In our digital age, content marketing is everywhere. From #tiktokchallenges to eBooks, podcasts and blogs, brands nowadays are pushing the boat out across digital channels to provide more content than ever before.
While these efforts may seem extensive, they’ve proven worthwhile. According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates over 3x as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
Businesses have recognised the immense importance of content marketing. And with the help of this article, you can too.
Let’s delve into the reasons why content marketing is so effective, including:
- The benefits of content marketing
- How effective content marketing is at bringing tangible results
- Why content marketing is more effective than traditional marketing
- How to get started with content marketing
Table of Contents
Why is content marketing effective? Benefits of content marketing
There’s a whole range of benefits of content marketing that can significantly enhance the success of your business.
Let’s dive in and discover some of the biggest benefits content marketing can bring.
1. Increase brand awareness
For your customers to buy from you, first of all, they have to have heard of you. To achieve brand awareness, you must spread your visibility across the web. And the best way to do this is through content.
Content is so fundamental for increasing brand awareness that marketing agencies identified it as the most important goal for their content strategies. In a Semrush survey, almost half of agencies said increasing brand awareness is their top 2023 content marketing goal.
That’s because creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content that resonates with your target audience is the best way to get the word out about who you are and what you offer. It’s important to do this across channels, including on your website, blog, socials and in the media.
Here are a few examples of how content marketing can increase brand awareness:
- A coffee brand creates a catalogue of how-to blogs on brewing coffee at home. Optimised for SEO, these posts begin to appear on the first page of Google for a range of targeted keywords, such as ‘how to brew a latte at home’ and ‘how to make a cappuccino at home’. As a result, the brand consistently appears in its target audience’s search results.
- A local bakery consistently posts new cakes they have on offer to social media. They make sure to use relevant hashtags and, where relevant, they jump on trends to gain wider visibility and engagement.
- A SaaS startup releases a report containing stats, expert insights and projections for the future. This is used for outreach to industry publications, which feature highlights of the report as media stories appealing to their readership and linking back to the company.
All of the above examples show the importance of content marketing in putting your brand under the eyes of your audience in a valuable, engaging way.
This brings us to…
2. Enhance audience engagement
Being known far and wide is great. But what’s even better is having an engaged and loyal community around your brand. The best way to do this is through creating engaging, valuable content.
Engaging content is content that sparks conversations, encouraging comments, likes and shares. It’s topical and attention-grabbing. It also speaks directly to the needs, interests and pain points of your target customer, establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty by helping to solve their problems.
For example, a business coach could create a whole series of blog posts and guides around starting a new business and how to avoid the biggest pitfalls as a budding entrepreneur. Content pieces could have a call to action compelling readers to sign up for a newsletter providing even more business tips, directly in people’s inboxes.
If you follow the above successfully, congratulations! You’ve now built relationships of trust with your target audience and can send them offers via email, rather than relying on third-party platforms like social media.
Best of all, if done right, your engaged audience will act as advocates for your brand, recommending you to friends and family and returning to buy from you again and again. Considering that loyal customers spend around 3x more than new customers, this is a tactic that would be foolish to ignore.
3. Attract traffic to your website
Content is pivotal to attracting traffic to your website. And unlike paid ads, content is organic, meaning it appears in front of your audience and lures them to your website at no extra cost to you.
There are a number of ways content can attract traffic to your website.
For example, creating high-quality, SEO-optimised blog content helps you appear in search results. As a result, people will search Google and see your content, and if your page title and meta description sounds compelling enough, they’ll click through to your website.
Social media content can also encourage users to visit your website. This can be through a link in the social media post itself or via a link in your profile bio. According to Ahrefs, over 90% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google, so distributing your content across socials and not relying solely on SEO is a must!
By optimising your content for different channels and ensuring it grabs attention and links back to your website, you can boost your website traffic performance.
4. Establish yourself as an authority
How can you showcase to your audience that you’re a reliable, credible expert in your industry?
Through content marketing, of course!
Publishing a wealth of content on your subject matter — including well-researched, data-backed pieces; expert insights and reflections on industry trends — indicates to readers that you are an expert in that area.
To do this, it’s important to ensure you stick to your subject matter or a small number of related content pillars.
For example, if you’re a professional dog walker, making a post about holidaying in the Caribbean isn’t going to enhance your reputation as a dog-walking aficionado. (Unless you’re holidaying in the Caribbean with your dogs, of course!
However, posting about dog training and care will help showcase your expertise. Any visitor to your social media profiles or website will trust you more after seeing all your cute and informative dog content and how passionate and knowledgeable you are.
Another thing that’s important to consider when establishing yourself as an authority is ensuring the quality of the content is exceptional. As an expert, you go beyond the standard how-tos to generate content that shares your unique perspectives as a hands-on industry maven.
Follow the above successfully, and you’ll find yourself the go-to favourite among your target audience and will build reverence in your sector.
What is the effectiveness of content marketing?
There are a number of KPIs used to measure content marketing’s effectiveness.
As already discussed, content marketing can help bring traffic to your website. In doing so, it can also help generate leads and conversions. In fact, content marketing is so effective it’s been shown to generate approximately 3 times as many leads as traditional marketing.
Content marketing also boosts engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares and follows. Data shows that infographics, listicles and other blog posts are among the most shared online content.
Additionally, using content to retarget existing customers aids customer retention. For example, sending regular email newsletters updating existing customers on company updates, new product lines and content they might find valuable keeps the conversation with them flowing, ensuring your brand stays top of mind next time they’re looking to buy.
The most popular digital content for customer retention is email marketing (used by 89% of marketers), followed by social media (used by 63% of marketers).
Why is content marketing more effective than traditional marketing?
When it comes to content marketing vs traditional marketing, there are a number of reasons why online content marketing takes the cake.
First and foremost, content marketing is focused on providing value to readers, rather than simply promoting a product or service. By creating helpful and informative content, companies establish a genuine connection with their target audience, fostering trust and loyalty.
This is much more effective than solely promoting products and/or services, which may come across too direct to a customer. Especially if they don’t have a relationship with your brand yet.
Another reason content marketing is more effective than traditional marketing is that it can be more personalised and use precise targeting tactics. By getting clear on who your audience is, including any audience segments, you can curate content specifically speaking to their needs. This increases the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and generates higher engagement and conversion rates.
How to get started with a content marketing strategy
Now you know how effective content marketing can be for growing your business, it’s time to create a great content strategy and put it into action.
Start by defining your goals, understanding your target audience and developing a well-thought-out content plan that considers keyword targeting, customer pain points and trending topics. By focusing on creating valuable, relevant and engaging content, you can increase brand awareness, enhance audience engagement, improve search engine visibility and establish authority in your industry.
If you’re unsure where to begin, why not book a consultation to discuss how I can help? As an award-winning Content Writer & Strategist, I’d love to create for you an impactful content strategy to enhance your website’s performance and build relationships with your customers.
Click here to book an initial free call.