13 Benefits of Content Marketing
These 13 eye-opening benefits of content marketing will convince even the most hardened skeptic that content marketing works wonders to generate leads and cultivate loyal audiences.
But What Is Content Marketing...?
If you’re a business owner, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of content marketing.
Maybe you’ve been told it will help you dominate search engine result pages (SERPs) and generate leads.
Or you’ve heard that it’s a form of inbound marketing that will help you attract, engage, and convert prospects by delivering the value they’re actively seeking.
No matter what you’ve heard, one thing is certain – there are many ways that content marketing can benefit your business.
Content Marketing isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a digital marketing channel you MUST adopt if you want to thrive in today’s digital marketing landscape.
It’s an effective and practical digital marketing strategy you should adopt to attract and convert quality leads into paying customers.
Here we’ll discuss 13 powerful and eye-opening benefits of content marketing you should know before hiring a content marketer.
Understanding these benefits will help you understand why content marketing is vital for your business.
But first...
Does Content Marketing Really Work?
Short answer: More than you can imagine.
Quick Fact: By prioritizing blogging (an aspect of content marketing), marketers are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI. In fact, marketers who blog generate 67% more leads than marketers who don’t. (HubSpot 2019)
HubSpot highlights that 70% of marketers actively invested in content marketing in 2020. This supports SemRush data indicating that 78% of companies have a team of one to three content specialists.
Investment in content marketing wouldn’t be this high if the strategy didn’t work.
To further explain why content marketing works, a Databox 2019 survey found that 70% of companies generated more sales through SEO content marketing than through PPC (Paid advertising).
This content marketing case study is a practical example of how content marketing works for businesses.
With the right content marketing services, the website was indexed by Google, acquiring 859 unique visitors in the first month. Within three months, that number grew to 2,490 visitors, and then more than doubled to 5,370 within six months’ time.
It’s clear that content marketing works. Now let’s explore the primary benefits of content marketing for your business.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Content Marketing Boosts Your SEO and Generates Quality Traffic
Content marketing helps your business rank high in the search engines and generates traffic from people hungry for your product or service.
If you’re looking for the best way to drive website traffic, look no further than content marketing.
To do this, starting with a content marketing strategy is highly recommended.
And here’s why.
Not all traffic is quality traffic.
With a good content marketing strategy, you’ll produce strategic content that answers search queries and gets quality, easy-to-convert traffic.
Attracting high-quality traffic is one of the benefits of a content marketing strategy that you don’t often hear about.
Don’t just focus on boosting your SEO and attracting traffic with content marketing. Focus on generating qualified traffic that will easily convert.
Once you’ve started generating high-quality traffic, what’s next?
Content Marketing Drives More High-Quality Sales
Here’s a question for you:
Would you prefer to chase your client or would you rather have them seek you out?
Undeniably, the latter is your answer.
With content marketing, your potential customers will seek you out.
And here’s why.
Because unlike other lead generation strategies out there, content marketing gives instead of asking for something.
Does it seem crazy that giving something away can drive sales without even asking for them?
Consider this: According to Content Marketing Institute data, content marketing, among all other benefits, has six times the power of conventional marketing for converting people into leads and then converting those leads into customers.
With content marketing, you’re giving out information that benefits your ideal customers without asking them to buy anything.
The truth is, today’s consumers shy away from sites that always preach ‘buy now’ and ‘shop now,’ without offering value.
Advertisements are everywhere these days, and it keeps getting harder and harder to run away from them.
Stand out by offering something that your potential customers will value.
Effective content marketing will generate qualified leads who are happy to buy from you and recommend your business to others.
Quality Content Builds Your "E-A-T"
In February 2019, a Google whitepaper confirmed that EAT is very important to ranking.
According to Google, ‘our ranking system does not identify the intent or factual accuracy of any given piece of content. However, it is specifically designed to identify sites with high indicia of Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EAT).’
What Google wants from websites:
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trustworthiness
Effective content marketing meets these Google requirements. But that’s not all it does.
Besides ranking, EAT websites gain customers’ trust, and convert more than websites not utilizing effective content marketing.
When you publish content about your customers’ everyday challenges, it shows that you are knowledgeable and trustworthy.
Forbes, for instance, is known as an authority in the business, investment, technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership domains.
You can see them in the top SERPs for different queries, as well as being mentioned when someone is looking for authority information in those niches.
They didn’t get there by chance. They got there through well-planned content marketing.
When you establish yourself as an industry thought leader through content marketing, people will trust you and buy your product/services.
Content Marketing Puts Your Business On Your Customers’ Minds
When you have a robust content marketing strategy and write informative articles that rank well in search engines, your website will get thousands of visits per month.
This works like magic, especially when you adopt storytelling in your content writing.
Imagine your content ranking number one for a keyword that gets 50,000+ monthly searches. That’s your business in front of 50,000+ pairs of eyes every month!
Anything can indeed build awareness, but content marketing builds awareness and gains customer trust – icing on the cake.
Content Marketing Helps You Move Buyers Through the Buyer’s Journey Faster
To purchase a product, buyers move through a series of steps called the buyer’s journey.
The steps in the buyer’s journey are:
- Awareness - When the buyer first notices they want something and comes into contact with your brand.
- Engagement - When the buyer takes a more active role with your brand, contacting sales, or requesting a quote.
- Conversion - When the buyer spends money with your business, purchasing your product or service.
- Advocacy - When the buyer becomes loyal to your brand.
Every consumer goes through this process, but how quickly they convert largely depends on the quality of your content.
With effective content marketing, you can engage consumers at each step of the buyer’s journey and facilitate lead conversion.
Content Marketing Continues to Generate Traffic For the Long Run
This is one of the standout benefits of content marketing.
Content formats like blogs, ebooks, infographics, and many more continue to generate traffic long after they’re published.
This is unlike many marketing strategies where traffic and lead generation stop when you stop your marketing efforts.
How is this possible?
Your content assets compound to boost your authority in search engines and increase your organic website traffic over time.
This works very well when you use blogging as a content marketing tool.
Note that you need to focus on creating evergreen content to exploit this compounding effect of content marketing.
Some examples of evergreen content include:
- Case studies and data
- How-to guides
- Listicles
- Encyclopedic content
- Industry glossaries
- And so much more
Content Marketing Helps You Showcase Your Brand Personality
Brand personality is a set of human characteristics that customers attribute to a particular brand based on the brand’s consistency in reflecting those traits. It’s something the customers enjoy and can relate to, and it helps them identify with a brand.
Infusing personality into your brand is one of the most powerful benefits of content marketing.
It gives your brand a human touch and shows it’s not just another business on the Internet.
While some businesses’ branding stops at logo and color palette, successful brands reach deep into their values to give their customers an extraordinary brand experience.
Through content marketing, they reflect who they are, what drives them, how they’re different, their values and personality, and their unique promise to their customers.
When done well, content marketing helps you build a wonderful community and make customers part of your content creation.
Enhanced Accessibility and Open Channels of Communication
Efficient content marketing opens diverse channels for your customers to know and contact you.
Providing your audience with the content they need to solve their pain points will increase their loyalty and level of connection to your brand.
When they start to rely on you as their primary source of information, they’ll feel freer to reach out to you, ask their questions, and, of course, buy your products.
A good content marketing strategy includes content formats and distribution channels that will amplify your marketing and put your business in front of your potential customers.
When customers can access and contact you anywhere – social media, contact form, email - they build trust in you.
Your business becomes more than business as usual when customers connect with you on a more personal level.
More Quality Content; More Reasons to Stick Around
You can’t overestimate the power of quality, informative content.
Your content is an important asset that creates a positive experience for your potential customers and keeps them coming back for more.
Readers’ attention spans are short when reading content online.
But if you leverage content marketing the right way short attention spans won’t be a problem for you.
The more quality, engaging content you publish, the more visitors will spend time on your website.
Would you like your visitors to spend more time on your website? Consider this…
In today’s fast-paced content marketing domain, creating quality, engaging content isn’t the only important task.
You need to add extra spice to reap more benefits of content marketing, by utilizing methods to keep your readers on your website longer.
One good way to achieve this high dwell time is by adopting the topic cluster strategy, which keeps your visitors on your website and improves your SEO.
Content Marketing Is Cost-Effective
Content marketing is more cost-effective in the long run.
It costs 62% less and generates more than three times the leads than most outbound marketing tactics.
Do you know why?
Content marketing is typically easier to start and has almost six times the conversion rates of other marketing strategies because today’s customers prefer content that provides value.
There may be upfront costs involved in content marketing, but they’re one-off costs for content that will keep generating results.
Content published on your website will continue to climb higher on SERPs, earning you continual traffic and leads without extra cost.
It Works For Any Business or Industry
Now you’re probably wondering, “This is great, but will content marketing work for my business or industry?”
The straightforward answer: Content marketing works for every industry and business, no matter the size, structure, or product.
Maybe you’ve tried before and didn’t see results. Or maybe you’ve seen others leverage content marketing without results.
If that’s the case, it was done wrong.
The key to reaping content marketing benefits is developing the right content marketing strategy that works for your particular business.
Fuels Your Social Media and PR Marketing Efforts
Content marketing often goes together with social media and PR marketing because content powers these other marketing channels.
The more quality content you create, the more material you’ll have to power your own social media and PR marketing.
This is one of the top reasons why content is important in marketing.
With a good social media presence, you’ll reach and engage more new leads while also fostering your relationship with existing customers.
Statista 2019 reports that 3.6 billion people were using social media globally, and the number is projected to rise to almost 4.41 billion by 2025.
And guess what?
Your customers are already on social media.
Once customers identify that you share useful and valuable content, they’ll seek you out and follow you on social media.
The more content you have, the stronger you become on social media. This increases your ability to attract, engage, and convert leads.
Less Invasive Than Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing involves approaching people and trying to sell to them.
But let’s face it, nobody likes being sold to.
It can be annoying.
More and more people are opting out of situations where they’re sold to.
Blockthrough reports that 527 million people used mobile browsers that blocked ads by default in 2019 – a 64% increase from the last edition of the report.
This number is expected to continue increasing as people lean more towards companies that provide value over companies that sell to them.
Rather than investing thousands of dollars in advertising, switch to content marketing. It costs less and yields more.
Why Is Content Marketing Important?
Because everyone loves content.
People love quality content that gives value, and search engines like making the content available to them.
In a series of interviews, publications, and algorithm updates, Google has emphasized the importance of quality content.
In fact, search engines are obsessed with providing their users with high-quality content.
If you can help them achieve this by continuously publishing valuable content, they’ll reward you with better rankings and keep sending traffic to your website.
You could call it autopilot marketing.
In addition, continuously publishing high-quality content helps you attract references and quality backlinks from high-authority websites.
This boosts search engines’ trust in your business website and sends an unending stream of leads your way.
These authority websites won’t cite you if you produce generic, low-quality content.
Furthermore, the more content you produce, the more keywords are added to your keyword arsenal. This gives you more authority in search engines and earns you more trust amongst potential customers.
Another great reason why content marketing is important is that content powers other marketing strategies.
Whether you’re doing print marketing, email marketing, or any other form of digital marketing, you need content.
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Why not develop a complete marketing strategy built on content marketing?
Then you can enjoy the core benefits of content marketing and also have all of your marketing bases covered.
Is Content Marketing Worth It? A Recap of the Benefits of Content Marketing
Yes, it's worth it. Here's why.
Yes, it's worth it. Here's why.
To put things in perspective, here is a recap of the benefits content marketing can bring to your business.
- Content marketing boosts your SEO and generates quality traffic
- Content marketing drives more high-quality sales
- Quality content builds your EAT
- Content marketing puts your business on your customers’ minds
- Content marketing helps you move buyers through the Buyer’s Journey faster
- Content marketing continues to generate traffic for the long run
- Content marketing helps you showcase your brand personality
- Enhanced accessibility and open channels of communication
- More quality content; more reasons to stick around
- Content marketing is cost-effective
- It works for any business or industry
- Fuels your social media and PR marketing efforts
- Less invasive than traditional marketing
You see, it’s not a question of whether content marketing is worth it.
It’s a question of when you’re going to enjoy the full benefits of content marketing.
We highly recommend you start with a content marketing strategy built on your business goals. That way, you know you’re generating results relevant to your particular business growth.
Not sure where to start? Reach out to us to discuss your business goals and how we can help you with content marketing that converts.
The 5 Best Content Marketing Books
I started thinking about the 5 best content marketing books this weekend while I was canning green beans.
Here I was, sitting at my kitchen table snapping green beans and listening to Joe Pulizzi's Content Inc. marketing podcast on Spotify and thinking about how much I'd gotten out of his book. Snap-snap went the end of the green bean as Joe and Ann Hadley talked about content marketing. Suddenly, it dawned on me: I should write about my favorite content marketing books!
Joe's book is, of course, tops on my list. It's the best book on on content marketing I've come across and that's no coincidence. You may know Joe's name since he was the founder of the Content Marketing Institute. At a time when few of us knew what content marketing is or how powerful it could be, Joe was busy starting an institute, a conference, and a training system for would-be content marketers. Now, through his company The Tilt, he continues to spread she mission and mindset of content marketing.
There books aren't your typical list. For one thing, there's a book decidedly about writing sales copy on the list, and as content marketing managers are so fond of telling people, sales copy isn't content marketing. But the book belongs on this list because of the enormous influence it has had on my marketing writing as well as on my team's writing. Often when new writers start at Seven Oaks Consulting, I ask them what content marketing or writing books they like. Nine times out of ten, if Bob Bly's Copywriter's Handbook is mentioned, they'll be a great fit for us.
Without further ado, I present to you Jeanne Grunert's unofficial list of the 5 best content marketing books. And yes, these are Amazon affiliate links. I will make a small commission on any books you buy after clicking on a link. It doesn't affect your price. Thank you. Commercial over.
Best Content Marketing Books
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
This book is one of the best books about writing, period. Brenda Ueland taught fiction writing for many years. She helped her students break free from the inhibitions that lead to stale, boring writing. We could all use some of her advice especially when writing on topics we may find less interesting.
The Copywriter's Handbook by Bob Bly
I intentionally included Bly's classic on writing marketing and sales copy for a reason even though content marketers are adamant that content writing isn't sales writing. They are correct, of course, but all of us do at some point or another need to know how to write compelling sales copy. There's no matter teacher than this primer from Bob Bly. I bought this book decades ago when I first dreamed of freelancing and I still read it periodically to refresh my memory on all things writing for business.
5 Chairs, 5 Choices by Louise Evans
I am not exaggerating when I say that Louise Evan's book, 5 Chairs 5 Choices changed my life. Actually, it was her TedTalk on YouTube that first began my journey into communication styles. Her method of identifying various mental mindsets during conversations is essential reading for content marketers who are serious about understanding their customers. Whenever I sit down to write, I think about the five chairs and wonder whether my customers are seeing my content through jackal, giraffe, meerkat, dolphin, or what. Check out the Tedx Talk. You'll thank me later.
Content Inc by Joe Pulizzi
Serious about your content marketing? Trying to make it as a content marketing entrepreneur? Or just want to cut to what's important in the content marketing journey? Whether you are a seasoned content marketer or a beginner at content marketing, this is a must-read book. It will teach you the basics and set your mind buzzing with the possibilities of advanced content marketing. Joe Pulizzi makes content marketing accessible and easy to understand for all.
Stories that Stick by Kindra Hall
At the heart of great content marketing is the ability to tell a compelling story. That's one reason why I love content marketing - as a novelist, I can use my fiction writing skills to craft great content for my clients. Understanding the hero's journey, the concept of a villain when writing industrial copy, all of this I learned from Kindra Hall's approach to storytelling. Kindra's book will help you better understand the idea of stories as part of business writing and especially in content marketing.
What Are Your Favorite Content Marketing Books?
I've shared my 5 favorite content marketing books. Now, what are yours? Drop me a note and let me know your favorites. I'd love to add more great reads to my business book collection.
Why Long Form Content Is Great for SEO
When it comes to content marketing, it seems that every marketer under the sun has their own opinion about what works and what doesn’t. Some say that posting frequent short content pieces, such as blog posts, works the best. Others swear that long-form content, or articles and blog posts over 2,000 words, works the best. Who is right?
Long Form Copy Produces Better Organic Traffic
A firm called SERPIQ analyzed the search engine results position (SERP) for more than 20,000 keywords and discovered something very interesting. It seems that the length of the content had a direct correlation on a web page’s search engine results position.
Here’s a summary of their findings:
- All of the top 10 positions were dominated by posts with 2,000 or more words.
- The average word count for the top position was 2,416 words.
- Most posts averaged around 2,200 - 2,400 words.
Our Take on Long Form Copy
From my own research, I’ve concluded a few interesting facts about long-form content. I write a popular home and garden blog, Home Garden Joy, and include a “free gardening guide” section filled with long-form posts on topics gardeners want to learn about. The section is new, but growing. My goal is to add one long-form content piece each month.
Last month, I added a long-form piece on composting - How to Make Compost. I haven’t done much to promote it except send a special email out to my subscriber list to announce it and announce it via Twitter and Facebook. I decided to schedule some automated posts via HootSuite to share the link during peak traffic times on Twitter.
Almost immediately, a popular gardening website aggregator picked up on the link and included a blurb and link to my long-form content prominently on their website. Several shares on social media also increased visibility for the new guide. At last count, my site’s inbound links increased from 42 to 63. Not all are going to this content page, but I think the increase is partially due to the long-form content.
What Makes Longer Articles Appealing?
What makes long-form content so appealing? Long-form content appeals to website visitors seeking more than a cursory look at a topic. If the content is well-researched, it adds value and depth to the information, and makes your blog, website or article worthy of bookmarking or sharing.
By its very nature, long-form content also requires site visitors to spend more time on your website, another clue for search engines to use to gauge the value of your site. Longer, well-written and intriguing content naturally holds visitors’ attention longer, and if you include thoughtful links to related content on your site, you’ve also increased the time spend on your site even more.
Long-form content is great for really diving deeply into a topic. Some topics don’t lend themselves to long form content; others, however, naturally need more room to develop the thesis and explore the many nuances around the topic. Anytime you dive deeply into a topic, you’re adding value to the reader’s experience, which develops your relationship with the end-user and creates a favorable brand impression.
B2B Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition
I generally think of marketing in three phases: acquisition, retention and loyalty-building. Content marketers tend to focus on the tail end of that three-phrase cycle, loyalty building. B2B content marketing is ideal for building brand loyalty. Magazines, long-form content, case studies and similar content marketing strategies are often used to great effect by B2B marketers to boost loyalty. However, B2B content marketing for customer acquisition can be equally as effective if it’s done well.
Why Are Customers Looking for Your Products or Services?
All good marketing programs, including content marketing programs, begin by answering the question, “What do my customers want or need?”
People shop for products and services based upon needs. Those needs may be physical needs; you need milk for your cereal, so you go to the store to buy it. Needs may also be psychological. I made an appointment with my favorite hair salon a few weeks ago, and the first words out of my mouth to my stylist were, “Blonde me.” I needed a psychological “lift” for the new year, and my naturally ashy blond hair had turned dark brunette over the past year. An hour or two at the salon and I left with lighter hair and a lighter spirit. In that case, my needs were psychological.
Before crafting your content marketing programs, know what your customers want or need. Conduct surveys, listen to their comments on social media, visit with them, hang out with them, but do understand what they need. That understanding flows into the first segment of a three-step acquisition program.
Good B2B Content Marketing Begins with Education
Once you understand what your customers want or need, you can begin to think of how your products and services might fill that need. But don’t rush right into an advertising campaign disguised as content marketing. Instead, educate them first on how your products or services solve that need.
How do you educate customers via B2B content marketing? You have many choices:
- Educational content: This type of content tends to revolve around industry facts. Statistics, facts, data, product information are all forms of educational content marketing.
- How-to articles: Teach your customers how to tackle simple tasks that solve their problems and win their attention and loyalty. How to choose an accountant, how to tackle a computer-based task, how to do something smarter, better or faster are all great how to article types for B2B content marketing.
- Advice: I like using personal advice from an authority or expert to educate customers. This works best when your brand is already well-known or you have a strong ‘voice’ in the industry. I’ve used this successfully with manufacturing clients and those who have a very unique, specialized area of expertise. Customers are hungry for advice from a true ‘expert’ in their industry, especially industries where products are more prosaic and functional.
B2B Content Marketing as an Acquisition Funnel
All steps along your B2B content marketing program should act like a sales funnel, gently leading and guiding prospects to make that final decision to call, contact, or complete a sales action. Once you educate prospects, it’s time to introduce solution-focused content. Such content takes the educational information shared in step 1 and introduces your firm as a solution for whatever problem led them to your content in the first place. By helping, advising and guiding instead of hard-selling them on your product or service, you can share useful, actionable information without clubbing them over the head (figuratively, of course) emotionally with hyperbole charged rhetoric. Instead, you’re selling to professionals in a manner that appeals to them as business people.
Jeanne Grunert is the president of Seven Oaks Consulting, a content marketing writing and services firm based in Virginia. She hopes you found this article educational and informative.