Trends in content marketing are always changing. This makes it hard for marketers to keep up. It seems that what’s popular in May falls by the wayside by the time Halloween comes along.

One trend that has proven not only that it is extremely successful but that it has staying power is content marketing.

No matter where you go, there’s no escaping content. It’s everywhere online, Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – everywhere. Each piece of content that you publish online is digital real estate that will live on forever.

When done consistently, content marketing will always produce compound traffic growth for your website, and your leads will continue to increase as you add more content online.

This is what makes content marketing the best long-term digital marketing strategy for growing your business.

The good news is that successful content marketing is a painstaking process. Why is this good news? Because only a few people are willing to do whatever it takes to create great content.

With content marketing, you get more rewards the harder (and more consistently) you work.

Reasons Why Content Marketing Gets Results

A lot of the older marketing strategies such as direct mail and billboards are based on short-term results.

For example, while a billboard may work well for a while, eventually the design will become tiresome meaning that if you want to see another influx you have to purchase new space.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this kind of approach (especially if you are seeing positive ROI) but, if you want long-term success, you need a marketing strategy that has a lot more staying power.

This is where inbound strategies like SEO or social media marketing come in. They produce a slow build of rewards but the most effective long-term strategy is content marketing.

Content Marketing Influences All Other Online Marketing Strategies

Content marketing is the most powerful marketing strategy because it influences almost every other online strategy.

It can be used as a strategy to complement almost all other online marketing strategies:

• It assists SEO by providing more online ‘real estate’ as well as adding to your domain authority. Content also helps you to earn inbound links.
• It can be used to provide source material for your social media marketing campaigns.
• It encourages more sign ups for your email list and can be used as a basis for your email marketing campaigns.
• Content enhances the value of your web pages (especially landing pages)
• It can help you connect to other online industries and brands as well as build relationships.

Content also has a number of other positive effects in addition to these main complementary influences.

Here are 14 more:

1. It attracts new traffic as search engines love content

There are over a hundred billion searches that are processed by Google each month!

Each of us uses search engines daily and we depend on them for almost everything from business and learning to shopping and leisure. No matter what time it is where you are, you’ve probably used Google at least a few times already.

When you type a search query in Google, the results that are returned to you are content.

For example, a query for “best Mother’s Day gifts” would bring results that answer that question.

This is why it’s vital to have high-quality blog posts on your site that answer questions related to your business. Feed Google lots of great content and it will reward you with loads of great traffic.

More traffic relates to more leads and ultimately more sales.

Whether you’re just producing your own content for your blog or guest posting, people will be more likely to find your content and click through to your site.

Once there, you can encourage them to interact more on your site by internally linking your blog posts to other pieces of content on your site.

2. It allows prospects to get to know you and helps to build your reputation

Churning out great content on a consistent basis helps to build your reputation because the more people come across your content online, the better they will remember your brand, which means that your reputation will be higher with those individuals.

According to some studies published by Entrepreneur, over two-thirds of consumers would rather get to know a company through articles as opposed to ads.

Your content helps your prospects and clients to develop trust in your brand and to increase your authority in the industry.

3. Content marketing creates awareness, confidence, and trust in your brand

The generation of brand awareness is vital if you want to run your business successfully, and content is a great way of doing so. Before people can become your loyal customers, first they have to know about your business and the fact that you exist.

They must become familiar with your company before they are comfortable enough to do business with you.

Brand awareness is not just about people seeing your logo and recognizing it. It’s about prospects knowing your brand and everything it represents. It’s also about people loving your brand even before needing your product or service.

The most effective way of conveying your brand message is through content marketing. The more your content gets seen, the better your selling opportunities.

Whenever someone stumbles onto your site for whatever reason, their confidence in your brand can be secured by your content.

If your content is well-written, authoritative, and extremely helpful then your battle is as good as won.

4. Content marketing can significantly influence conversions

This is assuming, of course, that your content is of superior quality.

When you present your audience with well-written content, a call to action that is strategically embedded in your content will be more likely to result in direct conversions, which leads to more average revenue from each visitor to your site.

Content marketing has one goal: To inform and engage your audience.

Instead of making blatant sales pitches to your clients and prospects, content marketing helps you to show people that you really understand your industry and also that you are a credible authority on the subject.

Knowing this helps your prospects to view your products or services as necessary.

5. Evergreen content is forever

It’s called evergreen simply because it doesn’t decay.

News content, trendy content, or other forms of material that are focused in the moment are great and they attract tons of visitors, but there are some forms of content that will stay relevant forever.

A good example of this is advice for people on how to communicate better, travel efficiently, or tips for saving money and so on.

As technology develops, there may be some new elements to a lot of these features, but it’s easy to freshen up old posts with bits of relevant new information.

The content that you publish online will last forever (theoretically) and it will never lose value, which makes it the ideal long-term investment if you want continued success.

6. Each post you write is valuable web real estate

Anything that you publish on your site is a permanent part of the web that will always be there unless you change the URL or take down the post.

While there isn’t much you can do about your guest posts as they are under other editors’ control, for the most part, each new URL from content published by you is another opportunity for you to get indexed by Google and be found in organic search results by people who need your product or service.

7. Great content compounds returns

You are familiar with the idea of compound interest, right? While your investment is earning interest, your principal is growing and you’re earning more interest with each consequent round of compounding.

Well, since content is more or less permanent, it works in very much the same way.

Let’s say you publish posts once a week, by the end of the first year, you will have 52 posts that will give you 52 posts’ worth of results. If you produce another 52 posts the second year, you will now see 104 posts’ worth of results. In the third year you’ll see 156 posts’ worth of results, and so on.

In addition to that, you will see even greater effects as time goes because you’ve been at it longer, more people have seen (and remember) your name so they are reading even more of your content.

8. You can recycle your content and reuse it for different purposes

Something else that makes content marketing so powerful is the fact that you can recycle and reuse it for other marketing campaigns.

For example, if you have written a great quality blog post you can publish it on your website as well as share it on social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

You can then send push notifications to your audience via your app, directing them to the post. You can also use that piece of content to create a presentation or white paper.

The list goes on! As you can see, there are lots of ways in which you can use a single piece of content in multiple marketing efforts.

9. You can use video to increase understanding of your product or service

A great way to show off your products is by using video. Video is fast overtaking written content in popularity and studies show that visitors to your site are more likely to make a purchase of a product online after watching a video.

This is most probably because video helps to increase an individual’s understanding of a product or service more than the written word.

Why does this work?

Simply put, the more understanding someone has of what you do, the more likely they are to find value in your product or service and consider it to be something that they need.

10. Content marketing helps you build relationships

The main objective of using content marketing is to create and nourish good relationships with your audience. Your clients and prospects don’t want you to just sell them services.

They want to see that you care about them and building good relationships with them. If you can do this successfully, then you will be more likely to create life-long clients.

11. It can help you to increase your ROI

When you compare the data from studies about organic search leads close rate versus the close rate from outbound marketing leads (14.6% vs 1.7%), it’s clear that content marketing can not only help you to stay on top of your audience’s minds, but also to effectively increase your ROI as more folks will be finding you through organic searches.

Content marketing is also cost-friendly as it costs much less than traditional marketing.

12. Content marketing can help you create a separate stream of revenue

If your content is powerful enough, you can use it as a separate service from your business such as an eBook or extended white paper to bring in another stream of revenue.

13. Use content to catch the attention of your prospects

When they are looking at content marketing, a lot of consumers are on the lookout for products.

For example, someone reading an article on “yacht charter in Croatia” probably isn’t doing so just for fun, it’s likely because they are at some stage of planning a holiday there and they are considering their options.

Consequently, they may also be looking for someone to help them with their travel plans.

Bottom line, whenever you share a piece of content, you’re inspiring your audience to consider your products or services.

14. Content will always be necessary

New trends and new technology permeate the marketing environment constantly and this means that the function and form of content has to evolve. While content may evolve, it will never be unnecessary.

One example of this can be seen in video marketing. As previously stated, video is already overtaking written content in popularity.

Another example is semantic long-tail topics that took over in importance from topics that were keyword-focused.

But, whatever happens, content is always going to be relevant. The only thing that’s going to change is the way people produce it and how they access it.

In Conclusion

Content marketing is a long-term strategy, but the sooner you begin to invest in it, the sooner you will start to see the benefits of it. Conversely, the longer you delay getting started, the longer you will have to wait for results.

If you are currently working without any kind of content marketing strategy, it’s about time you gave some serious thought to establishing one.

Whether your strategy enhances the bottom line independently, or if it serves as a backbone for all your other inbound marketing techniques, in time, you will be glad that you did it.

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PlanetBizOp.com

->Steven

Updated: Originally published May 10th 2018