Content Marketing is nothing more than just solving the same problems that your product solves through media you create and promote.
That’s it. And yes, you’re doing it through a different medium as your product (be it video, copy, etc.), but the end goal remains the same.
Every company ever created is there to help solve someone’s problem, and if all goes well in the long term, if your business succeeds, your product will succeed in solving that problem.
Your content marketing efforts are there to drive qualified leads, and both should always align, and both should help solve your customer’s problem.
The big difference between the two? Content marketing helps your audience before they are ready to buy. Your product helps them after they purchased.
The rise of Content Marketing
If you look at all the different updates Google has been doing to their search engine algorithm; you can only make one conclusion: content is king.
Starting as early as 2004 (probably earlier, but Google Trends doesn’t give any older data), you can see that people were searching for the term “content marketing” has been one significant upwards trend, up until a point that every business now wants to get a piece of the pie.
How can Content Marketing support your business goals?
#1 By building trust through Content Marketing, you’re improving brand reputation and brand awareness
One of the most significant benefits that help you support your company goals is the brand reputation and the brand awareness that content is building. When people read your content, they start to develop an opinion of your company; they begin to trust your business. If you’re creating specific content that is engaging, educational and valuable for your customers and leads they will start to think these same things about your business.
#2 Optimised content helps with organic search (SEO)
The moment you start creating expert content, which is useful and provides the answers people are looking for it will help you with your organic search ranking. Search engines are always changing, but they only reason why they keep on changing is that they want to deliver more and better value to their customers.
When your content helps to solve the problems of your leads and customers you will rank higher and in the end will only deliver more traffic. So make sure to keep your content up-to-date, informative and relevant to your target audience.
This way it will rank higher and more prolonged in search engines.
When you’re ranking higher in search engines, it also means you have to start spending less money on advertising to get those leads ranking in.
#3 Great content will generate lots of backlinks (and traffic)
One of the other side effects of great content is that people love to share great content to make them look smarter, they can do this on social media. Or they can do it in their own articles, citing you as sources for various things in your niche.
#4 Content Marketing helps support through all stages of the Buyer’s Journey
The thing is some leads are ready to buy, some aren’t, and that is all perfectly fine. But no matter at which stages a (potential) customer is at, they all have different questions about the product or service that you’re offering. This can range from “the best washing machines of 2018” in the awareness stage, to “Miele versus Samsung” in the consideration stage, to “Where to buy a Miele” in the conversion stage, to “how to use my Miele” in the loyalty stage and finally to “how to get a Miele dryer” in the advocacy stage (because you’re switching all your machines over to one brand).
#5 Give people a reason to keep on coming back to your website
The moment you start helping your audience solve their problems via your content, you’re starting to develop a relationship with your audience. You will turn into a trusted source, and if you keep on delivering these kinds of content, your leads will know that they have to come back.
#6 Content Marketing will help almost all your other digital marketing strategy efforts
Did you know that high-quality content that is delivered at a consistent pace to your audience helps to support all other aspects of your digital marketing strategy?
Think of it this way, when you’re doing marketing for your business online what tools are you using? Email marketing? Social media Marketing? PPC Ads? Chatbots? There are so many different ways to you can attract and engage with your target audience, but what do they all have in common?
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