By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about how effective content marketing is, especially since internet users today are a bit more critical of what they see and read online. Years back, digital marketers could get away with simply bombarding their audiences with content about their products or services. But not anymore.
Nowadays, effective content marketing is more than just creating blog posts or articles that talk about your product or services. It’s also about creating content that educates your audience and helps them make better decisions. After all, if you’re the only source of information for your audience, they’re likely to get bored and tune out eventually.
Your content should provide value first. Think about it this way: if your only goal is to sell your product or services, then you’re not really providing any value to your audience. But if you can help them learn something new or understand something better, then you’re giving them a reason to stick around.
In this guide:
- What is content marketing
- Why Is Content Marketing Important For Businesses Like Yours?
- 8 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Driving Results
What is content marketing really?
Content marketing is technically defined as a marketing strategy that is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
In other words: it’s creating informative or entertaining content to attract attention (and eventually customers) to your business. The keyword here is “informative” – to inform. While that may inject doubt, and it may feel like you’re turning your business website into an encyclopedia, it’s worth it in the long run.
Educating your audience and being able to provide guidance and solutions to their pain points can help you build trust and authority. Once you’ve established that, selling your product or services becomes more effortless.
Content marketing is not just about writing articles and blog posts, though. It’s also about creating videos, podcasts, infographics, ebooks, and more. Anything that can be used to educate or engage your audience can be considered content marketing.
Remember that content marketing is not the same as advertising. You’re not trying to sell your product or services outright with content marketing. Instead, you’re trying to provide value and build a relationship with your audience first. The hope is that, by doing so, they’ll eventually become customers.
On the other hand, advertising is all about selling. There’s no relationship-building involved — it’s all about getting people to buy your product or use your services.
To put it simply: content marketing is about providing value to your audience, while advertising is about selling to them.
Why Is Content Marketing Important For Businesses Like Yours?
Your business needs content marketing for the same reason that you need oxygen: it’s essential for survival.
In the past, businesses could survive (and even thrive) without content marketing. But in today’s digital age, it’s no longer an option — it’s a necessity.
Here are a few reasons why your business needs
10 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Important
- Build trust through content marketing and improve brand reputation.
Content marketing improves your brand reputation by increasing trust and credibility. Then you produce quality content that’s helpful and informative, you’re more likely to build trust with your audience. And when you have a trusting relationship with your audience, they’re more likely to do business with you.
Think about it this way: if you were looking for a new car, would you rather buy from a dealer that you’ve never heard of or one from which you’ve been reading articles for the past year?
The answer is probably the latter. The reason is that you trust them. You know they’re not going to try to cheat you or sell you a lemon. And that’s because they’ve built trust with you through their content.
The same goes for any business. If your audience trust you, the better your chances are of doing business with them.
2. Conversions are influenced by outstanding content.
Great content can be a great driver of conversion. Content marketing is an effective lead generation strategy. In fact, brands that adopted content marketing see 6x more conversions than businesses that don’t.
Content marketing effectively generates leads and sales because it helps you build trust with your audience. As we’ve already discussed, trust is a major factor in conversion.
3. The use of optimized content aids in SEO.
If your content is optimized for both search engines and user experience, chances are you will gain higher visibility and search for your target keywords and their variations. Google will see you as an authority on the topic and will be more likely to rank you higher in the search results.
So, how does great content help with SEO?
There are a few ways:
- Great content is keyword-rich. This means that it contains the keywords that people are searching for. Then you use these keywords in your content, you’re more likely to show up in the search results for those keywords.
- Great content is shareable. People are more likely to share great content with their friends and followers. And when they do, your business gets more exposure.
- Great content is link-worthy. Then other websites link to your content, it’s a signal to Google that your content is high-quality and worth ranking higher in the search results.
4. Creating excellent content is an inexpensive method to attract new clients.
Investing in content marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate leads and sales for your business. In fact, it’s about 62% cheaper than traditional marketing methods like TV or print ads. This is very helpful, especially for small businesses and startups with limited marketing budgets.
You don’t have to start from scratch every time you create new content. You can repurpose existing content, such as blog posts, infographics, and videos, and turn them into new pieces of content, such as ebooks or webinars.
If you don’t have the time or resources to create content yourself, you can outsource it to freelancers or agencies. This helps save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
With little budget, you will be able to connect with a larger audience by using content marketing. By creating valuable and interesting content, you’ll be able to attract more readers and followers who will eventually become your customers.
5. Creating great content displays your expertise on the subject matter.
When you produce quality content that’s helpful and informative, you’re not only building trust with your audience, but you’re also showing them that you’re an expert on the topic. This helps in building your credibility and establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Useful content helps your audience solve a problem. Then you provide helpful information that helps your audience solve a problem, you’re showing them that you know what you’re talking about.
Thorough content goes into detail and covers all the important points on a topic. This shows your audience that you understand the subject matter deeply.
By creating quality content, you’re helping your audience, but you’re also showing off your expertise. When you do that, you build trust and credibility with your audience, which can eventually lead to conversions.
6. Publishing great content will help you establish better relationships with your customers.
Customers today are more informed than ever before. They’re doing their research and looking for businesses that can provide them with the information they need.
If you can provide your customers with the information they’re looking for, you’ll be able to establish better relationships with them.
And when you have better relationships with your customers, they’re more likely to trust you, recommend you to their friends, and come back to you in the future.
7. Leads and customers want high-quality content!
If you want to generate leads and sales, you need to create high-quality content. This is because leads and customers are looking for helpful and informative information.
High-quality content helps customers make informed decisions about your products or services. It builds trust and credibility with your audience. Your customers will perceive you as an expert in your industry and it also helps you better understand your customers’ needs and wants.
If you create quality content that’s helpful and informative, people will keep coming back for more. This is because they know they can trust you to provide them with the information they need.
Creating high-quality content for your business is one of the best investments you can make.
8. Content marketing helps you develop an edge over your competitors.
If you’re not using content marketing, chances are your competitors are. This means they have a leg up on you. By creating quality content, you can develop an edge over your competitors.
By creating quality content, you’re able to attract more readers and followers who will eventually become your customers. Then you have more customers, you have a better chance of staying ahead of your competition. And when you have a loyal and trusting audience, you have an advantage over your competitors.
9. Content plays a vital role in each step of the marketing funnel.
The marketing funnel is the process that businesses use to market and sell their products or services. Publishing great content is crucial in every step of the marketing funnel. It nurtures leads and helps them move further down the funnel.
- Top-of-Funnel (TOFU):
Content must be informative and helpful at the top of the funnel to attract readers and followers.
Publishing great content aids in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. The awareness stage is when the buyer becomes aware of their problem or need. They recognize the problem and are now actively looking for a solution to that.
By publishing exciting content that caters to their pain points or problems, they are more likely to take notice of your brand.
- Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU)
Content must be more educational in the middle of the funnel to help leads make informed decisions about your products or services.
Your goal at the MOFU stage is to build trust and credibility with your audience. Therefore, you should create content that educates your leads so they can make an informed decision about your product or service. This can be done by publishing helpful and informative blog posts, infographics, case studies, ebooks, and whitepapers.
- Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU):
Your goal here is to get the lead to take action and buy your product or service. To do this, you need to publish convincing and persuasive content. This could include case studies, product demos, free trials, and coupons.
Related Reading: Content Marketing: Writing that Converts to Sales
10. Having valuable and interesting content is essential in every digital marketing strategy.
Content is essential in every digital marketing strategy. H w so? Well, first, optimized content can help you move up search rankings (SEO). Google loves long-form content. The more content you have, the better your chances are of ranking higher in search results.
And second, good content helps you create meaningful connections with your audience (social media). If your goal is to build a strong relationship with your customers and get them to like, know, and trust you, you need to publish quality content. Social media is about sharing great content after all.
Third, quality content can help you create a strong brand identity. Yo r brand identity is how your customers perceive you. It s what makes you unique and different from your competitors.
Creating quality content helps you communicate your brand identity to your audience. By publishing interesting and valuable content, you can show your audience what makes you different and why they should do business with you.
Lastly, in advertising, content can be used to create effective ad campaigns that drive results. Advertising is all about creating a message that resonates with your target audience. And what’s the best way to achieve this than publishing great content? By using content in your ads, you can reach your target audience and get them to take action.
Related reading: 25 Clever Content Marketing Examples with Amazing Results
8 Reasons Your Content Marketing Isn’t Driving Results
Let’s say your company has already invested heavily in content marketing and yet you barely see results. I’ve seen this happen all the time. One of the most common misconceptions businesses have about content marketing is that it’s all about just producing content.
Publishing content without a strategy in place is a NO-NO! You need to have a plan and know what type of content to produce and when to publish it. This is where most businesses fail. They produce random content without any rhyme or reason.
Here are some possible reasons for why your content isn’t driving results:
1. All of your content is written by your CEO, president, or founder.
The first reason why your content marketing may not be driving results is that you’re not creating the right kind of content. This means that you’re either not addressing the needs of your target audience, or you’re not producing quality content.
If most of your content is written by your founder, your content will likely focus more on your business’s current development as opposed to providing solutions to your target audience’s problems.
If you want to see results from your content marketing, you need to produce content that addresses the needs of your target audience. This means creating content that provides solutions to their problems or answers their questions.
2. Not everyone who writes is a content marketer.
Unfortunately, not every writer is a content marketer. Being a content marketer requires a specific skill set and knowledge. Just because someone can write doesn’t mean they can produce quality, shareable content.
When it comes to content marketing, you need to ensure that your writers understand how to produce quality content that’s interesting and valuable to your target audience. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and money.
3. You only use your blog to publish company updates.
If you only use your blog to publish company updates, then you’re not really doing content marketing. You’re just using your blog as another way to promote your business.
Content marketing is about creating and sharing valuable, interesting, and relevant content with your target audience. If you’re only using your blog to share company news, then you’re not really doing content marketing.
4. You did not set clear goals in your content marketing strategy.
If you don’t have clear goals for your content marketing, then you’re not going to see results. Your content needs to align with your business goals. It should be focused on achieving specific objectives.
Some common goals for content marketing include:
- Generating leads
- Increasing brand awareness
- Boosting sales
- Engaging customers
- Building customer loyalty
If your content isn’t aligned with your business goals, it will not help you achieve those goals.
5. You only have one person writing and editing your content.
If you only have one person writing and editing your content, you’re likely not to see the best results. This is because that one person is likely to get burned out and may not be able to produce quality content consistently.
It’s important to have a team of dedicated people to create and curate content. Thi team should include writers, editors, and designers.
6. Your content is not being promoted effectively.
If your content is not being promoted effectively, you’re not going to see results. You need to promote your content through various channels to reach your target audience.
Some common channels for promoting content include:
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Paid advertising
- Content syndication
- Influencer outreach
- PR
If you’re not promoting your content through these channels, you’re not going to reach your target audience.
7. You’re not integrating content marketing into your whole organization.
Content marketing needs to be a part of your overall marketing strategy. It should be integrated into every aspect of your business, from product development to customer service.
8. You’re not measuring your results.
If you’re not measuring your results, then you’re not going to know if your content marketing is working. So you need to track your progress and measure your results to see if you’re on track to reach your goals.
Some of the common metrics for measuring content marketing success include:
- Website traffic
- Lead generation
- Conversions
- Engagement
- Social media shares
There are several different ways to measure your content marketing results. But if you’re not measuring your progress, then you won’t be able to tell if your content marketing is working.
Final Thought
Content marketing is a valuable tool for any business. But it’s important to remember that it’s not all about your services. Your content needs to be interesting, valuable, and relevant to your target audience. If t’s not, then you’re not going to see results.
When it comes to content marketing, there are a few common mistakes that businesses make. These include: only using your blog to promote your business, not setting clear goals, only having one person writing and editing your content, and not promoting your content effectively.
If you want to see results from your content marketing, then you need to avoid these mistakes and create a solid content marketing plan. You need to create interesting, valuable, and relevant content. And it would help if you promoted it through various channels. Only then will you be able to reach your target audience and achieve your business goals.
Having a content marketing specialist on your team can help you avoid these mistakes and ensure that your content marketing is successful. Con ent specialists are experienced in creating and promoting interesting, valuable, and relevant content to their target audience.
If you’re not sure how to get started with content marketing or struggling to see results, consider hiring a content specialist in the Philippines like It’s a Writer’s World. I can help you create and promote content that will reach your target audience and help you achieve your business goals.
