As we’ve said before, content marketing can highlight brand authority in your niche and help to attract and retain customers. In this post, we will expand in more depth.
What is content marketing, anyway?
The term “content is king” is a big buzz slogan among internet marketers. While there are great arguments to be had over the accuracy of that phrase, the point is that content is a bit different than other areas of advertising like pay-per-click, social media platforms and SEO, because many of them are really only around because of content.
For one thing, without articles, SEOs would have nothing to optimise for search engines. The metadata they add to articles is an endeavour to help robots like Google and Facebook wrap their digital heads around the complexities of the content they\’re indexing.
Content is the centre of what marketers do; we talk to our customers, and our readers, and what we say to them regardless of what form it happens to be, is our content.
So, what is content marketing, then? Well, it’s pretty simple. Content promotion is the use of that content, any of it, to help meet a marketing goal for your organisation. That could be the acquisition of possible customers, retention of existing ones, making more people aware of your brand or your own goods or services.
How does content promotion benefit my business?
One reason some companies have hesitated to allocate resources to content promotion is the fact that it may be tricky to actually understand the advantages of content marketing. In cases like this, it helps to begin considering just how many benefits content marketing can bring.
Creating content gives your audience something to discuss. When they are talking about you, they\’re teaching each other about your organisation, passing on recommendations and links in the process. This consciousness of your brand is marketing gold.
The recognition and respect of your audience will take time to build, as you need to earn the confidence of your audience. As soon as you’ve proven your expertise and (even more importantly) your integrity, however, you can become the guiding light that people turn to when everyone else is simply contributing to the confusion. The authority that you gain subsequently transfers to your products or services, making clients more likely to choose you over the competition.
If you are creating content that targets potential customers, you’re shortening the distance between these people and your products, which makes it even more likely they will make a purchase in the future. This is true regardless of whether or not your articles even mention or link to what you\’re selling.
Site traffic and SEO
Traffic may be the obvious benefit, but it is also among the most important. Creating great content will bring visitors to your site, where they will (hopefully) also find information regarding your company and your own products/services.
The number of ways that content gains SEO is far too great to discuss here but we can sum up by saying that great content attracts editorial hyperlinks, which inform search engines that you\’re important and authoritative. When Google crawls your content it gets a much better idea of what your organisation is all about when you have other websites linking to your content. Once it registers that you are an authority in your niche your site begins to rank higher in search results.
Direct customer conversions
When you create great content especially, really terrific product descriptions that convince people you\’ve got exceptional value to provide them, you can convert casual browsers to new customers.
Evergreen content
If you don’t have the dedicated resources needed to frequently create great content, consider focusing on what is known as evergreen content. This type of content is less timely and requires less upkeep but can serve as an excellent reference for your niche
A lack of funds has a silver lining–you don\’t have the time or cash to dive into each content-related job you can think about, so you’re forced to curate and target a little more carefully. The result is a portfolio that, when viewed as a whole, seems even more impressive.
Remember content is what enables people to find you. Make sure you create valuable, informative content to keep them coming back.
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