There's so much talk about Content Marketing these days, and undoubtedly it can be a powerful weapon in the marketer's arsenal. Surveys suggest everyone is doing it! But it remains a poorly understood area, so if you're thinking about how a content strategy can benefit your business, or maybe you instinctively know it can help but are struggling to articulate the benefits to your stakeholders, this post is for you! Here's eight concise arguments for investing in Content Marketing.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing: a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services, leading to desired business outcomes over the medium to long term, such as new user acquisition or sign up conversion improvements.
So in a nutshell, Content Marketing is about creating assets which you then use to improve business performance, primarily attracting your target audience in a softer, non-interruptive, soft sell fashion.
What Are The Benefits?
Ultimately increase enterprise value by creating a diversified business unit which also feeds growth of the main business unit. A specific example could be display revenue earned in and around your content impressions.
SEO benefit by ranking for longtail keywords and also generating inbound organic links (white hat links) to your main power domain (your url).
Provides something meaningful to share on your social channels such as twitter and facebook, which can generate engagement with comments, organic shares and so on.
Influence and engage prospects who are 'ad immune' or use ad blockers.
Deepen relationships with existing users by meeting other needs such as education, entertainment, or information with your content.
Content on owned media (your website or app) can complement and amplify Public Relations (earned) efforts.
Scale and grow your UMV footprint more quickly, and create pools of users for retargeting. For one client I was able to grow UMV by 500K within 6 months of launching a content offering. At another client, I observed a 40% reduction in paid Facebook ad CPA when users had previously engaged with our content.
Build your brand's authority in your chosen verticals, whether mobile, technology, consumer affairs, business, etc.
How To Get Started
Before you do anything, you need a Content Strategy and some expert advice from someone who has done it before and learned the lessons first hand. Although it seems everyone is doing Content Marketing these days, 57% of B2C marketers say they have no documented strategy. Like any endeavor, a lack of strategy is setting oneself up for failure. If you'd like to discuss how content marketing could benefit your brand, get in touch.