It's true--some people still aren't sold on content marketing. They think it takes too much time, it's too expensive, or it's too complicated. But if those people want their websites to succeed, they need to understand that the benefits they'll see are worth the time, money, and resources needed to add content to their marketing strategies.
Consumers have been so overwhelmed by traditional marketing messages that they've stopped responding to them, so marketers have had to find a new way to reach their customers, and content is the answer. Consumers have replaced the search for products with the search for information, and sites that provide this information enjoy greater success and loyalty than those that don't.
If your clients are still skeptical about content marketing, here are four reasons why it's worth the investment.
Greater Brand Awareness
Consumers don't pay attention to most marketing messages unless they're already familiar with the company, so if you're planning to launch an ad campaign introducing your site, save your money. Instead, invest in a content marketing strategy that has a better chance of getting you noticed.
For most businesses, a blog is a great starting point, Create a list of topics that are relevant to your potential customers. What interests them? What challenges do they face? What information would help them? Why would they want to buy your products or services? As you build content that addresses their needs and answers their questions, they'll start to remember your blog. Over time, they may start sharing your content with their networks, and before you know it, you're getting repeat visits from loyal readers.
Greater Customer Engagement
Traditional marketing is focused on one transaction, starting with a call to action and ending with a purchase. Throughout the process, the customer is often treated less like a person and more like a revenue stream. But content provides an opportunity for customers to interact with you and your business in a more informal way.
Even though the goal of content is to increase traffic and sales, its substance focuses on what consumers wants to know. This makes them feel more comfortable interacting with your site because they haven't been hit over the head with a sales pitch. As they start to engage with your content, they wind up interacting with fellow consumers on your site, which not only turns your site into a discussion forum, but also provides valuable feedback that you can use to create even more relevant content in the future.
Broader Reach
The problem with most marketing efforts is that they don't travel well. They reach their intended audiences and generate a good response, but it doesn't have much of a reach beyond that. But content knows no such boundaries. In fact, social media and other online networking helps your content travel further than ever.
Unlike traditional marketing, which reaches only a finite number of leads, content can reach audiences you didn't even know existed. For instance, you might produce a video that only reaches a few hundred people. But if you've followed the rules of content marketing, that video has resonated so strongly with viewers that they share it with their friends and colleagues. Those people then share it with their friends and colleagues, and before you know it your content has reached thousands of new potential customers.
Higher Return on Investment
All the benefits listed above are nice to have, but most marketers are concerned with how much it costs to generate them. Online marketing has become more profitable as increasingly accurate and sophisticated analytics tools made it easier to measure, and based on the numbers, content marketing pays for itself very quickly.
Take a look at some of these content marketing statistics:
- Content marketing generates an additional 25,000 clicks over several months.
- It generates 31 leads for every $1000 versus nine from paid search.
- The cost per lead for content is 31% lower than for paid search marketing.
In short, your investment in content goes a lot further than other marketing methods, generating more traffic and revenues at lower costs.
Content marketing doesn't happen quickly, easily, or cheaply, but nothing worth doing ever does. If your clients want their sites to make an impression on potential customers, give them the tools to make content part of their online marketing mix.
