The phrase ‘Content is King’ has generated a lot of buzz nowadays. Irrespective of the debates we had over the authenticity of this phrase. It would be wrong to say that ‘content’ is different from the areas of marketing such as social media and SEO. But have you ever wondered what content is exactly? Content is the heart of what marketers do, what businesses talk to customers, their clients, and readers, and what businesses say to them, regardless of what form it takes, is called content. Long story short, anything that conveys the message to the audience is content. While every business is run by a business plan and strategies in various spheres, many new owners and even well established brands neglect to establish one major aspect before setting up their company – Content, which carries an equal weightage of importance like other business plans and strategies.
For every business, traditional marketing methods are becoming less and less effective by the minute as a forward-thinking marketer knows there has to be a better way. Anyone who is ambitious for growing a successful business, will eventually bet his bottom dollar that the right content will launch the business into the stratosphere of success from an average standpoint. The basic definition of success remains the same – plan for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. Most businesses are on the verge of providing truly relevant content to their prospects and customers to help them solve their issues instead of pitching your products or services.
However despite its popularity and emerging importance of content marketers in the business, ‘Content Strategy and Content Marketing’ are terms that are poorly understood. What is the ROI of content? How do you marketize Content? What makes Content Marketing different from the millions of written marketing pieces, researches and strategies that have been created since the era of advertising began?
Traditionally, marketers have had to ‘rent attention’ from other people’s media through ads on websites, booths at trade shows, or emails sent to third party lists. But today, Buyers and customers today are inundated by more marketing messages than ever before. Content marketing is the new way of creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage your audience where the appropriate content is planned, created, distributed and shared to reach the target audience to boost the factors like brand awareness, sales, interactions and loyalty. A brand that understands to focus on ‘being’ what audience is interested in rather than interrupting what audience is interested in, eventually succeeds. If worked under the assumption that simply generating more and more content will benefit the ROIs then, you are mistaken as every successful businessman would surely beg to differ with this statement. We need to understand that it’s the quality that trumps over everything. Behind every great brand is a wealth of valuable and relevant content that really connects with the company’s audience. But you may still be wondering, why is content marketing important?
Before you go ahead and spend good money and valuable time on content creation and marketing, a business needs to consider a lot of essential factors like target audience, reach, engagements, aim, to name but a few to ensure it reaches to the right audience at the right time in order for a brand to maximize its efficiency and meet your goals. Needless to say that Content marketers are very message-focused as they know what you as a brand wants to convey, what people want to hear. They work backwards from the needs of the audience to figure out how to deliver the best results and connect people with the most interesting part of the message.
While really wondering about what content marketing can do to your business, there are some statistics to clear your blurred perspective. Content Marketing is able to provide 6 times higher conversion rates as compared to other traditional and digital marketing methods. Not only this, According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality. How it is helpful in generating potential customer leads is also proved. Remember, the potential audience is online, 61% of online customers decided to make a purchase after reading recommendations on blogs and other leading platforms available online.
Content Marketing has it’s vital importance for your brand because of these major reasons:
- Increased sales : A content that aligns with your business’s objectives and what your customers want creates brand awareness, once it’s done, engaging content can draw direct purchase decisions and generate high conversion rates. It can even outdo your best salesperson.
- Cost savings : Other than the traditional methods, Content marketing is cost effective in return of the maximum ROIs that it is capable of bringing to a business. The cost is less than 62% of the traditional methods. Expect your lead generation efforts to rise by 65-85% giving you unparalleled ROI for every marketing rupee spent.
- Better Loyal Customers : Once your business is recognized as a go-to resource for valuable, expert information, you will gain your customers’ long-term trust and loyalty. Every piece of relevant content you share will solidify your reputation as a reliable authority.
- Helps to fuel other marketing channels : It helps in boosting the potential of other marketing channels to generate ROIs. For example, let’s not forget about word of mouth, arguably the most powerful marketing channel of all. If people are exposed to your content through other marketing channels, they’ll often share it with friends and colleagues.
With these major benefits emerged from content marketing methods, it wouldn’t be wrong to call content marketing the present and reigning future of marketing! The importance of content marketing becomes more clear when looking at the role that content plays in helping your business build and improve search engine optimization. Not to mention, the more content you have on your site, the more reasons you give visitors to stick around. In the era of digital competition, let’s agree on the fact that we all want quick fixes and wins. That’s human but short sighted. It’s crucial to understand that Successful content marketing and strategy demands a long game mindset. Let’s not forget that building a big brand is a journey. But persistence is the only key to ace the game of content creation. In a sea of mediocre content, be a a brave tone of a big differentiator
