The Best Advice You Could Ever Get About Content Marketing

By the end of this article, you’ll know what content marketing is and the many benefits it will bring to your business.  

If you’ve relied on traditional marketing strategies for years, maybe you’re beginning to wonder just what content marketing is. And why you need it now.

What is it?

Content marketing is the process of consistently publishing relevant content that your audience wants, to drive traffic to your website.

Not all content is equal

Your content needs to be customer-focused, answering the questions going on in the minds of your customers.

If you 100% believe in your service and you know it creates a transformation and changes your buyers’ lives, you’re doing a disservice if you don’t offer it to them!

Words tell.  Stories sell.  

Storytelling is a content marketing strategy that will add significant benefit to your business. People remember stories. Tell a great story that evokes emotion in your viewers, and they’ll never forget you.

Humans have told stories for as long as they could speak. Our attention will always go to those who tell great stories.

A financial asset

Content marketing allows you to reach, engage, and convert customers – people who haven’t met you yet and would never have known about you. 

Use the keywords customers type into Google to create the content they want to consume – content that engages and builds trust to drive new traffic to your business.  

Content marketing fills the gap between what you deliver as a business and what your audience is searching to find.

It leads to quantifiable business value.

Content marketing, when you peel away all the layers of techniques, trends, and possibilities, is a business opportunity.

It’s a tool you can use for growth and sales. As the landscape of business has changed, content marketing is now the best choice for marketing budgets.

The business advantages

Unlike other approaches, what makes content marketing stand out as the best of modern marketing methods: It’s sustainable.

When done well – with a strategy behind it and relevancy within each piece, it offers the benefits of 

• exponential growth
• building brand awareness and trust
• winning over prospects
• convincing leads
• endearing you to your customers, and
• helping to build a loyal base of brand advocates.

The snowball effect

Once you get your content marketing strategy going, it’s that positive snowball effect in action. Your brand presence will become more extensive and more impactful. 

It will become easier to achieve your marketing goals when you have a foundation in place – a vast content library of written, photographic and video content.  And each piece will be designed to resonate with your target buyers.  

Whereas advertising, even with today’s sophisticated digital ads, can create overexposure.  Your audience will become saturated with brand promotions that offer no personality or engagement.

Relevant content resonates

A critical factor in your content marketing is relevance. What are your customers’ challenges, pain points, and needs? That’s what you should be writing about and filming, not producing a commercial for your brand. Well-constructed, insightful content draws your audience in and sets you up as an authority in your market.

On the contrary, advertising, even digital ads, lead to overexposure and saturation. You haven’t attempted to build a relationship with your audience. Instead, you’ve only captured a story about your brand as the star with no room for the real hero, your customer.

Show people you care

Today, more than ever before, people want to feel like you care about them. The world is louder and noisier than ever before, and attention is your most valuable resource.

In contrast to one-off advertising, content marketing shows that you care about your customers.  It’s customised for them and it’s shareable.  

When customers are ready to make a purchase decision, their loyalty will already lie with you. They will sign with you, rather than your competitors, because you’ve shown them proof that you care about them.

Hard facts

• 61% of customers say they feel better about a company that delivers content
• 7 in 10 customers prefer to learn about a company through articles, not ads
• 90% of customers trust custom content
• 78% of customers believe that businesses providing custom content want to build good relationships
• 68% of customers spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in
• Social media and blogs account for 23% of all time spent online
• Relevant content is in the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media

Check out this 2021 article from Neil Patel if you want more hard facts.  

Quick Takeaways:

• Content marketing is an opportunity to reach and convert new customers.
• Content marketing drives measurable results and ROI over more traditional marketing tactics.
• Content marketing allows you to build relationships that enhance brand trust.
• Content marketing focuses a business telling brand stories that resonate with customers.

To sum it up, you need content marketing to get in front of your competitors, bring in new buyers and create sales.  

Keep connected with your future buyers, so you’ll be the natural choice when they’re ready to buy.

Over to you

Do you want to know more? Or perhaps you have questions?  I’d love to hear from you. Drop your thoughts or questions in the comments below.