In this competitive B2B marketing landscape, the ways we consume content, media, and technology continue to change and evolve. Today, we look beyond simple advertising strategies and now yearn for more personal, engaging, and relevant content.
With these consumer trends, businesses make substantial investments in marketing themselves and showcasing their brands. One method they have invested in is content marketing. Content marketing has become one of the most popular methods to help brands beef up their digital presence successfully.
Why? Have you ever heard or encountered the phrase, “content is king”?
Today, every outstanding brand has a wealth of relevant content that really connects with its audience. Content marketing has been proven to be a powerful tool in helping businesses increase web traffic, audience engagement, and overall brand awareness. It has now become a necessity for any modern brand to boost sales and achieve resounding success. Content marketing is always almost at the heart of most successful digital marketing campaigns today.
What Is Content Marketing?
According to business strategists and marketing experts, content marketing is now the standard when it comes to marketing strategy in this digital age of the Internet, e-commerce, and social media.
But what exactly is content marketing? Why is it beneficial for your brand?
Let’s put it this way.
Traditional marketing is about informing the world that you’re amazing at what you do using print ads, television, radio, mail advertisements, and other offline media. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing relevant and consistent content to a target audience using digital media to show that you are indeed amazing at what you do.
In other words, content marketing is all about creating content to attract a clearly defined audience and achieve your business goals. That might sound simple, but creating valuable and relevant content for your target audience is not an easy feat.
But when content marketing is done right, it can help you attract your target audience and also nurture and retain the ones you already have. Plus, it is also an affordable marketing strategy!
So, make sure that your content is tailored to your audience and business goals. Create compelling content that will drive amazing results.
Stats About Content Marketing
Here are the latest and most interesting content marketing statistics you should know.
- According to the Content Marketing Institute, 64% of the most successful B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.
- According to Business 2 Community, 93% of B2B marketers are now into content marketing.
- According to Contently, 57% of organizations now have two or more people dedicated to content marketing.
- Content Marketing Institute reports that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates more than three times as many leads.
- HubSpot reports that 69% of marketers actively invest time in SEO.
- Videos were the primary form of content in 2022, followed by blogs and images, according to HubSpot.
- The Manifest reports 51% of the businesses that invest in content marketing publish content every day.
- 73% of respondents prefer to know about a product or service from a short video (a 4% increase from 2021), according to Wyzowl.
- According to Demand Metric, content marketing yields over 3x as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
- According to HubSpot, 83% of marketers say it’s better to focus on quality rather than quantity, even if it means posting less often.
- Content Marketing Institute says that most B2B marketers try to differentiate from the competition by content quality (83%) and covering untapped topics/stories (72%).
Why Is Providing Relevant Content Important?
The increasing number of internet users and the flourishing of e-commerce has also driven digital marketing to prosper. It now outranks traditional marketing methods. That is why curated content plays a crucial role in building trust with consumers and generating profits. Providing good content, in terms of both readability and effectiveness, is important if you want to attract or retain audiences.
No matter what industry your brand is a part of, you should utilize content marketing to strengthen your marketing efforts.
You may still be wondering why content marketing is important. To help you better understand the importance of providing relevant content to your audience, we’ve put together a list of some of the benefits that it can provide to your small business:
Let’s review content marketing and its benefits of producing consistent, high-quality content.
Benefits of Providing Relevant Content
1. Have better traction on social media.
With content marketing, you can increase your social media followers across various channels. Content marketing allows you to create trendy content that your audience will love to consume. If you’re one of those businesses that doesn’t see much engagement or sales despite having a huge following, take advantage of using content marketing.
Create quality content to help your business gain traction on social media. Make sure you post them at optimal reach times so that your audience can read your golden pieces of wisdom.
Track your analytics and the performance of your content campaigns to test out when your audience is most engaged online.
2. Your audience will trust you and will stick around longer.
Your brand’s reputation can be enhanced with the use of content marketing. By providing quality content, you offer answers to their questions. Content marketing offers the reputation-building qualities of great content. When you create custom content, it helps you to learn more about your leads and customers while building goodwill.
Through your content, customers start to develop an opinion of your brand. If the content that they find is engaging, educational, and valuable, then they will start to paint a positive image of your brand. When you create value without taking anything in return, they will trust your advice and recommendations. So, provide more value with your content, so you can easily build trust with your target audience.
In addition, when your leads and customers start to see that you are consistently publishing content across platforms, the more likely they will have a positive association with your company. This will also compel them to come back for more. So, ensure to take advantage of it to capture your audience’s attention and continually maintain a positive brand impression.
Businesses must work to develop trust with their leads and consumers in today’s hectic digital economy.
3. Have better Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search engines, like Google and Bing, check each website’s content to determine what users they will bring to your website. If you create great content, search engines will use this to connect you to your next customer! Strong content will generate more website traffic since search engines have a clear idea about your services.
The businesses that have perfected how to get to the top of the search bar are the big winners in SEO. So, make sure to create relevant content to build organic traffic to your website.
4. You learn about who you are marketing to.
Content marketing plays a crucial role in knowing your target market. Creating content that offers personalization and speaks to them helps you to learn more about them. And when you create content that speaks to them, you learn what they want and what they need. You learn how to speak their language and what things they love to consume the most.
5. It can help set yourself apart from your competitors.
In today’s fast-paced world, competition is tough. But with content marketing, you can still survive, even among large competitors. Great content allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors in your industry or marketplace.
One way to do this is by showing your consumers your unique personality. Allow them to see your brand by injecting your business values and culture into your content. It is important to express your uniqueness by developing thoughtful, custom content.
6. It can help increase your sales.
Have you thought about that? Aside from generating great traffic to your website, content marketing can also make you more money. A well-executed content marketing strategy can help increase your sales.
7. It is a more cost-effective way than traditional marketing.
Content marketing is much cheaper than traditional marketing and generates significantly more leads and customers. This is because you do not have to hire an advertising firm. You can create content by just yourself. But it is still cheaper to hire an online content creator than to rent a television or billboard slot.
Furthermore, the Internet offers endless benefits. It allows your brand to be exposed to more people without you lifting a finger. It helps you to connect to a local and international audience.
Why Is Content Marketing Effective?
Now that we’ve covered the basics of content marketing and its benefits, you may already understand why content marketing is a more effective method to build your brand’s reputation and online presence.
Content marketing is more effective today because people now want more content to consume. In fact, 20% of the time that internet users spend online is spent just reading content. By creating content about topics that interest your target audience, you can turn them into your customers shortly.
It’s important to understand that content marketing strategies come in all shapes and sizes. No strategy is “one size fits all.” So, ensure to customize your content according to your brand’s specific needs and goals.
How to Score Your Content
Content scoring is the process of evaluating and quantifying your content’s true effects. You can do this by tracking how your content performs in generating and converting leads.
Here’s how to score your content:
- Establish scoring criteria using engagement metrics that have the greatest impact on your content. For example, page views, shares, comments, and likes.
- Create a campaign and add successful content that meets your criteria.
- Monitor content performance, such as their views and engagement percentage.
- Assess what content works best.
How to Get Started with Content Marketing
To get started with content strategy, you need to understand its importance to your business. We hope that you have learned something valuable from the advantages listed above.
So, if you are now convinced that you should be doing content marketing, here are some useful tips to help you:
1. Know who your target audience is.
Not knowing who you’re targeting will only waste your time, even if you are producing quality content. You won’t be able to attract them. To ensure that your content matches your audience, you can create a buyer persona that represents your ideal customer.
2. Check out what people are searching for.
Find the topics that your target audience is searching for to make your content rank in search engines like Google and websites like YouTube.
Brainstorm or research a few topics that are relevant to your business or brand. Then, insert keywords into them. Make sure to research keywords that most people use in relation to your services.
3. Publish consistently.
Commit to a content calendar to make sure you’re publishing consistently. Because if you don’t publish, you can’t rank. So, have a schedule of what and when to publish.
4. Promote your content.
There are thousands upon thousands of content online. So, to ensure that your content will be read by your target audience, promote them. Actively promote your content, so it can be picked up by the algorithms and get it in front of your target audience.
Final Thoughts
Aside from creating relevant, valuable, and evergreen content that your consumers will want to come back to time and again, make sure to be consistent. Trends always come and go, so keep in mind that producing good and consistent content will take your business to greater heights.
Creating great content marketing is not an easy feat. It takes lots of trial and error and time to perfect the best content strategy. But all of your efforts are worth it since a well-planned content strategy can have a life-changing effect on your business.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but the longer you stick with content marketing, the more benefits you’ll see.
What is the best content your company has produced recently? Let us know!
If you have questions, feel free to send us a message.
