Why is content marketing important?

Content marketing helps you attract and educate your leads and prospects about the products and services that you offer, which can boost conversions and ultimately generate profitable customer action and loyalty without selling.

Hubspot, a leading inbound marketing software company defines it’s importance as:

“Content marketing is important because it answers your audience’s questions. You can build trust with your audience, improve conversions, connect with your customers, and generate leads. Additionally, in today’s age, customers expect high-quality, consistent content from their favourite brands”.

The 80-20 rule of content marketing:

Imagine you’re with your friends and you talked about the same one thing every time you met up, and that one thing was something you were trying to sell them, would they rush to meet up with you again? Probably not.

Now, if you use the same analogy for content marketing. If you only created content trying to sell your products and services, your followers may quickly tire of hearing about it. With 75% of internet users conducting product research online and 57% of businesses acquiring a customer through their company blog doesn’t it make sense to create content that will interest and engage them?

If your product or service solves a problem you know your audience has, your content should coach and educate them on how they can resolve their problem by using your product or service and not just a be a sales message, tell not sell!

Following the “80/20” rule for content marketing is a good way to increase engagement. 80% of your content should inform, educate or entertain whilst the remaining 20% will directly promote your products or services. Using this method makes It less like a sales pitch and you’re more likely to keep your audience engaged, and let’s be honest, no one likes to be sold to.

25% of searches are for a product, service or brand so the remaining 75% is simply asking questions and trying to find solutions.  

Types of content marketing:

There are many types of content marketing that you can incorporate in your marketing strategy — here are some of the most common:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Infographics
• Case Studies
• eBooks
• Testimonials/Reviews
• How-to Guides
• Podcast

Why invest in content marketing?

Google loves content and content is king when it comes to your online presence. Creating unique content is critically important for brand awareness, increasing sales conversations and overall successful marketing campaigns.

• Better ROI than search engine marketing, such as Google PPC
• Drives traffic to your website
• More opportunities to appear in search results for more keyword terms
• Aids lead nurturing
• Helps to re-engage with customers

Content marketing also helps:

• Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer.
• Build relationships between you and your customers that result in increased loyalty.
• Show your audience how your products or services solve their problems

Conclusion

Content marketing goes beyond conventional advertisements and works because it is about putting your company in the customer’s view at the right time. If, like some people you find advertising irritating (some of the time), commonly when it is excessive, in your face, and irrelevant. Content marketing is about being there when your customers need you, your product or your service.