Before we proceed into the “technicalities” of content marketing & Top 6 Benefits of Content Marketing , there is an important thing I would like us to discuss: The Definition of Content Marketing;

So, What Is Content Marketing?

If you are into online marketing, I’m sure you’ve come across the phrase “content is king.” While the accuracy of this phrase is something debatable, the baseline is that you need content in your marketing.

However, content can be different on various platforms like SEO and social media. However, all these platforms rely on content for them to be relevant.

Think about it.

Without content, what would SEO experts optimize for search engines?

The metadata they add to posts is to try to help Google bots and Facebook understand the content they are indexing.

Every link a marketer creates points to a piece of content.

In the same way, the keywords people use on search engines are aimed at helping them find…well- content.

Every tweet, landing page, email, and product description are all examples of content, and the best way to describe what they share in common was summed up perfectly by Ian Lurie, of Potent, Inc. who said

Content is the heart of marketing; as a marketer, you talk to your clients, customers, and readers and what you say to them- regardless of the form it takes- is content.

So, you may ask, what is content marketing then? To simply describe it, content marketing involves using content to help achieve a marketing goal of a business, company, or organization.

This could involve getting new customers, retaining existing ones, popularizing your brand or your products, or anything else.

We will discuss other effective and popular ways of this kind of marketing throughout the rest of this content marketing guide.

How Can Content Marketing Benefit Your Business?

Many companies hesitate to allocate significant resources to content marketing they don’t fully understand the benefits of content marketing.

Getting people to know your business and value it certainly sounds great, but the benefits can be nebulous.

This is why I want us to discuss the benefits of content marketing so that you can be convinced that content marketing is great for your business.

Top 6 Benefits of Content Marketing:

We will start with intangible benefits;

[1] It Creates a Strong Brand Awareness:

Imagine this conversation between two people;

Guy 1: Hey, have you read that post on Leo blog today?

Guy 2: No, what is Leo blog?

Guy 1: Oh, It is a blog owned by an SEO company that created a cool research app. Let me send you the link to the app…

You see, creating great content gives your audience something they can talk about. When they are conversing, they will be educating each other about your company and sharing links in the process. This will create brand awareness.

[2] You Will Be Respected In Your Industry:

“I was not convinced that robot vacuums are effective until I came across a post on robot vacuums published on Leo blog confirming they really work. I’m thinking of giving them a try.”

Once you have proven to be a knowledgeable and factual person to your audience, they will begin building respect and admiration for you. Once you prove your integrity, you can become their go-to person whenever they are in confusion. The authority you gain shifts to your products and services, making customers prefer you over your competitors.

[3] You Will Spark Indirect Customer Conversion:

By creating content that targets your prospects, you are shortening the distance between your products and them, making it likely that they will purchase your products later on. This is irrespective of whether or not you mentioned products in your content.

The Tangible Benefits:

[4] Brings Traffic To Your Site:

• This is an obvious benefit. People will come to your site to find information about your products, and company.

[5] It Improves SEO:

• There are many ways in which content benefits SEO. In summary, great content will help attract editorial links, which tell Google you are factual and authoritative. There are endless ways in which content can improve SEO. Without content, what will you be optimizing for search engines? Check this powerful On-Page SEO Guide: Understanding On-Page SEO – 16 Key ON-Page SEO Factors That Search Engines Use

[6] It Creates Direct Customer Conversation:

• Clear and precise product descriptions help convince people that they offer unique value and this will boost sales.

Why Content Marketing Is Better Than Traditional Advertising?

=> Because it offers something of value to customers while the latter doesn’t:

• Assuming you are scrolling a website and an ad pops up- what do you usually do? Closing it as fast as possible, right?
  

• However, when it comes to content that is tailored to a specific audience, they end up reading it if it comprises of valuable information. If prospects find your content valuable and engaging, they will begin developing a relationship with you and finally trust you.
  

• People may read your blog posts for months before buying your products.
  

• Therefore, you have to keep people engaged by providing valuable content they can voluntarily consume before they are ready to purchase your products.

=> It educates customers on the benefits of the products you are offering:

• Often, people fail to purchase a product because they are not aware of the benefits it will bring or the need it will meet.
  

• Customers may not buy an app that helps them manage their finances and track their expenses, not because they don’t find the app helpful, but because they don’t comprehend how it works.
  

• Content such as YouTube videos and blog posts can educate them on that front to the point they feel comfortable paying for the app.

=> It creates a sense of reciprocity:

• By offering free content to your customer, they feel that they need to reciprocate that goodness and willingness to educate them.
  

• If your company helps them become better parents and raise their kids well, they will come to a point where they will want to buy your offerings as a way of paying back all the free teachings and content you have provided.

=> With content marketing, you can keep attracting more customer without incurring recurrent expenses:

• Instead of using pay-per-click ads, or other traditional marketing strategies, you can use content to attract more customers.
  

• If you write evergreen content, each post will keep attracting customers to your business in its entire life. This means you will get a lifetime return on your investment.
  

• Thousands of prospects can read a post that took you 2-5 hours to create.
  

• If you were to use Google ads to attract people to your site, you would be incurring expenses on every customer you attract, but with content, once written, you can attract direct traffic to your site for many years.
  

• In this case, content becomes an asset and advertising an expense.

=> Content marketing creates shareable content:

• People like sharing valuable content, written in an interesting manner.
  

• If you look at a social site like Facebook, close to 90 percent of the outside content shared to it are links to content, and not link to websites.
  

• Even if a customer like you a lot to share a link to your homepage, they can only share it once, because there is no reason to share it again.

• However, with content, the same customer can share your content now and then. Assuming their audience like the content and share it, the content gets wider coverage.

• The baseline here is that people share content, not websites. This makes a piece of content much more shareable and likely to go viral than a link to your website.

=> It Benefits Your SEO:

• Every blog post you publish means that you have new content that Google can index. With every blog post you publish, your website will have an extra page(s) that can be indexed. If, for instance, you publish one blog post a week for one year, you will have 52 more pages on your website.

• Even if some of them might not be strategically written, which should not be the case, you will still have a significant number that can rank in Google for short- or long-term. This will help you gain organic traffic from search engine.

=> It increases traffic:

• Let’s take podcasts as an example. If you use podcasts, you will reach people who listen to podcasts.
  

• These are people you may never have reached with YouTube videos and blog posts.
  

• By inserting a link in your podcast that links back to your site, you will be creating another traffic source that doesn’t require expenses and another opportunity to get your message read by a bigger audience.
  

• With content marketing, you can diverse potential traffic sources for your site through blog posts, podcasts, and YouTube videos.

=> It is highly targeted:

• As a marketer, one of your main goals is to get your message reach the largest and most targeted audience. A large audience will increase your brand awareness while a more targeted audience means that most of your audience can become potential buyers of your offerings.

• With content marketing, you create content that is specifically aimed and tailored to your customers.
  

• This is the kind of content that will make buyers come back to your website.
  

• If for instance, your blog or website offers content marketing advice for free to your audience, you will have a targeted audience of content marketing professionals who will be interested in the products and services that you offer.
  

• Although not all readers will become buyers, as long as your audience is highly targeted, most of them will eventually become buyers.

How to Maximize Your Content Marketing Efforts:

I hope that the above eight benefits of content marketing we have just discussed have convinced you that content marketing is the way to go.

If so, you might be wondering how you can get the most of your efforts and enjoy the benefits of this type of marketing now and then.

Here are four proven ways;

1. By providing content that your customers’ want:

• One of the greatest mistakes many blog owners commit is making content their business.
  

• This is problematic because your customer doesn’t care about your preferences and what you like, they care about themselves.
  

• It is true, your business is about them, and not you. You can take advantage of this by providing valuable content that will enlighten and inform them, and in exchange, they will give you their attention.
  

• Your content can be entertaining or education; it can take the form or how-to article, an entertaining video, or an exhaustive guide.
  

• Anything that meets the content needs of your customers will win them to your side.

2. Most of your content should be beneficial, with only a small part of it being promotional:

• To offer value to your customers, you will need to mostly write content that will benefit your customers, with only a small portion of it being promotional content.
  

• Before a customer makes up their mind to purchase a product, they have to read guides on how to purchase, why they need to purchase, and the value they will get from your offerings, not ads touting how amazing your product or service is.
  

• By offering 90 percent informative and educational content, and 10 percent promotional content, you will find you prospects becoming buyers because you have wooed them in the right manner.

3. Create cornerstone content:

• This is content that can be archived and categorized in a way that your customer will easily find it.
  

• This content provides incredible value to your audience over a long period. The best part about this type of content is that it significantly increases the ROI of your content, which means each article brings ROI over a long period.

4. Research to see what content thrills people:

• Sometimes it can be hard to find what kind of content people want to read about.
  

• One easy way to find this out is by checking competitor blogs and website and see what they have published. Check the posts with a lot of shares or retweets.

• Do some research to see the kind of content that is popular in your industry; if you find out that it fits into your publishing schedule, then include it.

So, what do you think? Is content marketing worth it? Are you ready to give it a try?

Now that you have learned virtually all about content marketing, it is time to create some interesting, intriguing content.

Come up with a plan on how to generate and publish content, and you will start attracting more traffic to your site thereby leading to more sales and greater return on investment.