Why is Content Marketing Important? (for Marketers, Biz Owners, Shareholders & Customers)

Have you ever asked the question:

Why is content marketing important?

When it comes to digital marketing and SEO, content has been king since the very beginning. Content marketing strategies have changed a lot over the years, but it’s still just as important.

If you’re a business or an agency, content marketing has gone from a way to gain an edge over competition to being a necessity to stay competitive. You need good content in order to engage with your customers or clients. Without content, new customers won’t find you or come to trust in your brand.

Want to know why content marketing is so important? We wrote this guide to explain why it’s so beneficial for marketers, business owners, and customers.

Why Is Content Marketing Important?

In general, content is one of the most common ways that customers find a new business and learn about them.

According to Statista, the global digital population is just over 4 billion, with 3.7 bllion mobile internet users. That’s a lot of potential customers to get in front of (with good content).

If you have no content on your website, or if it isn’t very good, you’re basically building a solid brick wall around your business.

On the other hand, investing in effective content marketing such as the hub and spoke model benefits everyone:

• Content marketing for small business helps them stay competitive with bigger corporations.
• Content marketing is one of the best strategies for marketers and agencies to improve the business’ online presence.
• Content marketing helps customers by giving them information relating to the business that’s easy to find and understand.
• Content marketing helps shareholders and investors receive updates to maintain their confidence in the long-term growth of a company.

The benefits of content marketing are different for each of these groups. We will be looking in more depth to explain why content marketing marketing helps everyone.

Benefits for Marketers

As a marketing professional, whether you are part of an agency or in-house department, there are a few main KPIs that you are expected to achieve. They include things like brand awareness, leads, sales, and so on.

And content marketing can help with all of these.

According to Marketing Profs, 63% of businesses don’t have a documented content strategy.

Source: https://www.slideshare.net/mprofs/b2b-content-marketing-2018-benchmarks-budgets-trends-north-america

In decades past, the best way to meet these goals was through advertisements in newspapers, direct mailers, or on radio and television broadcasts. With the rise of the internet, things have changed. You can still use traditional advertising, but shopping behaviour has changed now that customers can do it online.

People are now able to do tons of quick and easy research when they start shopping for something. They can look up all the businesses in their area, learn about specific products and decide before contacting a shop what they want to buy.

As a marketer, content is your best way to get the business in front of customers during their research phase. Content marketing is all about creating information for customers and publishing it where they will find it. It includes types of content like:

• Informational articles
• How-to guides
• E-books
• Webinars and other videos
• Social media posts
• Infographics and data visualization
• Pictures, graphics and other images

The best content marketing strategy will involve creating the types of content your audience looks for. When they can find your business through your content, they come to trust you as an authority. The more you earn their trust, the more likely they will come to your business when they want to buy something.

When you achieve all of this with content marketing, you meet all of your KPI goals. More people are aware of your business, submit leads, and become customers of your business.

Benefits for Business Owners

The benefits of content marketing for business owners is slightly different. In your case, it’s all about maximizing the ROI of your marketing efforts.

You don’t want to waste money on marketing and advertising if it won’t help you grow your business.

Source: https://www.officialbryangrey.com/content-marketing-statistics/

One of the best parts of content marketing is it is low cost but has huge potential in the long-term. The biggest investment it has is time, as it takes a lot of work to plan and execute an effective campaign.

If you’re a small local business, the low-cost makes it easier for you to stay competitive with big corporations in your area. If you’re a B2B business, you can use content marketing to attract businesses, agencies and professionals who use your product or service. Direct to consumer, and SaaS businesses can all use content marketing to meet their business goals.

Depending on your type of business, you will find that there are different types of content marketing strategies that work best for you. Here are some quick ideas for different businesses:

• B2B business: create virtual guides or interactive tools to showcase your product or service to other businesses.
• Small local business: write information articles about your niche so local customers trust you as an authority in their area.
• Direct to consumer: write reviews and guides about the products you sell on your website to your consumers.
• Software/SaaS business: write case studies and technical guides on how people can best use your software.

There are so many ways you can use content to help grow your business by connecting with your audience of potential customers. While the information can be about you, the purpose is to engage with them and provide valuable content they will find useful.

Benefits for Shareholders & Investors

Shareholders and investors are a distinct type of customer.

They are a crucial type of audience whether you are trying to attract new investors or keep current shareholders happy. It can be a delicate balance to make sure they are informed and confident in your operations, but content marketing can be a huge help.

You can use it to create an “investment brand” separate from your customer-facing brand. It helps you form an identity that your investor audience will relate to more strongly by better understanding their needs.

The content you create needs to update this audience on your performance, operations, growth forecasts, and so on. It needs to be something they understand, and something they trust. It will typically provide a lot of dense information, but present it in a way that delivers a message of confidence.

Here are some ideas for content you can create to market your business to shareholders and investors:

• Infographics: showcase your knowledge of important industry trends to keep investors educated.
• Webinars: engage directly with investors to give short and long term updates and answer their questions and concerns.
• Email newsletters: send regular updates with performance data in simple and easy to understand templates.
• Case studies: attract new investors by showcasing your greatest successes through case studies you have on your website.
• Reports & e-books: put together larger and more complicated reports in e-books that you can send to your shareholders upon request.

This is why content marketing is important for shareholders and investors. They help grow and maintain relationships between them and the companies they invest in. They provide an exchange of information to foster trust and transparency, so everyone is on the same page.

H3 – Benefits for Customers

Finally, we have customers. The whole focus of content marketing is on the audience — your potential customers. Businesses and marketers are trying to create information that their audience wants to read, whatever that might be.

Source: https://insights.newscred.com/what-is-content-marketing/

Google is only growing. There are over 3.5 billion searches every day, and each year the number of searches done on Google grows by around 10% (Internet Live Stats). Most importantly is how Google is changing how people behave when they start shopping. An estimated 35% of product searches start on Google, and 49% of people say they use Google to find a new product.

If you think about it, this makes sense. If you’ve ever shopped online for something, think about all the steps you took towards making a purchase. Here is what a typical online journey may look like for your average online customer:

• Ask a question on Google about a problem they have
• Learn about different products or services that can help
• Pick one product or service to research in more depth
• Choose a solution they want to pursue
• Look up businesses that offers that product or service
• Compare businesses according to prices, customer service, reviews, etc
• Research a business in depth before contacting them or making a purchase

Looking at that journey, think about all of the types of content they will see and digest between the beginning and the end. They will look up information articles and guides about their problem. Then they’ll see product and business reviews. They’ll read a business’ website to learn more about them. They’ll see videos and case studies and infographics.

All of this content helps them learn. It gives them information they need to make an informed buying decision. When a business can create all of this content so customers find it through the right channels, they can grow their audience of loyal buyers.

Customers get the information they want, and businesses get in front of customers to start earning their trust, loyalty, and sales.

Summary

Content marketing is a necessity for everyone in today’s marketplace, no matter what type of business or customer you are. There is no better way for a business to engage with their audience before they become customers, or to maintain loyalty from past customers.

Content marketing is important because it helps everyone be more informed about each other. Businesses and marketers use it to learn what customers want to know the most. They can then create content, in the right type of content, published in the right place so their audience can see it. In the end, everyone wins.

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