Content marketing is not just about advertising, it’s also about letting customers know who you are rather than merely telling them. Content marketing has completely transformed the interaction of businesses with their customers. With the recent rise of social media, all brands must communicate more with their clients if they want their trust and loyalty in return.
Simple broadcasting of advertising messages is not the only available strategy and it is not advisable for brands whose customers have made the effort of including them in their “social” circles. Today – it’s important to give clients engaging stories, information or advice that has genuine interest or use.
Many companies are still adjusting to the ideas and effort needed to create content. It isn’t always easy to quantify their return on investment (ROI) through this process. By examining the benefits, businesses can better understand the need for good content marketing to engage their customers.
Here are the top benefits of content marketing:
It builds customer loyalty.
Providing customers with good information builds a tightly connected community of clients that have loyalty to your brand. By giving them valued content for which they can follow you, they will have a good reason to invest their time in the brand. Moreover, if you publish content regularly, followers can effectively check in with your brand.
You are able to get to know your clients.
Content when delivered through the different social media channels allows for feedback. This means you will be able to gauge their attitude while also getting to know their demographics and needs better. Content can inspire allegiance, discussion, provoke thought and get people talking.
Content generation improves SEO.
For SEO, quality content is nothing but gold. Once you decide to create a blog that has quality content and then connect it to your brand there will be positive repercussions. The days of writing poor quality keyword loaded copy on blogs and websites are long gone. Contextual, meaningful and genuinely good, relevant writing is easily picked up by customers reading through the information. Search engines also will “read” content and use it to increase your search engine ranking.
Content adds value.
There\’s a new business rule – for whatever business you are in, you must also become a publisher to be competitive. Customers expect that business websites and their brand ambassadors (whether they are staff, managers, hired freelancers or just customers) to entertain or deliver insight. People will want to go back to your social media page or website because the experience gives them something worthwhile. Posting amusing pictures, using videos for short films, delivering helpful and handy guides makes your website worthwhile and better engages customers.
Driving traffic.
Providing quality content 0n your website drives more traffic to it. Consumers love educating themselves before talking to a salesperson. Good content whether in the form of blogs, eBooks or videos will help lead them there.
Generate leads.
A Hubspot report has shown that companies which blog generate 67% more leads each month compared to those who don\’t blog. By executing effective content marketing strategies that hone in on your clients’ pain points, more qualified leads find and use the website’s content. By establishing your website and hence, your brand as a resource that can be trusted, you will build an authentic relationship so that when the customers decide to make calls, they will have your brand at the top of their minds.
Promote integrated marketing.
Content marketing works well with SEO and plays hand in hand with social media – most content marketers use social media when distributing their content, according to a recent Content Marketing Institute Report. Social media is a great platform for promotion of content and followers who benefit a lot from content that is specifically catered to them.
Content marketing is safe, inexpensively available and beneficial in numerous different areas. The sooner a brand starts investing in it, the sooner they start to see the results, and the better results they will eventually see. Whether you are in it for increased traffic, higher conversion rates, or just a better relationship with your customers, there is no reason why you should not have content marketing included in your marketing arsenal.