A Guide to How Content Marketing Can Boost Your Business

The Opportunity

Data indicates that the average time online users spent using the internet stood at six hours and 40 minutes per day in the third quarter of 2023. It has remained over six hours per day since the third quarter of 2015.

Given the vast population of internet users across age groups, socio-economic classes, and geographies, businesses now have the means to reach out to their target audiences quickly and efficiently. According to numbers collated by Search Engine Journal and Ahrefs:

• 82% of marketers invest in content marketing actively.
• Content marketing finds a place in the overall marketing strategies of 73% B2B marketers and 70% B2C marketers.
• 97% of marketers find success with their content marketing campaigns.
• 76% of marketers say that content marketing helps generate leads.
• More than half of all businesses that have content marketing strategies publish some form of content every day.

One common problem most content marketing managers face is that of oversaturation. In this highly digitalized world, the internet is awash with blogs, videos, podcasts, and other types of content that do not have any takers. To get it right, businesses need to deliver their well-planned content through the right channels by relying on structured content marketing strategies. Then, they may expect a boost in traffic to their websites as well as increased sales.

What is Content Marketing?

You may think of content marketing as a form of marketing that requires creating and sharing material and sharing it via different platforms, be it in the form of blog posts, videos, social media posts, podcasts, or infographics. Typically, this content does not promote a business overtly but aims to generate interest in its readers, viewers, or listeners.

Simply put, content marketing refers to a strategy through which a business creates relevant and valuable content to engage with its target audience organically.

The long-term aim of content marketing is to attract new customers and boost sales. In the short term, the goal is to deliver valuable content regularly and get your audience to want more. This is why a professional digital marketing agency will stress the importance of acknowledging an audience’s presence and making it feel heard. After all, your audience needs to know that you understand its pain points and you need to work on building its trust in the products/services you provide.

Types of Content Marketing

Irrespective of the content marketing strategy you use, you should aim to build your brand’s reputation and trust. For instance, if you’re relying on email marketing as one subset of your overall content marketing strategy, it should offer value to readers that other similar emails do not. While content marketing is far-reaching in scope and can make use of different tools, types of content marketing boil down to five basic categories.

• Written content. This can come in the form of blog posts, landing pages, case studies, press releases, white papers, answers to frequently asked questions, instructional guides, and emails.
• Graphics. These include logos, infographics, charts, call to action (CTA) buttons, and suitable use of color schemes.
• Videos. Videos may include vlogs, behind-the-scene brand stories, customer testimonials, instructional guides, webinars, live feeds to events, and virtual reality (VR) tours.
• Audio. Audio-related content marketing examples include podcasts, interviews, and ads on online audio streaming services such as Spotify and Amazon Music.
• Social media. Social media presents a great opportunity for content marketing through user-generated content, sponsored content, customer reviews, celebrity endorsements, contests, and hashtags. Popular social media platforms that businesses turn to for content marketing include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Content Marketing Channels You May Use

You may consider any avenue that you use to share your content as a channel. Determining which channels will be the most effective in delivering your message is crucial for running a successful content marketing strategy. The different channels you may employ include:

• Organic searches. Organic traffic refers to the web traffic you generate through search engines such as Google and Bing without the use of paid advertisements. By providing relevant and useful content created keeping search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, you increase the possibility of ranking high when users conduct online searches related to the subject matter at hand.
• Paid searches. Traffic that comes through this channel is the result of showcasing your content through carefully crafted paid ads on prominent search engines.
• Social media platforms. These include popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
• Emails. Well-crafted, relevant, and useful emails have a long history of working as an effective content marketing tool. By delivering your message via email, you get the ability to capture an audience that has already demonstrated some interest in your brand (by signing up for them in the first place).
• Link building. Link building involves an online platform that links to your website/content and sends web traffic your way. This aspect plays an important role in SEO and can work as a rather effective way to boost traffic to your website.

How Content Marketing Helps Your Business

No matter which industry your business belongs to, content marketing gives it a cost-effective way to boost the results of its overall marketing efforts. If you’re wondering “How can I grow my business with content marketing?” or “How does content marketing add value to a business?” you need to start by understanding why content marketing is important. After all, the benefits of content marketing come in different forms.

Building Trust

Creating relevant and useful content gives your brand an easy means to build long-term relationships with your target audience. When you build trust, it has a direct effect on improving your brand’s reputation. Engaging with your audience remains an ongoing exercise, through which you keep it interested in your existing and upcoming offerings. The content you provide helps foster positive customer experiences, which is always good for your brand’s bottom line.

Generating Leads and Increasing Conversions

Content marketing gives you the ability to share information with your target audience in a streamlined, engaging, and compelling manner. Content marketing managers often look at this as a highly cost-effective way to generate new leads. They do this by providing content with engaging CTAs that capture your audience’s attention.

When it comes to how content marketing can boost your business, know that it has a positive effect on conversion rates as well. This is because it lets you connect and share information with your audience directly, be it new leads or existing customers. If you provide valuable content consistently, you get to influence your audience so it may make well-informed decisions surrounding the value your brand offers. Once your audience gets a good indication of what your business is and what it stands for, there’s an increased possibility of it investing in your brand.

Improving SEO Effectiveness

People who ask “What is content marketing in SEO?” should know that the former can help improve the effectiveness of the latter. SEO has an important role to play in the online visibility and accessibility of your brand, which is why it is important to use content that highlights your brand’s value. By creating and publishing SEO-based content regularly, you get to increase your brand’s online presence. This is why most prominent websites have blogs through which they offer content that their audiences might find useful. More often than not, content creators and managers optimize blog posts for search engines.

Increasing Authority

Creating a variety of online content helps your brand build its reputation. By offering high-quality content regularly, you get to build respect. While the content you provide helps differentiate your brand from its competitors, you may also use it to showcase your expertise. Over time, this establishes your position as an industry expert and your audience will look at you as a credible authority in your field. With consumers becoming increasingly conscious about where their money is going, establishing a sense of authority can go a long way in boosting your business.

How to Use Content Marketing to Grow Your Business?

Moving beyond the importance of content marketing in digital marketing, you need to know how to formulate and implement an effective strategy. After all, any content marketing strategy is only as good as the results it produces. Formulating an effective strategy requires paying attention to different aspects. While there are no set rules to follow, some factors remain the same across all good content marketing strategies.

Setting Uniformity Across the Brand

If multiple people speak on behalf of your brand, it’s important that they maintain the same voice, tone, language, and personality. Businesses that have no set protocols in place may benefit by taking a look at what industry leaders are doing right. While your content marketing strategy should account for your audience and employees, it should also factor in other stakeholders such as suppliers and vendors.

Assessing Resources and Capabilities

The lack of a standard content marketing definition results in several businesses being unsure about what marketing strategy to employ, and they end up spending valuable resources in the process. Determining the right content marketing fit and identifying what’s in and out of scope gives marketers the ability to focus on the right combination of resources for formulating and executing their strategies.

After you establish which type of content you wish to do extremely well in, you need to address aspects such as what your content marketing budget is and how you wish to break it down, who will create the content, the types of creative specialties you are looking look for, and the technologies and processes that might come into play when implementing your strategy.

At this stage, you must take complete stock of the resources and capabilities you already have access to, so you may then look for external help accordingly.

Setting Clear Objectives

Your brand’s content marketing requirements help determine its key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals. Different types of content with relevant metrics may come in the form of:

• Content that caters to building brand awareness and consumer perception.
• Content that focuses on performance marketing through a variety of promotional content.
• Content that caters specifically to local markets.
• Content that relates to specific business objectives surrounding products, pricing, promotions, and placement.

Creating Customer Personas

Several successful businesses now create customer personas (semi-fictional representations of their ideal customers) based on data and research. This gives you the ability to focus your marketing efforts on qualified prospects and develop products that align with the needs of your target audience. Factors that go into creating customer personas include age, gender, income, location, marital status, employment status, personal values, likes, dislikes, needs, and media preferences.

Using Data

When it comes to getting customer insight, data and research play vital roles. This can come in the form of data from your own research, historical data, and data acquired from third parties.

Mapping Customer Journeys

A journey map comes from the perspective of your customers and gives you an indication of how they progress when interacting with your brand. In this fast-paced world, a customer may switch from one stage to another depending on a range of factors, and might even skip a touchpoint or more completely.

Following a Streamlined Process

Effective content marketing requires following an iterative process from the creative stage to putting forth your content. Grouping your content into separate sections is a good idea, as is creating and following a best practices approach to deal with different types of content.

Conclusion

Now that you know how content marketing can boost your business, you need to incorporate it into your overall marketing efforts. However, creating and implementing a content marketing strategy requires considerable research and planning, which is why several small and mid-sized businesses steer clear of taking this path. Fortunately, expert help is available more easily than you might imagine. Besides, when you partner with a content marketing agency to increase your online presence, you get to focus on the internal workings of your business.