15 Amazing Benefits of Content Marketing to Your Business

Behind every successful product is an effective content marketing strategy.

Content marketing may be new to some people, but the concept has existed long before the internet. History tells us that the content marketing concept existed long before the trans-Atlantic trade.

Over 3,000 years ago, Arab merchants traveled around the world peddling their wares and stories. Everywhere they went they told their hosts different tales of adventure, love, and intrigues. You may have heard of stories like Aladdin and Alibaba and the 40 thieves.

It wasn’t called content marketing back then, but these stories had the ability to attract people to the Arab merchants.

Businesses today have continued the tradition of storytelling; only this time it’s done through the internet.

Content marketing is simply using high-quality content to build and maintain a bridge with your target audience. This content could be blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts, images, and videos.

The goal is always the same – attract people to your brand before selling your wares to them.

How about showing you some amazing benefits of content marketing to your business?

• Your Brand Can Make Connection with Your Customers at a Personal Level
• Have Your Brand Rightly Positioned in Your Target Market’s Mind
• Help Prospects Move Faster Through the Buyer’s Journey
• Make Your Brand More Visible to Your Target Audience
• Generate and Grow the Size of Traffic to Your Website
• Improve on Your Business Conversion over Time
• Build Credibility and Authority within Your Business Niche
• Give Visitors the Need to Keep Coming Back to Your Site
• Content Marketing is a Cost Saving Means of Advertising for Your Business
• Offer Free Value without Requesting For Something in Return
• Attract and Retain More Followers on Social Media
• Increase Your Brand’s Engagement with Its Customers
• Provide Shareable Content
• Promote Your Business beyond Borders
• Reach a Specific Audience through Targeted Posts
• Conclusion

1. Your Brand Can Make Connection with Your Customers at a Personal Level

Most business touch-points are through official websites, emails, live chats, and phones. The focus tends to be on the business and how it can serve the customers. But today’s customers want more; in fact, they demand more from brands that they deal with.

To effectively solve this, brands need to connect with their customers on a personal level. Let your customers relate with your brand the same way they relate to humans.

Through content marketing, you can give your brand a face, voice, and personality that customers can relate with. Let them feel like you understand them, their needs, hopes, and dreams.

People want to feel loved and appreciated by those they have dealings with. And you can show this through the content you create and publish online.

Blog posts, graphic designs, social media posts, and videos are great for connecting to your customers.

2. Have Your Brand Rightly Positioned in Your Target Market’s Mind

You can use content marketing as a strategy to position your brand in the minds of your target market. Project the image you want the market to retain your brand with.

Do you want your brand to be perceived as an industry expert? Then convey that image of your brand through your blog posts and social media posts.

Lots of brands want their customers to see them as a caring, or customer-friendly company. If you’re among this lot, you can drive this image through content marketing. Pass the right information to your audience using the right tone, and they will see you the way you want them to.

3. Help Prospects Move Faster Through the Buyer’s Journey

Most consumers go through a buyer’s journey; this spans the time a need is identified to when a solution to that need is acquired.

The duration of the buyer’s journey is determined by different factors. And it could take from a few minutes to as long as a year for different consumers.

As a brand with products offering value to the customers, you may want to speed up that journey.

The journey begins by helping your audience identify the specific needs. We often say that the customer is always right, but there is always an exception to this rule. What happens when a consumer has a need they are not even aware of?

You help them identify this need through quality content produced by your brand.

Next is to offer the solution for that need, and that includes the benefits and specs of that solution. Again, this is achieved through your content.

The final step is to provide valuable information on how they can easily purchase the solution at the best price.

Once again, you will be using content marketing as the strategy for achieving this.

At the end of the day, you are able to quicken the buyer’s journey for your target market.

4. Make Your Brand More Visible to Your Target Audience

The most effective marketing strategy is one that is able to get your message to all quality leads, all the time.

A reality check tells you that this isn’t remotely possible. But you can increase the number of quality leads that your brand is exposed to through content marketing.

By creating relevant content that your readers find valuable, you can reach a vast amount of readers over time. Readers who find your content will likely fall under quality leads for your business.

Brand awareness is a metric that needs to climb higher in order to gain new customers. Relevant content can be used to improve your brand awareness and visibility.

5. Generate and Grow the Size of Traffic to Your Website

HubSpot reports that brands that publish at least 16 blog posts monthly attract more traffic. In fact, these sites generate 3.5 times higher traffic when compared to those that published 4 posts monthly. The more quality content you churn out consistently, the more traffic you will generate.

Google tends to be friendlier with websites that have fresh post updates than the ones that do not. The reward is higher search ranking and increased traffic to your site.

You need to devise a content calendar and stick to it. And this applies to content for your blog, site, and social media profiles.

6. Improve on Your Business Conversion Over Time

Content marketing is the driver that transports your readers into paying customers. It drives conversion and helps you achieve consistent sales over time.

Content marketing is an investment with great returns in sales and profits. Brands that have consistently used this approach have outperformed those who don’t by a factor of 6 to 1.

7. Build Credibility and Authority within Your Business Niche

Creating valuable content is a great way to build credibility and authority in your business niche. This Content includes those that help to resolve issues your readers may be facing.

These are blog posts that provide answers to your audience’s questions, industry insights, and additional resources.

Once readers find out that your content provides accurate information, trust is established.

8. Give Visitors the Need to Keep Coming Back

Have you ever bookmarked a site or blog because its contents are interesting? We all have a number of those sites that we keep coming back to.

Internet users spend an average of 12 seconds on a typical website. That’s how long it takes for a reader to scan through a blog post.

Apart from grabbing their attention with your headline and intro, your content should be scannable – by breaking them into subheadings and using lots of lists in your posts.

Keep them coming back for more with attention-grabbing headlines, scannable, and valuable content.

9. Content Marketing is a Cost-Saving Means of Advertising for Your Business

The Content Marketing Institute records that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing. Yet it generates three times more leads than traditional marketing.

You save costs using content marketing and improve efficiency. It is a long-term strategy guaranteed to reach more of your target audience, at less cost, over a longer period of time.

10. Offer Free Value without Requesting For Something in Return

In the past, every interaction was about what the business had to offer its target market. Businesses simply produced and sold their products to the market.

The internet favored a different business model where some constructive things were first given for free.

Users could then upgrade, or subscribe to the premium versions in order to enjoy the full benefits of the products – bringing this same business model to bear on content marketing.

You first offer content to your readers for free before they trust you well enough to do business with you.

Brands that succeed at this are those who present valuable content with no strings attached. This is a sure way of building trust with your readers.

11. Attract and Retain More Followers on Social Media

Social media networks offer great platforms to increase reach, engagement, and generate leads. Most brands have social media profiles on at least two social media networks.

The networks you should focus on for effective social media marketing are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Content marketing also works very well on social media networks. By using a content calendar to monitor your postings, you can grow your followers with valuable, highly engaging, and consistent posts.

12. Increase Your Brand’s Engagement with Its Customers

If you want to maintain a community feeling around your brand, find ways to engage them – by producing content that causes them to like, comment, share with their networks. If well deployed, content marketing can help you engage your customers.

Produce original, interesting content on your blog and social media profiles to get your customers talking.

13. Provide Shareable Content

Ever wondered how a blog post, graphic image, or video become viral? They went viral because those who consumed the content just couldn’t keep them all to themselves.

They had to share the posts with friends, families, colleagues, housemates, and even strangers.

That’s how a video went from being just any comic video to one that everyone is talking about.

So how do you produce content that will become viral?

I might not have all the answers to that question. In fact, if I did, all my posts and videos would all be viral, but I do have one detail – produce shareable content.

Your content has to be original, interesting, and easy to share. For blog posts, ensure you create comprehensive posts, and at least one infographic.

Let your posts be the kind that after reading, readers wouldn’t want to just keep it to themselves.

14. Promote Your Business Beyond Borders

Do you know that your blog posts can be found through online search engines long after posting? They can also be found by your target audience beyond your geographic location.

Take for instance a social network like Pinterest where users search for information about anything. You can create relevant posts that offer valuable insights about your brand on the platform. Get others to view and share it among their networks.

After you have long forgotten about that post, internet users can still see these Pinterest posts through Google. This applies to all products and blog posts made on your site.

You may be able to find new customers or break into new markets with your posts.

15. Reach a Specific Audience through Targeted Posts

You can only attain higher conversion by attracting quality traffic to your website.

Content marketing is a great way to target readers, to enable the right people to find their way to you.

For instance, your business sells garden tools for home use. Your content should educate and inform readers about gardening. Provide valuable insights to help your readers maintain beautiful gardens.

These posts will serve as filters, and ensure that only garden lovers are frequent with your site. This way, only those interested in garden tools become your regular readers.

Selling garden tools to your readers becomes easier since you offer products that they need.

Conclusion

Content marketing may be less than 3 decades old, but businesses have long employed the concept. It is simply using content that offers great value to position a brand, engage customers, and attract business leads.

Your content could be blog posts, social media posts, images, or videos. Any of these content types can provide great value to your audience.

The benefits include wider reach, more social media followers, and the ability to build trust and credibility. Brands can also connect with their customers, and help quicken the buyer’s journey for potential buyers.

Content marketing is a great strategy to adopt for your brand and will prove effective in the long run.

You can start by defining your business goals and objectives for online marketing.

Do you want to become a successful content marketer? Can you explore content marketing to drive massive traffic to your blog? To get properly trained online, try out Wealthy Affiliate today.