Top 7 Benefits of Content Marketing You Must Know

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic digital marketing method that is focused on creating and providing relevant and useful content to a clearly defined audience. Instead of pitching your products and services directly, the goal is to provide valuable content to your prospects and drive profitable customer action.

The annual growth in organic traffic is 7.8 times higher for businesses that engage in content marketing.

Top 7 Benefits of Content Marketing

1. Boost Your Website Traffic

Anyone serious about their digital marketing efforts knows that it is impossible to win at SEO without a good content strategy. Effective content is the foundation of organic search and the best way to drive more traffic to your website. When you continuously create good and useful content that answers search queries, Google will reward you with high rankings on the search engine results page (SERP). If you continue to generate unique and valuable content, you will also get requests from high-authority websites and blogs for backlinks. 

2. Drives More Sales

Many people think that boosting website traffic (especially inorganic traffic) will drive more sales. However, this is not always the case. But content marketing ultimately helps you with both - more traffic plus more sales. Before making any purchase, a customer needs to realize that they have a problem that needs to be solved (awareness), research about their problem and its solutions (consideration), and make a decision on which solution to opt for (decision). Content marketing helps solve all three of these stages by helping out potential customers with what they are searching for and building a relationship with them.

3. Doesn’t Annoy People

Traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective because nobody likes in-your-face marketing. Think of the last time you even bought something from an ad that interrupted you in the middle of the day. Research shows that a staggering 40 percent of people use ad blockers and this number is surely not going to decrease with time. Some form of advertising is a good way to showcase your brand, but spending a lot of money on it isn’t the best way to win them over. It is important to note that content marketing, when done effectively, generates three times the leads and costs 62 percent less than other marketing channels.

4. Increase Your Social Media Following

One of the most important benefits of content marketing is that it helps to increase your followers on social media. While this may not be your initial goal while developing good content, it is something that will surely happen as your readers garner more interest in your brand. They would like to follow you on social media to make sure that they stay updated with your future articles. Many of your readers will also share these blog posts and articles with their own followers, which helps to exponentially build your brand over time.

5. Better Customer Service

How many times does your customer service team need to answer the same questions every day? Whether it is how to sign up for a new service or how to use your product, an informative blog can answer those questions. Also, most people prefer to find these answers through an online search instead of reaching out to customer service. This gives your team more time to deal with other customer problems instead of regular questions.

6. Create a Brand Personality

Another one of the benefits of content marketing is creating a personality for your brand. A brand is more than just a logo, color, or name. Successful brands are able to market their values that paint a complete picture of who they are, what drives them, their personality, and their values. Is your brand about beauty products? You can create content about body positivity, inclusivity, and similar causes. A brand personality lays the groundwork for the story of who you are as a brand. While your products and services pages may not let your personality sign through, your blogs and articles will surely be able to. 

7. Multiple Learning Formats

Each customer has very own requirement and there is no universal format that can cater to all their needs at once. While some people like to read, others may prefer a video or listen to a podcast instead. One of the best advantages is that you can use multiple learning formats to meet different customer needs while keeping your voice and values consistent. Here are some of the most common formats in content marketing that you can use to your advantage:

• Blog posts
• White papers
• Infographics
• Webinars
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Interviews
• Live Q&As

Is Content Marketing the Future?

If you’ve been asking yourself whether content marketing is the future, the answer is a resounding YES! There is no better long-term marketing strategy that provides compounding ROI without pushing your customers away. Creating a good content marketing strategy is one of the most important steps for the success of a business. If you want to learn more about content marketing, Simplilearn’s Advanced Content Marketing Certification Training Course is designed to help you master various aspects of planning and executing content marketing strategies. This course will help you create impressive content with greater efficiency to drive sales in your company. Sign up for this course today and become an expert content marketer.