Top Ten Benefits Of Creating A Content Marketing Strategy For Your Business

Gone are the days when one could engage in impersonal marketing and still make good sales. Today, the focus is on connecting at a personal level with the customers. This emotional connection breeds loyalty which in turn boosts your business.

But how do you create and strengthen this connection? The best way to do it is through content marketing. Content Marketing includes website articles, blog posts, guest blog posts and social media posts.

But it is not just about writing words, it is about telling a story that strikes the emotional aspect of your potential and existing customers. If you just write articles about how good your products are or how long you have been around, no one will be interested to learn more about your brand. You need to provide information such as useful advice, how-to tips and latest developments; basically anything that gives value to them. It should of course relate to your products and services.

So, as you create a marketing plan for your business, do not fail to include a comprehensive marketing strategy that will guide you through the content marketing process for best results. If you are still not convinced that this will not work for you, here are 10 benefits of content marketing that will bring drastic positive change to your business.

1. Identifying your audience

Often, brands make the mistake of not identifying and understanding their customers. It is needed to learn more about them; what’s their average age? Where do they get their gardening information? Which social media sites are mostly used?

To make content marketing strategy a success, it is necessary to identify your audience. This way, the content created will be designed to attract a specific target audience. Once you have identified and understood your audience, the knowledge will come in hand in other aspects of marketing and in customer service. This will serve to solidify the business-customer connection even more.

2. Better social media strategy

As mentioned before,social media is an inherent part of content marketing. This is because on a network you are simply posting the right kind of content, textual or visual, that will spur engagement from your followers. By incorporating a good content marketing strategy you will take bigger steps in brand promotion on social media.

3. Increased inbound traffic

One of the best and most effective ways to increase the amount of traffic coming to your site is by creating content that naturally attracts people. This is called inbound marketing where visitors come to your site without being coerced (as is the case with banner ads). This type of traffic is considered to be of a very high quality since it is more likely to convert. Of course you must use tools such as SEO, blogs and social media to get your content out there so that it can be seen.

4. Higher search engine ranking

When your content is good enough it will spread a lot in social media and other sites will link to it. This is the perfect recipe for a first page ranking on Google for certain searched keywords. Your ranking will also be positively affected by the good quality and value of content.

As you plan your SEO strategy remember that content marketing is an indispensable part of it and when rightly executed, the results can be amazing.

5. Increased brand exposure

As a business, you must continually grow your customer base by seeking to expose your brand beyond the current limits. This will bring in new leads and consequently new customers that guarantee sustained growth in sales.

Content marketing is an excellent way to create this exposure. The increased ranking and engagement on social media ensures that a lot of people get your message and check you out. To create even more engagement, consider using short videos and images which tend to be viewed and shared more than textual content.

6. Establishes you as an authority in a specific field

When people are searching for information online, they want it from a site they can trust. This means that to increase your inbound traffic you must show yourself to be an expert and authority in your area of business. You can achieve this by producing valuable and relevant content – whether on your site, social media or on other blogs. If Google perceives your site as a thought leader, your ranking will benefit immensely. In addition people are more likely to opt for your site over others.

7. More open communication with customers

Sometimes it is really challenging to collect feedback from customers. Even if you use questionnaires and surveys to ask about their customer experience, they most probably won’t be very open. A better way to obtain feedback is to do it naturally by engaging customers through content marketing.

Using a blog, you can create a community and customers will find it easier to communicate their joy and displeasure concerning your business. The same goes with using social media. This feedback is crucial in improving service delivery.

8. Creates trust

Written words are more powerful than the spoken ones. Content Marketing creates trust amongst the customers as they consider it to be honest and authentic.

9. Cost- Effective

Though, at the beginning you may have to invest money and time into content marketing, but gradually it proves to be cheaper than other forms of marketing. Paid search engine marketing, sponsored ads on social media and banner ads all call for constant financial investment. With content marketing you just need to continually produce the right content and spread it out.

 10.  It is timeless

A lot of digital marketing methods have come and gone because of the constantly changing nature of the internet. But content marketing is one technique that will never cease to be effective. In fact, it can only get better.

Identify your measurable objectives, understand your audience and create content marketing methods that are in line with your target.