Since you’re searching about benefits, I assume that you’ve already read and understood what content marketing is all about.
Traditional marketing practices used to push most of their prospects into not buying their products (or services) merely because they were irritating. However, content marketing has created opportunities to pull customers to the brand by providing quality content.
Customers no longer have to be contacted to sample the products; they can test and review the product themselves.
So let's take a look at the benefits of content marketing:
When you observe higher conversions for your product or service, you know that your content has succeeded in doing its job. Quality content first generates awareness about your brand, and ultimately leads to conversions.
Research demonstrates that brands who consistently utilize content marketing had six times higher conversions than competitors who didn’t.
You may have been able to work out by now that content marketing is a combination of monetary investment, time and effort if the campaign has to be successful.
This is also because customers go through a full process of buying before they finally make a purchase. They research, make themselves aware, and then compare different brands eventually. For smaller products, the process is quick, whereas, for bigger products, the process is fairly long. Content makes it easier for customers to make a thoughtful decision.
Producing content is one of the greatest ways of building up a one-way conversation with your potential customers. Someone looking for, say, a mobile phone, may be looking for some information related to mobile phone features and trends. You can actively take part in their research process by producing content related to that. Your vlogs/blogs/podcasts can help them buy a phone that could be better than they were looking for. Even better if they purchase the phone from your site. Even if they don’t make that move, and purchase from some other site through your reference, your content still left an impact on them and they may revisit your website some time and eventually buy something from you.
Your content marketing strategies can help you create a positive brand image and raise awareness. Not only does your content generate general awareness, but it also educates your customers and prospects related to your products and services, which can also create a positive image of your brand.
Increased brand awareness is directly related to increased sales, as it is an inbound process: customers visit your brand's digital assets, which creates an opportunity to connect with them.
Content marketing looks like a one-way process, but it is actually not. When you look into it, you set up a conversation with your potential customers that they may or may not actively participate in. But the content you produce, if it is authentic, factual and high quality, consumers will start trusting your brand long before they convert into loyal customers.
Imagine the number of people looking up “benefits of using an air-fryer” on Google right now. I am not going to mention a number because I’m afraid that I’d be underestimating it. But it’s going to be huge, right?
Imagine you sell air-fryers, and you want people to buy the appliance from you, and you write a blog or make a video on its benefits and put it online. People with that search query will have chances of landing on your blog/video based on your blog’s rank (which is based on your content quality and several other things like SEO). Now, people will know the benefits, and if you’ve been able to convince them, they’ll buy an air-fryer too.
The people searching will have greater chances of landing on your blog, and eventually your website. Content marketing indirectly increases the traffic on your website.
Google, the biggest search engine in the world, loves content. Quality content, which is engaging, fascinating, informative, and valuable to content consumers, is ranked higher by Google and preferred to be given the top ranks.
If your content ranks higher, this means that your website does too. This automatically generates more traffic, as we discussed in #4.
You can specifically target your potential customers by creating targeted content. If you have expertise in selling some of the finest wines in the world, you want your content to go only to the people who consume alcohol, as the people who don’t drink are of no use for you. This specific targeting makes it easier for you to know what to expect from your campaign.
For example, if I create content for both the people who drink alcohol and those who don’t, the maximum conversions I can expect is only 50 percent even if I produce the best content and the best wine. Targeting can also reduce my costs and increase conversions.
There’s no industry that wouldn’t benefit from content marketing. The simplest and most common way, blogging, can be utilized by any industry and reap the same benefits. In fact, we get to know about many industries through their blogs. For example, I didn’t know a thing about trousseau packaging but got to know of it in a blog post I read.
There are so many other industries that we aren’t yet aware of, but if all those industries make content that is engaging, attracting and shareable, we’ll be able to buy products and services we aren’t anyway aware of.
Content marketing is cost-effective. It is easier to start with and can generate a huge audience base. This reduces the amount of money that marketers have to spend to engage leads and customers.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs about 62 percent less than outbound marketing practices, while also generating leads more than three times of it.
Content can be shared, while traditional marketing techniques cannot. Traditional marketing techniques are also very irritating, and people generally don’t like to spend even a second of their busy lives on stupid phone calls or emails. Most of us have ad-blockers on, on both our computers and phones and can’t stand such useless ads.
What if your ad is your content? And, an interesting piece of content is shared by one and all. Not only does this increase your website traffic and brand awareness, but also leads and conversions.
Everything that you’ve read so far is relatable - this is too.
Content marketing can up your SEO game through the use of proper keywords in the content. Earlier, people would stuff keywords and dupe search engines like Google into ranking their webpages higher. But now that Google has advanced algorithms, it can differentiate between quality content and content that has keywords stuffed into it.
So, if you’re consistent with your content quality and frequency, you will hit Google’s algorithm at the right place to rank your pieces higher in search results.
Content marketing is a clever trick. It involves almost every media format and subject, and if you do it right, doesn’t leave even a small window open from where visitors will want to leave your site.
You make several pages to upload your content, and in turn, you are giving a visitor a big list of pages to visit from. This increases the time spent by a visitor on your site, which is taken as a positive by search engines, and your website may gain in ranking.
You want to build better personal relationships with your potential and existing customers. But you can’t go and visit everyone to tell them that you care about their demands and challenges. Your content can communicate your point of view and connect with your consumers and people and those who are not yet ready to make purchases.
By providing quality, consistent content, you also make sure that people enjoy consuming your content even if they aren’t buying anything from you. If they trust your content, they will trust your brand.
If you sell flowers, producing content around flowers like “the uses and benefits of flowers” will be consumed by everyone alike. Whether the consumers buy flowers at the moment or not, they’ll definitely remember you because you gave them valuable information. And if they’re able to recall you, they will make up their mind to buy flowers from you.
If you don’t want to annoy your prospects by showing them irritating ad displays anywhere and everywhere, want to impress them by your products or services without spoiling your relationships with them or spending extra bucks, you can employ the content marketing technique to your promotional tools.
Content marketing can help you educate people and create your brand’s awareness while also increasing traffic to your website, resulting in more leads and sales. This approach also works in parallel with your SEO program in enhancing and giving you higher ranks in search results.
