Back to the Basics: 7 Benefits of Content Marketing

Wouldn’t it be great if prospective customers were reaching out to you, rather than the other way around?

It really IS great—it’s what happens when you have a healthy content marketing strategy!

If you aren’t already familiar with content marketing, it is an essential part of Inbound Marketing. It’s when you offer your current and potential customers valuable content in the form of news, videos, articles, blogs, photos, infographics, how-to guides, case studies and more, to help build relationships, trust and rapport.

This type of strategy has become incredibly popular over the years, because as you publish a small bit of proprietary but helpful information via blog and social sites, this content brings prospects to you.

We are basically trying to say that content marketing rocks. Here’s why:

1. It generates leads. When you share your expert knowledge with the world by publishing interesting content, people who have a need for your expertise will start to look to you for advice.
2. It is cost-effective! Compared to traditional marketing methods, creating blog posts or YouTube videos can be significantly less expensive (yet often more effective). Because it is cost-effective, Content Marketing allows you to conduct experiments to optimize delivery methods, messaging and more.
3. It helps with SEO. If you have the right keywords in your content, it can help your website to be found more often.
4. It enhances social media. When you have the content, you can use it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more to encourage shares and to help drive people back to your website.
5. It earns you the right to push out sales-oriented messages later. Many businesses only push out messages when they are running a sale or a discount. Giving up just a part of your expertise goes a long way between sales messages.
6. It helps build trust with potential customers. If your expertise helps them with a problem, they are more likely to come to you for help in the future. And your current customers will receive constant assurance of your abilities and expertise.
7. Any company can use it! All that is needed is some creativity and dedicated time.

In case you aren’t convinced, let’s look at an example. Pretend your business is called Seven Kingdoms Event Planning. You decide you would like to try some content marketing, so you publish blog post on your website titled “10 Unique Westerosi Wedding Traditions.”

Brides and grooms visiting your site will be assured that you have a deep understanding of how to handle the traditional Westerosi wedding. Next, you might use social media or emails to entice prospects to visit your website using that same blog content. Also, thanks to the keywords in your post, your blog is now being found by brides who are searching for some Westerosi wedding inspiration—many of whom are discovering your business for the first time.

All the while, you have established yourself as an expert, and you are in the backs of the minds of everyone who saw the post and appreciated the information. Perhaps if some of the readers are fed up with planning their epic “Red Wedding” on their own, they will remember you and give you a call!

As you can see, content marketing is a strategy that can become invaluable to any business, big or small.

The key is to come up with engaging and informing content and a calendar of ways to publish the content. Content marketing is an excellent add-on to traditional marketing, so you really have nothing to lose by incorporating this method as part of your marketing strategy.

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