Technology is evolving day by day, and so is everyone connecting to it. Marketing approaches took a sharp turn recently and paved the way to introduce digital marketing to all the online businesses out there. Though every one regarded it as an expensive and complicated approach first, it is slowly becoming a necessity for all the small and big companies.
Digital marketing comes with a lot of elements, and today we are going to discuss how content marketing is the most crucial among them all. But before getting into further details, let’s get to the basics.
What Is Content Marketing?
Traditional marketing is fading away pretty fast, and every marketer is looking forward to finding an effective alternative to enter the era of content marketing.
“Content Marketing is a strategic online approach that aims at creating and distributing relevant, valuable, and compelling content to its readers to gain maximum visitors on its website without being promotional about the company and its services.”
Read that definition again and understand the worth of good content. It not only attracts more visitors to your website like a magnet but also keeps them lingering upon your profile in a longer run, thus being the most effective way to drive your online marketing campaigns.
Content marketing is more of a commitment than a campaign. Below, I have talked about some principal reasons that justify this statement.
1. Slides Your Brand Into the Audiences’ Minds
“Content is the reason search began in the first place.”
– Lee Odden
You see, it is the beauty of content marketing – it grabs the attention of a majority of audiences without even pitching them about the products or services you provide. How? I’ll explain this with an example.
Let’s say, you Google the recipe for egg-less chocolate cake, and notice the blog that popped up at the top out of 83,00,000 search results? You perceive that it has ranked the highest, so it might have the best content.
Moreover, every time you search for the same recipe, you witness almost the same results, so you prioritize reading the top-most blogs over the others. These blogs may have back-links to their website. You click on them because you find them relatable. As a result, you go through their site and come to know about the services that the marketer provides. Bingo. Great content always wins the audience.
2. Enhances Search Visibility and Website Ranking
“The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google.“
Have you ever read that quote before? Well, now, you did.
When you search for a product or service, you only read the content available on the first page. You, most probably, don’t even go past the first five results, forget about clicking on the second page. A website, thus, needs a solid SEO to help rank on the first page, and content marketing is one of the most effective ways to do so.
Every new blog you add on your site becomes a new page for Google to index. High-quality content created with targeted keywords increases perceived expertise, relevance, and trust on a website. It leads to more inbound links from other sources, which, in turn, increases the domain authority. Higher D/A implies higher ranking and higher organic search visibility. Thus, a digital marketer must make sure that they create the highest quality content possible.
As a matter of fact, even the sites with low DA/PA rank quickly with relatable and valuable content for the masses.
3. Can be Utilized by Literally any Industry
Is there any topic on which you cannot find information on Google? Of course, there isn’t. When it comes to crafting content, one can do so for virtually any topic starting from assembling a lego game to building a motorcycle from scratch.
Your brand becomes more approachable for the viewers if you provide them with insights regarding the topics that you cover in your business. There is nothing that falls into the category of harmful content. You can create content for any niche you want to. You don’t have to add or come up with anything new. Just rewrite the things that you know in a way that others on the Internet didn’t do.
explains this phenomenon very well with their quote, “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; you just need to share your unique perspective on why the wheel is important.“
4. Prime Source of Driving Traffic and Engagement
“Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks with them.”
Better content generate interest. The more your audience shares your blog, the more new viewers visit your site, and the more your existing customers feel connected to your brand.
When you have interesting content, your users will have reason to stick around your site, reading further topics and coming across more of the services that you provide. Thus, it becomes more convincing for them to believe in your services. You can also keep your audience engaged in your social media platforms using automation tools like Socinator, Hootsuite, BuzzSumo, etc.
Another way to effectively channel your creativity into your content is via guest posts. When you provide content to the external publications as a guest, you get the chance to link your website and services there. This way, your site gets exposure among the readers on their site. By doing so on a site with high D/A and good traffic, a marketer can earn thousands of audiences with a single guest post.
5. Assists You in Adapting the Changing Trends
How would you deliver what your consumers prefer if you don’t know about it in the first place? So, talk to them through your content, and try to understand what they want based on their response.
“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”
The aim of crafting content is not limited to gaining more and more audience. As an online marketer, you need to keep an eye on the changing trends and shape your strategies accordingly. Talk to your audience about anything, in general. Write an article on a recent Instagram update, any upcoming technology, inclination towards a healthy lifestyle, the influence of social media- anything that resonates around your business, yet sounds trendy for the readers.
Analyze your posts and record everything- audience reach, number of shares, click-through rate, etc. This way, you get to know about the type of posts that your audience likes and talk about the services they want from you.
6. Fills the Gap Between a Buyer and a Seller
“Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left.“
Let’s say you build the next big thing in the market. You come up with the best marketing strategies, and now, your brand becomes pretty popular among the potential audience. What next? How will you convince them to buy what they see? How will they know that your product is valuable for them unless you tell them directly about it?
People, these days, want to learn about things before they buy them. Convincing them becomes a lot easier with content, be it on a search engine or a social media site. Content is the only thing that bridges the gap between marketing and sales in the journey of a buyer.
Good content provides answers to the questions that your buyer has regarding how, what, where, and when should they buy your product.
The aim of any advertisement agency remains the same- to convey the right message to the viewers about the products displayed. This process becomes much more effective and seamless with content marketing.
7. Reaches A Myriad Of Audience
This point is as obvious as the noonday sun. One of the main reasons behind brands going digital from traditional is the amount of exposure that they are going to get with this shift. In the words of Jeremiah Owyang, Founder of Crowd Companies-
“Google is the new corporate homepage.”
Folks of the Internet make things go viral in no time (we all know about the egg that broke the Internet). Your brand can reach thousands of potential leads when marketed correctly.
With 4.48 billion active users there comes a lot of online competition. If your content is relatable, it will grab maximum eyeballs, will make sure that your brand remains on the top of their mind, and will assist you in getting conversions, not just clicks.
As we already discussed above, you get maximum site visits when your content ranks up on the first page of a search engine. It helps build trust in the minds of the readers and increases your brand reliability, thus increasing your revenues exponentially.
Wrapping It Up
If you think that content is the king, you probably need to expand your vision. It is not the king. It is the whole kingdom. As you might decipher how important it has become in the world of digital marketing, it is pretty safe to say that content drives the online market more than we expect.
The information we gather from the Internet has become one of the primary sources of knowledge. Folks rely a lot on the online content and find it very credible. Thus, every marketer needs to focus on the type of content they create in order to stand out among the competitors in their audiences’ eyes.
Content is, indeed, driving the online market, and probably it will keep doing so in the near future.
Let me know if I missed anything in the comments below.
Image Credit: Toa Heftiba, Pexels