10 Valid Reasons Why Content Marketing is Important for your Business

Table of Contents

• What is Content Marketing?
• 10 Reasons Why Content Marketing is Important for your Business
• Types of Content Marketing
• Actionable Tips on Content Marketing
• Conclusion

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the act of creating impactful content through the circulation of online materials, such as social media captions, blogs, vlogs, videos, and more that is valuable and relevant to attract a specific audience to your brand’s products and services to incite profitable customer action.

10 Reasons Why Content Marketing is Important for your Business

1. Develop a Brand Reputation

Content marketing helps build your brand reputation by showing the most attractive aspects of your brand. It is extremely important for businesses to build trust with their customers and leads, which helps to establish a positive and lasting impression of your brand. When a brand reaches the consumers with their content, they start to form an opinion of you— good or bad.

This drives brands to produce custom content that is creative, valuable, and compelling which makes a mark in the minds of your audience.

When your leads and customers start noticing your consistent content across all social media platforms, this reflects on your brand efforts and may lead them to think highly of your brand.

This is done by publishing your content on other third-party platforms, getting influencers to endorse your brand to build a stronger brand connection and trust with your audience.

2. Quality Content helps Generate Conversions

When you create quality content marketing, it can significantly improve your conversion rates and allows you to establish a meaningful connection with your leads and customers. By providing your leads and customers with valuable information, it plants seeds of trust and confidence for your brand that encourages conversions and to make an informed purchase decision. Based on statistics, content marketing enables inbound marketers to double the average site conversion from 6 to 12% due to their content marketing efforts.

Inbound marketing is the experience of customized content and experiences specifically targeted at a specific audience and according to the stats, inbound marketing creates 54% more leads than outbound marketing.  By providing quality content marketing, it can help you improve your website conversion rates.

By optimizing content for conversions, brands should always include a precise call-to-action to guide the readers to the next step of the conversion process whether it’s for making a purchase, acquiring information, or to contact you directly, it’s always best to be clear and concise.

3. Content Optimization Improves your SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization which is the process of making changes to the content, design, and any element to increase the chances of your website to appear on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

Through optimizing your content, you increase your visibility through organic or paid search engine results because you’re including more relevant and useful content that your audience is interested in and wants to learn more about.

According to SEMrush, 67% of marketers say that SEO and updating and repurposing content (51%)  are the most effective strategies applied and that 54% of marketers say that content is the most important part of their SEO strategy, based on the figures.

For instance, this can come in the form of creating interesting blog topics that are relevant to your target market by providing resourceful information to help answer their questions or providing alternative solutions to their problems.

The more content you have available on your website, the more areas you provide for visitors to scroll around and discover more about your brand.

4. A Cost-effective Way to Bring New Leads

Still, wondering why content marketing is important?

According to statistics by Curata, 74% of companies that were surveyed mentioned that content marketing has increased their marketing leads in terms of quality and quantity.

Content marketing helps in generating new leads to help your business maintain consistent traffic and to boost sales.

Content marketing will help with your lead generation whatever products and services you sell, it will bring you more sales and leads for your business.

Data from Demand Metric points out that content marketing offers 3 times more leads at a 62% lower cost than traditional marketing methods which are pricey. In addition, based on the DemandGen Report, 75% of B2B buyers rely on the content as a form of research prior to their purchase decision. This shows the affordability of content marketing and how it is important for tactic marketers and brands to use to maximize their budget.

Most importantly, it’s important to know that content marketing is time-intensive and requires time and consistency to see the results, especially with SEO. But a little bit goes a long way in the long run.

This shows that creating content is affordable and effective, which most businesses will benefit from in terms of their ROI on their content marketing.

Brands must create strategic content to maximize their content marketing strategy in terms of what topics, what type of promotions, and what are the brand’s assets to be highlighted.

5. Show your Expertise

This may be a psychological thing, but we are all human and this is the way the human brain works. Consumers always want the best of the best which means they seek the most knowledgeable sources to refer to or consult.

This aspect alone is why content marketing is so important because it helps elevate your brand to show your expertise in the industry and by giving the most original and valuable content to educate the readers on a certain topic, they need some help with — it will certainly make them think of your brand in future when it comes to getting more insights.

For instance, whenever you publish a “How-to” blog post, you reveal your to your leads and customers that you’re the industry expert that understands the industry in and out and will demonstrate their expertise on how to solve their problems, provide solutions, and provide more information.

If you were to choose between a brand that has demonstrated their knowledge, concerns and shared valuable information with you and one that hasn’t provided any content or information whatsoever, which one would you choose? Of course, you will be more inclined to choose the brand that has offered to solve your problems and provide solutions to help or somewhat communicated consistently through content marketing.

6. Allows you to Build Relationships with Customers

Good content helps you build meaningful relationships with your customers. Content marketing is good for your brand reputation which helps generate leads and grow a quality following — including existing customers which contribute to at least half a brand’s revenue.

According to BIA Kelsey, 61% of SMBs state that half their revenue comes from repeat customers, and on average, a loyal customer is worth up to 10X as much as their initial purchase, as mentioned by Marketing Tech Blog, and moreover, it can cost 5X more to acquire new customers than to keep the existing ones, The National Law Review states which makes it clear that retaining loyal customers are the fruit of your labor and one that you must maintain close ties with to solidify your relationships with customers.

This is when your content marketing comes in to offer a valuable experience for your customers and to leave a positive impression of your brand, leading them to repeat sales and brand advocates that will help spread the word for you.

7. Your Audience wants Great Content

Don’t be discouraged, what makes you think your audience doesn’t want to read great content?

Of course, they do! Let the stats speak for itself here.

Just remember, if people take a liking for your brand, there’s a high chance they will follow your content marketing and perhaps, even save images out of genuine appreciation (stuff I do when I appreciate a brand’s content marketing efforts). Those leads and consumers are human too and make decisions based on pure emotion. Don’t. Forget. That.

Relieved? Me too.

According to the statistics by Meaningful Brands, 2019, 90% of consumers want to hear from you and your content marketing efforts are indeed appreciated by them.

However, the harsh reality is that out of all the content marketing that is going on online, only 42% of them are considered meaningful and the remaining 58% is not.

Want your brand to make it into the 42% bracket? Let’s get in touch!

Many brands find this challenging and it certainly is a competitive battlefield where brands must be as creative or as original as possible to stand out from the rest— especially their competitors.

Interestingly, according to Stackla, 2019, 80% of consumers state that user-generated content plays a significant role in their purchasing decision.

Brands must churn out impeccable content that is a rare sight and has its own unique style and qualities that might latch on to the minds of the audience and give them that immersive experience — and encourage user-generated content.

It is a brand’s ability to come up with interesting topics they can’t ignore, exceptional out-of-the-box content, and must-know information, and etc. Brands must understand their consumers on a deeper level to keep providing them with content that speaks their lingo.

So, let’s give our people some awesome content!

8. Helps your Brand Stand Out

The most important thing about content is that you must utilize your full creativity and strategize how your brand will differentiate itself from your competitors.

This is when content marketing comes into play and gives your brand a chance to ignite that special spark. This could be the topics and the value it gives to your audience.

The art of content marketing is all about building an identity that will leave an inspirational and memorable impression. It’s your brand voice, personality. The style you convey valuable information in, and most importantly, how you do YOU so well.

Let’s take Tony Robbins for instance, who hasn’t heard of Tony Robbins?

I would be surprised if you didn’t because he is known for his transformative financial self-help existence, his books in bookstores situated in the popular section, his expensive seminars, and many more impressions that will probably last a lifetime.

Tony Robbins gives off that calm, cool, and sophisticated financial teacher you would break the bank for, just to listen to him serenade you with how to keep your finances in check and turn your life around.

His brand exudes a professional touch with Tony mirroring the darkened background with content spread across, with precision. “Transform your life,” it says with a true professional behind it. Just classy and not overdone.

It’s always best to delve deep and ask yourself what tone and manner suit your brand. Are you fun? Mysterious? What resembles your brand most?

If you want to create impactful content marketing like Tony Robbins’ for your brand, let’s talk!

9. Content Plays a Role During Each Stage of the Marketing Funnel

With the importance of content marketing at the back of our minds, let’s breakdown the marketing funnel into three major areas to highlight in the midst of developing a digital marketing campaign.

Top-of-Funnel (TOFU): The Awareness Stage

This is the stage when your prospects are becoming aware of their problems and are looking out for solutions. They are aware that there are solutions out there.

This is the time for brands to help educate and provide them information to decide which solution is appropriate.

Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU): Evaluation Stage

If you’re running a business, the best time for content would be in the middle and the bottom of the funnel. Here’s where you move your prospects from the awareness stage to the evaluation stage. The goal is to use your content to attract them and convert them into leads.

During this stage, to use FREE content as an incentive to prospects to key in their contact details to receive upcoming news regarding your brand.

The content must be magnetic and powerful at this stage. Examples of this content would be in the form of case studies, newsletters, white papers, events, etc.

At this stage, content is crucial as it is meant to educate your leads on the various options available so they can start making their final purchase decision.

Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU): Conversion

When your leads have reached the bottom of the funnel, they are ready to convert.

The content during this stage is supposed to create that subtle urgency and encouragement to act on a purchase decision.

At this stage, you need to direct your buyers to make a more focused decision so it’s best to help your leads decide with a free trial, for instance.

Refer to the content marketing funnel below to learn more.

10. Content Strengthens your Digital Marketing Strategy

Having consistent quality content throughout your marketing strategy will truly strengthen your digital marketing strategy. Many businesses have their digital marketing toolboxes such as emails, social media, social media analytics tools, and various tactics you can use to lure your audience in.

Your brand needs to create high-quality, creative, and engaging content that is impactful and leaves an impression.

The statistics indicate that buyers go through 57% of the purchasing process before contacting a sales team, which means brands have to do thorough research about their consumers and understand what content to reach their consumers with during the stages of the marketing funnel to get the consumer to act on their decision.

For instance, you would like to develop an email marketing campaign to nurture your leads. By going forth with this, you must create email content that is engaging to urge readers, so it’s best to use relevant content such as a blog that provides information for them to move through the marketing funnel and make an informed decision.

Your content is already integrated into your digital marketing strategy and is keeping your digital campaign together. Content marketing is what reaches out to the audience and establishes a connection.

Types of Content Marketing

Content comes in various forms and it can get kind of confusing so here’s a breakdown of the common types of content an individual will most likely encounter when they are online.

1. Blog Content

Blogs are inspirational content elements that encourage a certain connection with the readers by educating them on a topic that enables readers to understand a problem and to find solutions.

Interestingly, according to statistics by WebFX, marketers who blog are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI. It is no surprise because blogs speak to the people and are easier to relate to because it is customized to communicate to a specific audience.

According to The State of Content Marketing Report 2019: Global Report, blogs account for 86% of content marketing strategies applied out there and for a solid reason — it just works.

Blogging used to be for personal journal entries, but today it has become a hit among most businesses that see its lucrative value. Businesses that use blogs tend to receive 97% more links to their websites and have 434% more indexed pages for the SERPs, making it a cost-effective content marketing tool for small businesses that are on a budget.

What makes blogs so dynamic is that it has its own charismatic appeal (depending on the content) behind it and your leads or consumers will not feel bombarded or attacked with a slew of information. They are reading your blog because your information is relevant to them because they know you’re the industry expert that will solve their problems.

At the end of the day, your readers just want to learn how to solve their issues efficiently and feel like they’re learning from a human and not a bot — humanize your content. Here’s an example of a successful blog by Glossier.

The Glossier blog, Into The Gloss, is a good example of a successful beauty blog. Launched by founder, Emily Weiss and it became a hit, garnering over a million views per month. Today, Glossier is worth over $1 billion. The power is to build a community of like-minded people who share the same interests and connect with hard to resist topics.

2. Infographic Content

Infographics are a refreshing type of visual content used to summarize the most important key points and turn it into a powerful source of valuable information in the form of an image. Plus, it’s appealing and educates you at the same time.

It’s a pity we don’t have enough infographics out there because they make it a fun and useful source of information for your mind to digest and the use of color makes it easier to distinguish between the facts and information.

According to statistics, 86%of businesses report that visuals will play an important part in their 2020-2021 marketing strategy and that 49% of content creators rate visual content as up there in their content marketing strategy.

Interestingly, color plays an enormous role in statistics, as color in visuals increases a viewer’s attention span by 82%, messages that are colored are 39% more likely to be remembered than without, and 55% of people prefer to read their messages in color than without.

When executed well, infographics can get a lot of attention in the form of engagement and inbound links.

The purpose of infographics is to make it a simple and impactful experience backed up by meaningful statistics and strong data points.

Here’s another example of a resourceful infographic on the Top 10 Content Marketing Skills That Will Dominate 2020.

3. Podcast Content

Podcast content is growing increasingly popular these days, especially when people don’t have time to read and are busy going on with their daily lives. With a digital audio file option, podcasts are available online to download and usually come in the form of a series which subscribers usually receive and get involved in.

Although podcasts may seem relatively simple to produce, it requires good content direction in order to go viral on a podcast network where it can leverage on massive reach.

Podcasts are more flexible than you think and are usually used to create brand awareness and personality to a niche market which you can distribute to your social media sites and website

Here’s an example of a Guided Mindfulness Meditation Podcast. 

4. Video Content

Video content can be costly and time-consuming to produce, but the stats indicate that it’s an effective content marketing strategy, so brands can’t afford to ignore it.

According to the statistics shared by Oberlo,  Animoto 2018 reports 88% of marketers are satisfied with their ROI of video marketing efforts on social media and businesses are utilizing video content to increase sales, keep their customers informed and entertained, and to build brand awareness.

In addition, it is apparent that 66% of video marketers get 66% more qualified leads a year, according to Optinmonster, 2019 as stated in Oberlo.

Video content is like blogging turned into a visual feast accompanied by sound and motion. This makes videos an engaging option for your audience to learn about your brand or how to use a product if you’re too lazy or have no time to read.

Video content is great for showing visible personality and a different edge of your business to your consumers. You can either demonstrate how to do or how something operates type of videos, as long as you keep your audience fixated.

Always remember to include captions and a text introduction while you’re introducing your product or service to help your audience digest your content better. The beauty of content marketing is that you can always repurpose it and park it in a different way when it comes to different social media channels. Your content can be used anywhere, from your blogs. White papers, social media sites, email campaigns, and etc. You name it.

Here’s an example from an Apple ad campaign called Over Sharing with their tagline “Privacy. That’s iPhone”

Stating the fact that “Some things shouldn’t be shared. That’s why the iPhone is designed to help give you control over your information and protect your privacy.

Watch how iPhone attends to the needs of their consumers by making privacy their priority. Just brilliant.

5. Social Media Content

Social media is a different type of content marketing altogether for most marketers and brands because there are various channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and etc. You will need to monitor it separately from the rest of the types of content marketing.

When it comes to social media, it can be tricky to track your content insights and metrics which are the key to getting every brand or marketer closer to their goals.

This may come in the measure of engagements such as post likes, comments, shares, and clicks. You can actually check on both Facebook and Instagram to see if you’re doing a good job with your posts.

The best part about social media is that you probably already have existing content assets from other content marketing efforts, so you can always repurpose your content specifically for the type of your audience you’re communicating your brand to on your social media channels.

For example, you want to post on Instagram and track how that post is doing, That’s very possible.

From this, you can check your account overview to see how many accounts you’ve reached and the percentage of your content interactions. This is just a sample taken from an Instagram Business regarding what to look out for.

If you want to monitor how a post is doing, you can check post insights on a specific post to see your engagements such as likes, comments, and shares. The more consistent you are with your posts, the higher your engagement rate will be, provided your social media content marketing strategy is relevant to your targeted audience.

These social media analytics tools act as a guide to help you achieve your social media marketing goals. A little monitoring never did any brand any harm.

Here’s an example of lifestyle social media content on a smartphone for Instagram which can then be enabled to link to Facebook for more reach.

Actionable Tips for Content Marketing

1. Master the Concept of the Marketing Funnel

The sales/marketing funnel signifies the process of a buyer’s decision-making journey. The three stages of this start with the process of awareness, evaluation, and conversion. As a marketer or a business, you need to understand what efforts make buyers move from one point to another in the funnel.

To elaborate further, there’s more to the funnel when content marketing is involved after the conversion stage. Let’s break it down:

• Awareness: Getting new customers
• Evaluation: Study your customers and convert them to leads.
• Conversion: Get your customers to make a purchase decision.
• Closing: Confirm the sale.
• Retention: Establish brand loyalty and repeat sales/customers.

The top of the funnel (TOFU) is where brand awareness and generating leads take place and your opportunity to make a valuable introduction and engage with them more about your brand and what you’re all about. Think about it as a first date, hence casting a good impression.

A good content strategist or marketer will know how to engage with their customers through every part of the funnel. Remember, every stage is equally crucial for a brand.

2. Be Data-driven

For a content strategy to work, it’s all about putting in a consistent amount of quality effort and is not about how many posts, blogs, or video content you posted. Your efforts are merely a component of your strategic approach, but the content is definitely more than posting here and there.

A valuable content marketing strategy is powerful enough to captivate the hearts and touch on the audience’s pain points. How does a marketer or brand do this? They fully utilize their data analytics tool and let it be their guide.

Your content strategy will be guided by data analytics and digital marketers will use it to monitor, track, and watch how their latest campaign post is doing.

In the process, it is best to fine-tune and make adjustments in areas that require slight changes to improve your conversions. Strategists can even track where your audience is coming from and where they’re going.  This consistent assessment enables marketers and brands to learn more about their audience’s interests, preferences, purchase behavior, and what type of content gets them hooked. Analyzing the content metrics and data will save a lot of time and money on your content marketing efforts.

Before going further, ask yourself:

• What part can be improved?
• Which social media channel is performing best and the least?
• What is the best use of time and resources when it comes to conversion?
• Are all your efforts in sync?

3. Start Planning

Being organized almost always pays off, especially when strategizing your content marketing plan. The clearer you are with yourself, the more clarity in your plan.

Calendars are your ultimate buddy when it comes to planning because it keeps you in check and acts as an organized guide for you to follow throughout the month/week (whichever your preference) but I prefer to plan a month ahead of time with what I call a masterplan that oversees an entire month’s worth of strategy and creative ideas jotted down when the inspiration hits.

Ideas are worth nothing if it’s not being documented. Keeping track of your content is powerful and will most likely lead you to a successful and consistent strategy. Think of it as an editorial calendar with auspicious, special, festive events, and public holidays for you to keep track of in order to create content accordingly. These masterplans will do your content strategy some justice, especially when it comes to planning your content for social media sites such as Facebook/Instagram captions and are subject to change when something even bigger comes along like a last-minute trend or meme you want to create content on to leverage on the hype.  This is a good way to plan ahead of your competitors and always try to be flexible to change because that is how you make the most out of your content marketing strategy. Here’s an example of a monthly masterplan from a digital marketing agency, leveraging on the festive Christmas hype.

4. Repurpose your Content

Repurposing your content takes just as much effort as creating new content because there is an end goal that your content marketing efforts must achieve from this. However, don’t be so hard on yourself, remember to offer a variety of content because you don’t want to appear mundane.

Incorporating various types of content into your content marketing strategy shows high levels of creativity, effort, and that you’re adaptable to change.

You can experiment with a combination of things such as having a guest blogger, creating a blog based on an inspirational case study, using social media communities or what they call your “tribe” to pass around the magic wand for you — creating an army of loyal advocates that will praise your brand and your words. There’s just a lot of opportunities even in the littlest of areas. Just make sure you do your due diligence by repurposing your content effectively through the various channels like if you plan to do video content, memes, GIFs, emails, and have them on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and etc.

Make it dynamic and easily shareable on most online platforms and make sure there is a strong purpose behind every one of them — with relevance.

There are many ways you can shake it up, like for instance, creating your own PDF guides out of existing blogs, specific case studies that are life-altering, attractive infographics that make boring facts seem mind-blowing,  and you can even combine strategies by allocating social media buttons that will be distributed to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and many more. The more content distribution your audience has, the better.

5. Establish your Brand Direction

Let’s say you’ve overlooked your overall framework and you’ve got your calendar planned out with the intended content in place, forming a solid enough strategy to make your way through the funnel. Congrats, but it doesn’t end there.

A marketer or brand must know which type of content should be incorporated into the different stages of the marketing funnel from start to finish— taking your audience out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner metaphorically speaking.

Here are some tips about what type of content in the funnel:

• Awareness: The awareness stage is you reaching your audience with Facebook ads, a landing page, and some light videos.
• Evaluation: Your leads or customers are on a fence now, so you need to convince & convert them more than the awareness stage.
• Conversion: At this point, you need to pull them in with social media posts, some informational blog posts, convincing case studies, fun quizzes, or a questionnaire they can’t ignore and will lead them to a positive buying decision.
• Closing: Give them an email newsletter, reviews, questionnaires, etc.
• Retention: Remember, just because your customer has made a purchase, doesn’t mean it’s a done deal between your brand and them. Transform them to repeat customers by keeping them coming back for more with exclusive offers, whitepapers, consistent emails, promotions, contests, and customer surveys.

As a marketer or brand, you must always stay ahead with the use of innovation and you don’t want to be too predictable because that’s when your audience will crave something new like fresh content. Always know that content, you’re not limited to just words and reasoning. it can be morphed into various forms like engaging videos, podcasts, social media posts, fun challenges, and so much more to experiment without there to give your content a creative twist.

Don’t see it as a short-term plan, plan way ahead for the long haul where you need to monitor and nurture your content strategy through the process.

 

Conclusion

To summarize our journey here, I hope this blog on content marketing has at least prepared you to be more open and receptive to change.

The digital landscape is everchanging and marketers/businesses must keep up if they want their brand to survive out there on the battlefield. With so much noise out there, brands need to find a way to cut through all that disruption and truly understand how to reach their audience by creating top-quality content that not just anybody out there is capable of.

Another reason for this blog is that many people are not aware that content marketing comes in various forms and may assume it’s purely stacks of information and words, but it’s more than that, it’s a combination of visuals, words, and sounds that will evoke an emotion out of an individual that connects them to your brand.

Content marketing is the power to influence people with your ideas, concepts, design, voice, style, manner, and so much more.

So, to round it all up, you are getting the hang of what content marketing is, the common types you’ve seen, and actionable tips to help you move forward.

I must admit though, there’s seriously a lot more to content marketing than all I have explained today and the only way you can fully comprehend is through experimentation and practice over time. And that’s something every marketer or business owner is short of— time.

Want to build your content marketing strategy but don’t have the time to go full throttle? Talk to us and let our digital marketing industry experts lead the way!