Content marketing has become an essential component of any successful digital marketing strategy.
But why is content marketing so important?
What makes it such a powerful tool for business growth?
What do the other marketers know that you don’t?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the top 10 reasons why content marketing should be a crucial part of your business’s marketing strategy.
1. Content Marketing Establishes Your Authority
High-quality content published on your own platform, as opposed to rented platforms like social media, helps establish your brand as an authority and thought leader in your industry.
Whether you publish on your business website, blog, or owned media channels, you control the messaging and own the audience.
This content real estate also provides a place to direct all other marketing efforts back to, allowing you to capture leads and connections otherwise lost.
Nothing builds authority and trust better than consistently providing value through quality content.
2. Content Marketing Builds Trust and Credibility
You organically build trust and credibility with your target audience by consistently publishing informative, educational, and helpful content.
This makes potential customers much more likely to think of your brand when they’re finally ready to make a purchase.
Quality content also shows that your brand understands your customers’ problems, knows how to solve them, and cares to help. The more value you provide, the more trust you build.
3. Content Attracts Higher-Quality Leads
Content marketing brings in leads that are much further down the sales funnel because they've already engaged with your brand through content.
This means they're better informed about your products or services before even contacting you.
The leads generated through content marketing convert at a much higher rate compared to other lead gen methods because they come pre-sold and pre-vetted.
4. Content Marketing Boosts Search Engine Visibility
Optimized, original content published on your owned media channels can dramatically improve your search engine rankings.
Higher rankings lead to increased organic traffic to your site. More eyeballs on your content and brand lead to more conversions.
This essentially provides a source of continual “free” traffic from search engines when done properly.
But it requires consistently publishing keyword-optimized, engaging content that answers search queries.
5. Content Marketing Provides a Better ROI
Not only does content marketing cost less than traditional outbound marketing, but it also provides a significantly higher return on investment (ROI).
Unlike interruptive PPC ads, content marketing provides continual value before, during, and after a conversion.
It costs less to produce quality content than purchase ads.
The content also continues working to bring in conversions long after publication
This efficiency and longevity is why content marketing ROI can be over 6 times higher than other forms of marketing.
6. Audiences Prefer Content Over Ads
Consumers have banner blindness and ad fatigue.
They’ve learned to ignore most ads thrown their way. But audiences crave valuable, relevant content that helps them solve problems and achieve goals.
This is why Reddit marketing works so well, and why Reddit has secured a $60M deal with Google this week. People want real, authentic, human-written content.
This innate preference for content over ads makes content marketing a more effective marketing strategy.
Audiences actually want to engage with content, which makes them more likely to convert down the line.
7. Content Marketing Levels the Playing Field
If your competitors are using content marketing (and they likely are), not having a content strategy puts you at a significant disadvantage.
It’s incredibly hard to compete against the continual traffic, leads, and authority that quality content provides.
But creating better content than competitors allows smaller businesses to compete against larger brands. Content allows you to punch above your weight class and win more market share.
8. Content Marketing Improves Website Optimization
Creating content focused on specific buyer needs naturally improves website optimization. Every piece of content targets keywords and answers customer questions. This boosts your site’s usefulness by providing a better user experience.
An optimized website keeps visitors on pages longer, improves conversions, and increases organic search visibility through relevant content creation. More content equals more optimization. Just make sure it’s indexed on Google.
9. Content Builds Customer Loyalty & Retention
Content marketing helps nurture prospects into customers, and customers into loyal brand advocates.
y consistently providing value through content, you build relationships with your audience. This makes them more likely to buy from you again and recommend you to others.
Loyal customers also have much higher customer lifetime value. They buy more, buy more often, and cost less to market to over time. Content marketing helps boost retention and loyalty.
10. Content Marketing Is the Future of Marketing
Content marketing has quickly become the present and future of digital marketing.
All signs point to content marketing growing even more important over the next decade. Taking a long-term, continual approach to providing value through content will fuel business growth for years to come.
Start Focusing on Content Marketing Today
As you can see, content marketing provides a remarkable range of benefits for businesses in the digital age. It establishes authority, builds trust, captures more leads, lifts search rankings, provides better ROI, and much more.
For these reasons and many others, having an effective content marketing strategy needs to be a core part of your business’s overall marketing approach.
The brands seeing the most success today use content marketing to continually attract, engage, and nurture their audience.
Now is the time to start focusing on content marketing if you haven’t already.
Audit your existing content. Look for gaps and opportunities in your content strategy. Brainstorm creative ideas for new content formats that provide value. Set up a consistent content production schedule.
Now is the time to shift towards a customer-first, content marketing mindset - before your competitors do. Want to learn more about content marketing?
To discuss how content marketing can transform your marketing performance, request a demo or start your free StoryChief trial (a content marketer’s secret weapon!). Our team would be happy to give you a walkthrough.
If you happen to know someone who could use StoryChief, refer your friends and we’ll give you a $50 bonus per lead + 15% revenue share!
