What is content marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute (one of the industry’s leading authorities), “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach 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.”
And we’ve all heard it (probably more times than we care to), but I’m going to say it again, “CONTENT IS KING.”
Bill Gates nailed it back in 1996 when he wrote an essay titled “Content is King” that he published to the Microsoft website whereby he stated that content is where much of the “real money” will be earned on the internet — and he clearly wasn’t wrong.
A 2022 Statista report¹ states, “Data suggests that content marketing revenue reached nearly 66 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, and according to the latest forecasts, the content market industry is set to double revenues by 2026.”
It’s safe to say that content marketing isn’t going anywhere. It’s one of the leading marketing strategies, and it’s important that even small businesses have an established content marketing strategy in order to compete in their respective marketplace.
Content marketing helps your audience to know, like and trust your brand. It answers your audience’s questions and helps you to develop relationships, attract more leads, nurture existing leads into prospects and eventually convert those prospects into customers.
Here are three reasons why content marketing is important.
Content marketing attracts high-quality leads
High-quality leads are people interacting with your brand and content who have a high chance of converting into customers. They either know your brand and are ready to buy, or they know they have a problem, understand what they need to solve that problem and they are ready to find the best option for solving the problem.
Your competition is using content marketing
Even if you’re not using content as part of your overall marketing strategy, it’s highly likely that your direct competitors are, because 97% of businesses use content marketing².
And if they are doing it well, then it means that your competitors are more likely to have a visible online presence, grab the attention of leads, better engage audiences and convert more leads into sales.
Content marketing is the present and future of marketing
As mentioned above, content marketing isn’t going anywhere. It’s here to stay, because consumers like digesting content and they like to be in the know. Content nurtures them, builds loyalty and improves customer retention. Plus, it brings in more leads and ROI in the long run.
How is content marketing done well?
Like any other marketing initiative, in order to execute the tactics well, you need a strategy in place, first and foremost.
Your content strategy should outline your goals and supporting objectives, your content pillars, the channels you’ll use to distribute your content, the types of content you’ll create, your audience and the key performance indicators you’ll use to measure the success of your content.
You’ll also need a content creation strategy that informs you and your team on how you’re going to create consistent, valuable content for your audience. This will save you time, money and resources because it will help you to be intentional about the process and the end product(s).
Whether it’s videos for YouTube, captions for social media or long-form content, such as a blog or white paper, having a strategy and plan for your content creation process is crucial to your efficiency and success in content marketing.
Do you have a content marketing strategy in place for your small business? If not and you want to understand it better, or if you’re just unsure of your strategy, schedule a quick call with me and we can assess your needs!
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