How do you respond when approached by someone on the street asking you to buy something? It’s a turnoff to say the least. According to Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, humans are hard-wired to fulfill their own needs first. People want to feel important and respond best when you put things in terms of what matters to them. Content marketing harnesses these principles to create a positive, yet subtle, buying process. And if done right, it won’t feel like selling. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing has six times the power of traditional marketing for converting people into leads and leads into customers. Can you say game changer? Keep scrolling to read about four mind-blowing advantages of content marketing.
Build Awareness, Trust and Expertise
After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of U.S. online consumers made a purchase. This just goes to show that as you create valuable pieces of targeted content directly related to solving your prospects’ problems, you gain trust and establish yourself as an expert. For example, if you are trying to start a running shoe business, maybe instead of buying an email list and blasting your latest deals, you start by offering helpful articles on social media explaining how you can increase your endurance through interval training. After perusing your article, your new reader likes your page and maybe even subscribes to your blog, giving you another means of communicating tips or offers (High five!). Then perhaps you send your new friend a newsletter with workout plans detailing how to train for your next race in three months or less, and oh, by the way, here is our deal of the day.
Blasting emails to a rented/purchased list may get your product out there, but it’s one way, intrusive and kinda rude really. It doesn’t get to know the runner or take into account what the runner cares about. With content marketing, you first take the time to think about the runner’s problems and craft your offering around their needs to spark their interest. Utilizing this strategy, you become an expert in your industry. So when the time comes to purchase some killer new running shoes, your new-found friend instinctively recalls your brand since you clearly go way back and have been on the radar offering pro-tips all along the way.
Nurture the Relationship Through Small Touches
Any good relationship needs time to grow, and typically that growth occurs through small, consistent interactions. Let’s be real, it’s hard to develop a deep friendship if you only reach out once every six months to talk about the weather. You need to cultivate the relationship by regularly checking in to see how things are going and offering something meaningful to the conversation. In content marketing, this is achieved by having a library of well-thought-out content at the ready to fuel social media, email and other scheduled marketing programs. The goal is to create pieces that match each stage of the relationship or sales cycle so you can continue to nurture your budding friendship. For example, blog posts and eBooks for the “getting to know you” phase, ROI calculators and product brochures for the evaluation stage, and client testimonials for the validation stage. Each communication furthers the relationship, grows your expert status, builds trust and gets you closer to closing the deal.
Increase Web Traffic and Conversions
Once you start building up your expert status, Google and other search engines will take note too. By creating loads of content on your site you naturally build more inroads that drive traffic and help you rank higher in searches. In fact, websites with blogs have 434% more search engine-indexed pages than other business sites that don’t publish content. Your content matches more searches and therefore comes up in more results. Once on your website, valuable and relevant content increases the time spent per page, giving you more opportunity to establish expertise and increase conversions. And you know what increased conversions equal...Yes, more sales!
Cost Savings and ROI
Content marketing is not a flash-in-the-pan strategy like some traditional advertising can be. With many outbound (read: old-school) forms of marketing like TV, radio, print and outdoor advertising, you pay big dollars, your cross your fingers and hope for the best — because, sadly, there isn’t a lot of ROI tracking available. Content, on the other hand, is easily trackable through stats like number of downloads, shares, page views, time spent on page, forms completed, etc. You data analysts out there can really geek out on all the ways to measure the success of your content pieces.
Content on the web also has a longer shelf-life than a magazine that goes in the trash or an ad read by an announcer at the game. It actually gets better or “compounds” over time in many cases, as inbound software company Hubspot says. Once you post a blog or a video, those pieces stay around pretty much indefinitely and can continue to garner new readers or viewers. This is especially true if you are producing “evergreen” content, or content that isn’t tied to any current event or trend, something that stays universally true over time. And just so you know I’m not making this stuff up, Content Marketing Institute cites content marketing as costing 62% less than outbound marketing and generates three times as many leads. Whoa! If that isn’t enough to sell you, I’m not sure what is.
So let’s review. You have trust, expertise, relationship nurturing, increased web traffic, cost savings, ROI, conversions, sales and... you’ll look pretty smart doing it, too. Though I’m not gonna lie, this approach takes commitment, time and hard work to continually deliver quality pieces your audience wants to read. But is it worth it? Ohhhhh, yes.
What other benefits have you seen from your content marketing or inbound marketing efforts?
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