Where there is inbound marketing, there is always content. Whilst inbound marketing is the comprehensive machine in attracting, engaging, and delighting customers, content is the fuel that powers it along the way.
In the midst of all the negative press and intrusive advertisements interrupting society, content marketing is becoming increasingly popular as a means to appeal to audiences in a more endearing and helpful way. Read on to find our 6 different reasons why content marketing is beneficial to all parties involved.
Google is very fond of great content. Fresh content gets quickly indexed by search engines, and registers higher in the search engine page results pages (SERPs) than older, weaker content. When good quality content appears on a site with strong domain authority, you can be sure that it will have a SERP boost. So ultimately, SEO can stem from a consistent output of quality content.
Not everyone is ready to buy from you. Prospects go through a process before purchase and thus fall into one of three stages in the buyer's journey; awareness, consideration or decision. Before considering purchasing, audiences need to come to terms with the fact they have a problem needing a solution (awareness stage). Once they find this problem, they research and fully understand what they’re actually faced with. So, they weigh up their options (consideration stage). Then, when they finally make a decision on which solution is best for them, they take the final step before purchase (decision stage).
Content should help your audiences in all stages, building trust with them along the way, ultimately leading them through the buyer's journey, landing on a purchase of your product or service.
People are consistently looking for information and answers to their questions every time they go online. Prospects asking a particular question you know the answer to on social media, forums, FAQ pages? Why don’t you create a piece of content on your website that answers that exact question and optimise it for search engines? Boom - you just became a one stop shop and thought leader for that question. As audiences will see that you can answer this question, they will now look to you when running into further problems. Not only does this build brand awareness, but also brand credibility.
So your content just demonstrated that you are an expert in the field of exactly what your potential customers are looking for? What does this mean? It means that there is someone actively on your website, with a problem you can solve. This content just drove high quality traffic to your site. Make sure to turn these eager visitors into leads and paying customers with forms, meeting links, and other ways they can convert on your site.
A massive 40% of people currently use ad-blockers on their devices. Of course, there is a time and a place for targeted paid ads, but spending money on display ads in places that won’t get the traction you need is pointless and expensive. Alternatively, content marketing enables you to build relationships with your audiences by positioning your business in front of your audiences as a fountain of information and help, rather than an intrusive ad slapped across their screen screaming “BUY NOW”.
Have you realised that today, it’s actually getting harder and harder to be able to talk to an actual human being when approaching a company’s customer service team? That’s because they are wasting way too much time and money answering the same questions, day in day out. Compile all the most asked questions you receive into an infographic, blog, ebook, or whatever. Make sure audiences have full access to this information, so they only want to speak directly to customer service when absolutely necessary.
This also goes for your sales team. Are they constantly asked the same sales related questions? Provide them with content they can easily share with their prospect, so that sales can spend less time looking for answers and more time selling.
There are so many benefits of using high quality content marketing. The more you continue to use it, the broader your content library will be with assets you can use to not only drive revenue, but also make the lives of all stakeholders involved a heck of a lot easier.
Now that you know about the benefits of high quality content marketing, learn how to build your own content strategy with our Content Strategy Checklist. Download it now!