benefits of content marketing

7 REASONS WHY CONTENT MARKETING IS IMPORTANT FOR ANY BUSINESS

With the time spent of consumers shifting primarily on digital, there is a paradigm shift marketing and advertising industry is seeing.

Marketing a few decades back made good use of channels like direct mail, print, TV, Out of Home etc.

While these were the prevalent channels, they were focused on short-term impact.

With the advertising and content consumption patterns altering on digital platforms, there was a strong need to focus on a long-term impact.

Something that unlike a TV Ad or a Print Ad isn’t seen and forgotten in some time. Something that has a longer lifespan and a bigger impact.

That is where Benefits of Content Marketing came in and changed the game forever.

What is content marketing? explained

Content marketing is a novel marketing strategy that makes use of creation, publication, and distribution of content to a target audience in order to bring new traffic (along with leads and customers) for your business.

It is all about capturing the audience’s attention with strategic marketing that effortlessly registers in one’s mind. “Attention” is the currency.

That’s where content marketing plays a vital role.

One of the most essential tips to keep your marketing strategy effective is to keep it current, if not ahead of the curves.

Content marketing could be considered as soul food for your marketing strategy.

The term started to pick up in the year 2004 where advertising enthusiasts were intrigued to know more about how can they execute this practice.

It revolves around content creation, communication, advertising, and publishing for your target audience in order to increase your brand awareness and attract potential customers.

A Use Case of Why to do Content Marketing

Let’s say you are a trainer for Digital Marketing. You teach at paid physical workshops as well as in online courses.

You want to grow your client base (people who are ready to pay you to learn Digital Marketing).

You start writing an SEO optimized blog twice or thrice each week covering one essential topic of Digital Marketing.

After publishing these blogs, you share them on your social media handles and your connections interested in learning start visiting your blog. Also, your blog starts ranking on the search engine for a few of your selected keywords.

This creates a steady stream of people who keep coming back to your digital marketing blog and read the expert tips you put out.

Now some of the people already know digital marketing and will come to your blog only to consume content or get ideas.

But there will be a section of the audience that wants to learn what you teach, and now will ask you questions about your workshop or course, and eventually sign-up for your paid courses.

As you can see in this use case, the content was used to generate inbound leads for your business.

Benefits of Content Marketing

benefits of content marketing

Now that we have context about what content marketing is, let us look at the question that begs to be answered – Why is content marketing essential for any business?

1. Content Marketing Improves brand reputation:

content marketing improves brand reputation

One of the biggest benefits you can get out of Content Marketing is the increase in awareness levels and the trust it brings.

When people start coming to your blog and read your expert articles, they start forming an opinion about your company as a whole and begin to trust it.

They might not have an immediate requirement for your services. But when they do, your company will be in the top-of-mind recall.

The more value you add to your content, the more will the audience start trusting your brand.

Pro tip: Always leave a call to action for your customers. This will urge them to go and explore what you have to offer.

2. Content Marketing Helps with SEO

content marketing helps SEO

Ranking for your target keywords on search engines gives you the much-needed organic (or free) traffic.

If people are looking for something, the preferred next step is to search for it on Google.

If your blogs are answering those questions, and are discoverable on Search Results, you can expect the users to land on your website.

SEO and content marketing go hand in hand in order to build effective communication.

When your content is up-to-date, informative, and precise, your audience will naturally engage with it.

As you rank higher in search engines, you will get more free traffic, that can complement your paid advertising efforts.

Pro tip: Do keyword research and competition analysis to identify the topics you want to write on.

3. Content Marketing helps with Lead Generation

content marketing helps lead generation

This is probably one of the most important factors for considering content marketing a crucial part of growing your business.

Once you have built trust amongst your target audience, you can take them down to the next level of your funnel – lead generation.

Content marketing helps attract new customers when you give them informative and to-the-point content.

When you put targeted, high-value content for your audience, you are already creating inbound traffic that is interested in products or services similar to what you provide.

When you provide a solution to the problem they are facing regarding your industry, they will automatically be think of you as a thought leader and an expert.

This will completely eradicate the competition (in their minds) in your field and get them to want to know more about your products or services. That is where you ask for their details.

Pro Tip: For lead generation, you can also explore options such as ebooks and videos.

4. Content Marketing can make your Business the Talk of the town

You see brands like Durex, McDonald’s, Burger King, Swiggy, Zomato, etc – these brands create witty content not just for selling their products or services, but also to engage their audience and increase organic engagement.

They get appreciation and love from their audience. And they keep them on the

This is what the right kind of content marketing does for your brand. Along with trending topics, also make sure to cover topical (campaigns that are informative and convey the right message about the brand).

Pro tip: Implement this technique in forming a content strategy for your social media platforms because blogs, articles, ebooks the message will somewhere be lost in long-form content.

On the other hand, the short-form content will give you filtered and quality leads without wasting time, effort, energy and money.

5. Content Marketing brings The Return Value

content marketing increases return value

Content Marketing allows you to build strong relationships with your audience.

When your content speaks information, precision, solutions to the problems, it automatically gives your audience a reason for coming back to you.

If you’re wondering what is a return value, it means attracting a set of customers that are keep coming back themselves to consume your content.

For example, a lot of companies post valuable blogs, whitepapers and research reports to keep their audience engaged.

The more companies engage their audience through valuable content, the more there is a chance the audience will keep coming back for more.

Pro tip: An excellent idea to ensure the return value of your customers is to be consistent with your blogs, articles, or ebooks.

This consistency is also the key to attract a new audience which in turn could be your potential customers.

6. Content Marketing Eases a buyer’s journey

content marketing eases buying journey

Along with creating awareness, content marketing also helps you draw a proper road map for your customers.

With the right communication, your customers will have an easy way to understand your products and services and opt for the best.

A buyer’s journey can be broken down into five stages: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, Advocacy.

With different stages, your content strategy should change and adapt to the stage effortlessly.

Pro tip: Always be a guide to your audience through all these stages and always offer a well-timed call-to-action.

7. Content Marketing Helps other Marketing Strategies

If you deliver high-quality content through the same channels consistently to your audience, it can support your overall digital marketing strategy greatly.

There are so many channels to engage your audience with content – Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Advertising, and more.

Most of these things have to have one thing in common for them to succeed – Great Content!

Content has become an irreplaceable part of digital marketing strategy and you cannot ignore it.

You want to create compelling emails that get people to subscribe to your newsletter or click through, you need amazing content.

You want to make online ads that perform, you need great copy.

You want to make landing pages that convert, you need to build content that makes people put in their details or gets them to press the “Buy Button”.

Pro tip: Always be open to experimenting and see what works the best for you. Ice up pieces of what works for you and create new content every single time.

It’s clear that content marketing is essential. It is also the common thread that connects all your marketing efforts and makes them work!