The benefits of content marketing are plentiful and can have a huge impact on your business. They can transform the way both audiences and search engines perceive your brand, building trust and establishing authority in the process.
If you want to learn more about all the content marketing benefits and why you should be doing it if you haven’t already – keep on reading.
What Is Content Marketing and The Benefits of Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing content that is valuable, relevant, and consistent. It does so to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and drive profitable customer action.
Instead of overtly selling or pitching your products, through content marketing, you can provide relevant and useful content to help potential customers solve their problems.
Organizations the world over use content marketing to increase their sales and boost their savings.
Now, let’s take a closer look at all the benefits of content marketing that could be yours for the taking.
#1 Boosts SEO and Traffic
Most, if not all, marketers will tell you that you can’t succeed in SEO without a great content strategy. In fact, it’s going to be the foundation of organic search and the best way to drive more traffic to a site.
Once you’ve addressed technical SEO issues, you have to keep continuously generating high-quality content that excites your audience. When you create content that’s useful to your audience and that they respond to, Google and other search engines will reward you with better rankings in search engine results pages (SERP).
What’s more, backlinks from websites and blogs with high authority will boost Google’s trust in your site. That said, you can’t expect backlinks when you provide watered-down, generic pieces of content. They want unique, engaging, relevant, and useful content.
An additional benefit of content marketing is that it adds keywords to your arsenal. In the process, it will help you strengthen results for your long-tail keywords. Over time, those keywords accrue with every piece of content you create, drawing in a variety of targeted traffic.
#2 Builds Trust and Establishes Authority
One acronym to always keep in the back of your mind is E.A.T. – Expertise, Authority, Trust. It basically sums up what Google wants to see from websites, and one of the benefits of content marketing is that it can help establish those qualities.
Every time you create content around the topics your audience cares about, you’re also creating a new opportunity. It’s a chance for someone who wasn’t previously familiar with you to come upon you in a search engine or social media and become aware of your brand.
If your content is relevant and useful, people will come to think of your brand as a trustworthy and reliable source. Not only that but your brand will become one that offers value and is worth keeping up with.
On top of it all, great content marketing is more likely to get shared on social channels, further extending its reach.
#3 Creates More Leads
Big retailers have swift sales cycles and with content marketing, you can move a new customer from awareness to purchase in a single session.
With a carefully placed call-to-action (CTA), you can generate new leads for your sales teams. With content, you can create content that provides useful, free information. The more invested a visitor gets, the more likely they are to click on your CTA and move onto your landing page.
#4 Better Traction on Social Media
Increasing your following on social media is great, but having your followers engage with your brand and your content is a different game. Through the power of content, you can also turn casual visitors into advocates for your brand. Those people who become brand advocates are transformative for your marketing ROI.
A brand advocate will engage with and share your content and help your brand build more followers. But if your content isn’t great and engaging, your audiences won’t have anything to connect to.
#5 Better Ranking and More Visibility
Another one of the biggest benefits of content marketing is that it can give you a better search engine rank.
In fact, according to a survey from BrightEdge, 68% of online experiences start with a search engine. When done right, content marketing can help your website and brand rank higher in search engines for popular keywords.
But why would you care about your ranking so much?
Well, as research shows, the first page of search engine results accounts for around 95% of all organic clicks. What’s more, the top five results garner about 67% of clicks.
#6 Improves Conversion
No matter how low or how high your conversion rates are right now, they could always be doing better and more. Luckily, you can leverage the benefits of content marketing through demand-generation strategies.
That means content can give life to your brand and help consumers discover new products or solutions. It can also create a story that your customers will want to participate in and help them feel like they’re part of something.
But above all else, demand generation strategies will build trust, address concerns, answer questions, and help you sell.
#7 Builds Brand Awareness
Content marketing is a unique way to build brand awareness because it does more than just rank your blog. It makes your content, as well as your brand, appear in the right places, i.e. where your audience is.
Whether someone encounters your content in SERPs, a link from a friend, or an industry source – they’ll be exposed to your company and products. And once they go through the content funnel, they might even become a new customer or an advocate of the brand.
So the more keywords you rank and the higher you position them, the more likely potential customers will find it and follow through to learn more about your brand.
#8 Supports Audiences Through the Conversion Funnel
Speaking of the funnel, content marketing and SEO have a unique ability to target each stage. They can impact awareness, consideration, and decision.
It doesn’t matter where the customer is in the funnel or what they’re searching for. You can create content to address their needs precisely when they need it most.
If your customers are only in the awareness stage, you can address a particular concern they have. If they’re in the consideration stage, you should be trying to convince them that you offer the best option.
And if they’re in the decision phase, remind them how your product answers their concerns and why it’s the best fit.
To learn more about content marketing and how it can expand your reach – get in touch with Guru SEO Services today.
Through careful planning, extensive research, and a wide variety of SEO services, including content development – we can take your business to new heights.
