In the last few years, content marketing has evolved into one of the most powerful ways to build your business faster. It has allowed companies like HubSpot, KISSmetrics, Moz and many more to reach out to their audience and build their brands.
In this post I want to point out all the possible benefits of content marketing for your business. Here’s the full list:
Content marketing helps you get more traffic
The most obvious reason why you should invest in content marketing is that it will simply get you more traffic. Each piece of content you create has the ability to rank in search engines, to be shared on social media and to go viral.
Blogging is your best strategy here, but you can also focus on creating videos, white papers, ebooks, reports, etc. Thanks to content marketing KISSmetrics receives more than 1 million visitors per month.
Let’s see how content marketing helps you get more:
Search traffic - Creating quality content, especially through blogging, is one of the best ways to rank in search engines in the Post-Hummingbird era. It allows you to target long-tail keywords and produce in-depth, well-researched content that people naturally want to link to.
Download Our Free ebook: How to use quality content to rank #1 in Google.
Google naturally wants high-quality content to rank better since it provides better search results for users. At the same time the search engine takes massive action to penalize poor, thin, duplicate and spammy content that doesn’t bring value to the end user.
It’s important to state that content marketing will help you get more search traffic only if you spend time optimizing and promoting your content.
As Derrek Halpern wrote on his blog: “I spend 20% of my time creating content, and 80% of my time promoting it.”
This doesn’t mean you should rush out bad content, but you need to take the time to optimize your content if you want to acquire search traffic. In other words, you’ll need to reach out to others and build links.
Social media traffic - Content gets shared on social media and that brings massive traffic to your website. In fact, a great piece of content has the ability to go viral on the web and make the difference for your business.
Immediately after you publish a blog post, an ebook or any other content, publish it on your social media channels. As KISSmetrics suggests, it’s often a good idea to share your content more than once to maximize exposure.
Referral traffic - Some of the people who find your content valuable might decide to link to it in their own blogs and websites, and as a result you could receive lots of referral traffic as well.
Here we’re not talking about the pure value of backlinks from a SEO perspective. We’re talking about the fact that when people read a blog post in which there is a link to your site, they might click on it and this will result in more traffic for you.
Direct traffic - Consistency is crucial in publishing high-quality content leads for loyal and returning visitors. This audience will remember you and come back for more because they know they will always find valuable resources on your website.
Loyal readers will most likely type your URL directly in the browser instead of searching for you on the web. They already know who you are and what you have to offer.
Great examples are the blogs of companies like HubSpot, KISSmetrics, Backlinko, QuickSprout, etc.
Content marketing helps you earn more engagement
The second most obvious reason to invest in content marketing is because it will help you engage your audience with your brand and website.
Consistent high-quality content helps you get repeat visitors, increases the time people spend on your site and decreases bounce rate, an important SEO factor. It’s about giving people what they want, desire and value.
More repeat visitors - When you publish great content on a consistent basis people tend to visit your website again and again. This encourages engagement with your brand, so they are more likely to remember you and actually make a purchase from you in the future.
People stay longer on your site - Visitors not only come to your website more often thanks to new content you publish, but they also visit considerably more pages. People will gladly check out more blog posts from you that are related to what they’re already reading.
Be sure to include similar or recent posts in the side widget area and link to other posts in your blog. That way people will naturally follow, open more pages, stay on your site longer and engage more with your content.
More feedback - Good content marketing engages people to participate in the conversation. Your visitors are much more likely to share their views and opinions related to the topics you cover and your products.
Other readers will also scroll through your comments, and this will engage them even more with your content.
To be sure that you receive feedback, enable comments and make it easier for people to post them. Be sure to push call to actions at the end and ask people to share their opinion.
It’s also worth mentioning that integrating social comments (Facebook, Google+, etc.) can also increase the traffic to your site.
More shares - People are very likely to share content that they like, they agree on and believe others will appreciate as well.
They will also share content that they believe is funny and entertaining. However, you need to be careful with this: use humor and various tones only when it’s congruent with your brand.
Content marketing helps you increase your conversion rate and sales
Companies that invest in content marketing have higher conversion rates, more leads and sales than those who don’t.
The website conversion rate is nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters according to a report by the Aberdeen Group. So if you’re not doing it, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your business.
Here’s what you get when you focus on creating amazing content:
You get more leads - Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional marketing. Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month according to Hubspot.
Leads from content marketing also cost much less in the long term. According to a study done by Kapost and Eloqua, the cost per lead usually drops by 80% in the first 5 months.
Marketers also report that the website conversion rate is nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters.
You get more customers - According to HubSpot 82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly – which is still an impressive result.
Allows you to increase your prices - Companies that produce great content are often viewed as premium. That’s why they’re able to sell their products or services for much more than others on the market.
Here’s what Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing, has to say about this:
“Since the majority of would-be customers are long-time readers, they already understand the value you bring to the table. They don’t come for the cheapest service… They come to get the best. In this way, pricing rarely becomes an obstacle. When you increase your pricing, customers usually don’t have an issue with it.”
Content marketing helps you increase customer loyalty and retention
Great content makes people love your brand, and that’s why they never want to leave as a client. It’s proven that content marketing helps you keep your customers longer, which is great for the long-term stability and growth of your company.
Customers stay longer with you - A little known fact is that content marketing can help you increase customer retention, which only makes you more money in the end. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25%-95%.
The other thing marketers should keep in mind is that it costs much more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, and this is where content marketing can help.
The content you share helps build stronger relationships with your clients. They tend to value what you’re offering more, beyond just your core services and products.
This extra offering you provide via your content makes customers see your brand as something special and unique. This combined with your great service or products is what makes them stick around.
They recommend you more often - When you share content more frequently, you engage with your customers more. But this also have a side effect. Because of this, they remember you more often and are more likely to recommend your products and services to others.
This turns customers into brand advocates who start promoting your business for you. When they share your content, it performs 2 times better than email and 6 times better than online ads.
As a result, advocates create a snowball effect which allows you to grow your business much faster (if you’re prepared to handle the rise of sales).
They buy more from you - Many people think of content marketing as a top funnel activity for traffic and engagement, but it can also help you sell more to your existing customers. The ones who engage with your content are likely to buy more products or services from you.
In this context you can use content marketing to upsell on the point of purchase or after that with a follow-up campaign leading to another sale.
Content marketing helps you build brand awareness
84% of B2B marketers pointed out brand awareness as the most important goal for content marketing.
When you create great content, people start to remember who you are in the long term. In fact, research shows that interesting content is the top 3 reason why people follow brands on social media.
Here are the 3 ways content marketing helps you build your brand:
Creates positive buzz – valuable content makes people like and share your content. This gets more people to talk about your brand in a positive way.
Helps counter negative reviews – when people start talking good things about you, they tend to forget the bad stuff. The content you produce will shine through any of the bad reviews you might have received in the past and will help you recover your image.
Content marketing goes viral – when you create something that’s interesting, entertaining and valuable for your audience they tend to share it. And then their audience shares it as well.
That way you can reach a broader audience and enhance your message. This is something you might not be able to do with other forms of traditional marketing.
Content marketing helps you establish yourself as a Thought Leader
When you produce valuable content you win people over and you have the power to influence them.
With content marketing you’ll be able to:
Establish yourself as authority – people will know that you’re the expert in your field, they will listen and trust your advice, and it’s more likely they’ll recommend you to others. All of this earns you more business.
Educate your customers to make better buying decisions – 52% of your blog readers will be searching for information to make better buying decisions. Let me explain why.
When people trust you, they will come to you for advice. People want to feel confident when they’re making a buying decision, and by reading your content they can educate themselves on the best options.
As a result people will be happier with their purchase.
Content marketing helps your employees do a better job
Though this is not well-known, content marketing helps you attract, retain and motivate the best employees. Let’s dig deeper into each benefit from an HR point of view.
Attracts the best talent – the content you publish builds a positive buzz, not only in the eyes of your customers, but also for your future employees as well.
By reading your blogs and watching your videos, potential job seekers experience your company, your values and viewpoints. Then when the right opportunity comes on board, people will want to join your team.
Motivates your employees – when people create content for your company, they reconnect on an emotional level with your values. They tend to care more about what the company does, and they’re more motivated to do their job right.
As a result, their performance also increases. And we all know that an increase in productivity often leads to more revenue.
Educates them – the easiest way to educate new employees is to encourage them to read your corporate blog. The content you have created to educate your customers will help your staff get on track and increase their knowledge as well.
Also if you ask your employees to contribute and write blogs themselves, it will be a learning opportunity for them. Writing will also help them structure their knowledge and better understand the subject.
Keeps your employees in your company – when employees read and write content they improve their skills, confidence levels and motivation. As a result, they do a better job.
There is one bigger advantage for employees – as a result they highly connect with the values of the company and are more likely to stay working for you in the long term.
They will be less likely to leave just because someone offered them a higher salary or better position. They want to stay because they believe in your company’s values and have a higher sense of purpose for what they have achieved in your company.
In Conclusion:
There are many benefits of content marketing – from acquiring traffic, engagement, leads and sales to educating your customers and employees.
You don’t need to focus on every single benefit; just choose the ones that make sense for your business at its current stage.
Why would you invest in content marketing for your business? What would be your top goals with content marketing for your business? Let me know in the comments below.
