform for creating valuable content that helps consumers make informed purchasing decisions.
Here's a good example – what's the first website that comes to your mind when you think of SEO related content? Maybe it's Backlinko or Ahrefs or Neil Patel?
