Why content marketing matters
I talk a lot about the importance of adding relevant content regularly to websites. And that’s because it’s really important in today’s day and age!
Consumer behaviour has changed enormously in the past decade, and your business outreach needs to factor that in. Content marketing is the present – and the future – of marketing. But if you don’t understand what it is or why it’s important, it’s easy to ignore it or think it isn’t relevant to your business.
Here are a few stats for you:
- Google processes over 99,000 searches per second around the world…over 8.5 billion a day
- 84% of us use Google 3 or more times a day to search for information
- 63% of Google’s organic search traffic originated from a mobile device (this makes it more likely to be location based and also after fast facts rather than complex information)
In our society, knowledge is everything and your potential clients will be trying to educate themselves. You need to be ready to help them…or they will go elsewhere!
So let’s cover the basics of content marketing for beginners to give you a better understanding:
- what is is in a nutshell
- types of content you can create
- most importantly, why it’s essential for your business
What is content marketing?
- Traditional marketing: telling the world you’re awesome at what you do
- Content marketing: showing the world you’re awesome at what you do
At its core, content marketing emerged as a way for businesses to demonstrate their expertise, rather than talking about themselves. In today’s environment, they way to show your knowledge is to share information and content related to your clients’ needs.
Content marketing 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.
At its core, content marketing needs to be:
- Relevant: current and applicable to your target audience
- Valuable: this means it can’t be fluff or full or jargon – it should be accessible and ready to help your potential client
- No strings attached: it should be free
- Your information: if you’re show casing your information, it needs to be your insight, not copied and pasted from someone else.
The initial purpose is to give information away freely, as it relates to your ideal client. That isn’t to say each piece of content should have a direction action associate with it! You can guide that action with calls to action or registration pages.
Furthermore, a profitable customer action can be a number of things, not just signing on as a new client:
- Registering for an event
- Getting in touch for a meeting
- Referring you to a potential client
- Applying for a job
- And also signing on as a new client!
What type of content does that include?
Content can come in a wide range of formats, across different platforms. These include:
Blogs
This is written content on your website that helps to boost your web presence and can be shared across platforms. These are typically 300-1,000 words and should be optimised for easy reading for your visitors.
Webinars and events
These are sessions where you talk about a particular topic of relevance for your target audience. In-person sessions have the added benefit of networking! You can also partner with frequent referrers to widen your reach.
Resources and guides
Resources are meatier pieces of written content that can be downloaded from your website, or shared as a tool to generate leads.
PR
Public relations (PR) can be from press releases, but also more in-depth articles in magazines, local press and trade publications.
Newsletters
Email newsletters are a fantastic way to stay in touch with your audience and signpost content to your website. They can be weekly, fortnightly, or monthly and you can curate a collection of your content from the previous time period. They’re also a great way of capturing potential leads.
Podcasts
Podcasts are recorded conversations about a topic and published on a regular basis. They often include different guests in an informal and engaging format.
Social media
Social media this is a great way to amplify your website content to a wider audience. But it’s essential to tailor your content to the particular platform you use. Valuable content is a good reason to connect on social media!
Video
There are 30 million daily active users on YouTube and it comes up in Google’s search rankings. A great idea is to turn your blog content into video content. You can also cut snippets of your longer video content to share on social media.
Re-purposed content
The great thing is you can re-purpose one piece of content across all of these different platforms. They don’t have to be done in isolation.
Why is content marketing important for your business?
Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts audience decision-making more than any other technique.
Content consistency:
- establishes your credibility
- builds trust
- strengthens your reputation
The best part? It has no limit to its reach! Once your content is live, it works 24/7 for you, educating your potential clients.
Content marketing has numerous benefits for professional service businesses:
- Demonstrates your deep understanding of issues your clients (and potential clients) care about. This helps to build trust, essential for professional service providers.
- Adds value to your audience, aiding client retention by providing a better experience (as well as opportunities for cross selling)
- Saves you time by putting the information you regularly communicate in one central place.
- Helps your pipeline by educating your target audience. This means they’re in a more informed place to discuss services with you, improving your sales funnel
- Essential to your website presence and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
How we can help
If you need help making sense of content marketing, get in touch today! We can help put together a bespoke content marketing strategy tailored for your unique business .