Of all the digital marketing strategies, arguably the most effective is content marketing – a strategy which involves creating useful, relevant and insightful content, in various formats, that engages and attracts your target audience.
Be under no illusions, a powerful content marketing strategy takes planning, commitment, research and consistency, but the effect is profound and the rewards are long-lasting.
Let’s take a look at how a strong content marketing strategy can benefit your business.
#1 Google loves good content
One of the primary reasons you need to invest in content marketing is that Google ranks websites with good content above almost anything else.
If you want to climb the search results pages and earn a coveted place high on page 1, your website’s content and the content you produce around your website in blogs, social media channels and so forth will help you achieve that ranking faster than many other strategies.
A recent study found that Google sends 10 times more traffic to your website than any other referral channel – in other words, organic search remains a number 1 priority to get your site visits up. And content is the key to earning a strong ranking on Google Search.
What does good content entail? Have a read of our post last week on What content marketing is and why it matters, to find out more about how to create content that helps you climb the Google Search results! Read more…
#2 Customer loyalty is built over time
The buying or communication process for a customer is often not something that happens quickly. A potential customer may visit your website a number of times before committing to the next step whether that’s buying something or making an enquiry.
The best way to accelerate that decision-making process is to build the visitor’s trust by offering them valuable content to guide or advise them in an authentic and ‘non-hard-sell’ way.
By helping them solve their challenge, you’re creating a relationship of trust that encourages them to commit to buying your product or service or get in touch to find out more.
This helps to build long-term customers as well, with repeat business that really helps grow your revenues over time.
#3 Content marketing lets you control the narrative
Helping people understand the aspects of your business, product or service that sets it apart from competitors helps you control how your business is perceived in the public eye.
Whilst what you do or sell may be a premium service or product, and on the surface may be expensive or take longer to deliver, if you’re able to explain in detail why quality and precision (for example) are key to customer satisfaction, you’re controlling the purchase process from end to end.
Rather than a potential customer being put off because they see price first, they’re now able to understand a great deal more about the value they get for the price they pay, which once again encourages the purchase decision and long-term engagement.
#4 Content marketing is less intrusive and more effective than ‘traditional’ strategies
Traditional marketing models rely on disrupting attention to get a potential customer to make a purchase decision. They can be irritating, and online there are already more than 40% of browsers who use ad blockers, so many of the digital marketing models actually simply don’t work any longer.
Content marketing offers an authentic, content-led way to engage with your customer by giving them something they can use – whether that’s information, a step-by-step guide to doing something, a sample of something for free, or similar, your customer is able to absorb this piece of content in a non-intrusive way.
#5 Content marketing grows your complementary audiences
The more content you create that’s of use to your potential customers, the more likely they are to do two key things: firstly they’ll share the information they’ve found with people they know who are likely to find it useful.
This alone helps to grow your referral customer base without any effort on your part – how great is that?!
Secondly, they’re far more likely to find you and follow you on social media channels, giving you a whole new audience that you’re able to engage with, share further content marketing pieces with and have direct conversations with.
Note, therefore, that it’s essential that you create pieces of content that can be shared, and be sure to include relevant links to social media channels and ‘share’ functionality to all your pieces of content.
#6 Content marketing is a customer service tool
Many business owners will have a FAQ page on their website – useful, but quite passive. By using feedback and questions from your customers to write response articles or create videos or infographics that answer their questions, you’re basically solving a customer service role and growing awareness and understanding of what your business does or sells.
And again, your target audience will feel that you’re taking note of their needs and are aware of what information they’re looking for, helping to build that trust relationship you’re after.
#7 Research and data
Once you’ve developed an audience that engages well with the content you’re putting out there, it becomes far easier to create content that asks your audience to respond, helping you evolve your business to suit their needs in almost real-time.
With the various tools available such as HubSpot, you’re able to build data from your content marketing campaigns too, helping you get an even better understanding of your audience, what content works best, which channels are most effective, and so forth.
Content marketing is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to improve brand awareness, develop an engaged audience, drive sales and leads and grow your business in an authentic and sustainable way.
Find out more about how to create a content marketing strategy for your business. Call Realnet today on 01223 5500800 or email info@realnet.co.uk for more.