Content marketing is one of the most popular and effective forms of marketing, practiced by 100% of marketers today. It is a valuable strategy to achieve many important marketing goals, including improving SEO, increasing brand awareness, building long-term brand loyalty, generating leads, and increasing conversions. With the right approach, your content can generate more leads at a lower cost than traditional advertising.
Content marketing has been around for decades, as savvy businesses have always understood the power of sharing useful, engaging information as a way to connect with potential customers. With the rise of digital marketing agency /agencies, marketers began using high-quality, free content as a way to attract potential customers to their brands online.
Advantages of Content Marketing
With over 80% of digital marketers reporting that content marketing is a top priority (the average B2B { Business-to-Business} brand makes up 26% of their marketing budget), it's clear that content marketing is a popular marketing tool.
Talking about the benefits of content marketing means gaining a deeper understanding of why content marketing is important and what it can do for your brand. Here are some advantages of content marketing.
#1. Better return to investment
Research shows that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing like ad campaigns. The main savings come from the fact that you publish the content on your channels, such as your blog, website, and social media channels.
The cost of content marketing is derived from the cost of creating the content. New technologies like AI and SEO content marketing techniques are making the content creation process increasingly efficient and affordable for brands of all sizes.
However, there is one important difference: your content remains accessible to potential customers for as long as you want. You can constantly make changes and updates to it, and it continues to add value for months, even years, compared to an expensive ad campaign that lasts a few months at most.
#2. Boosting conversion rates
Even though content marketing isn't explicitly sales-driven, it can still have a powerful impact on conversions. Previous studies have linked effective content marketing with increased sales of up to 600%. Yet it can be difficult to fully measure the impact of content marketing.
Unlike a fixed-term advertising campaign, which provides a quick increase in conversions, content marketing is a long-term strategy. It develops lasting relationships with customers resulting in a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) than a simple one-time advertising campaign.
#3. Generating High-Quality Leads
It has been proven that content marketing generates 3 times more high-quality leads per euro spent than paid advertising. Because this is an inbound strategy, you know that the people who find your content are very likely to be in the market for something your company is selling. In that sense, content marketing filters out low-quality leads and attracts high-quality leads.
#4. Raising brand awareness
Branded searches (Internet searches that contain a specific brand name) are a rare privilege available only to well-established brands. Especially if your brand is relatively new to the market, your chances of attracting branded searches are very low. However, having an abundance of high-quality content online can help even the playing field.
Even if a customer has never heard of your brand before, he or she will search the Internet for information about the solutions you offer. 90% of B2B buyers research 2 to 7 websites before making a purchase. When buyers search for topics related to your offering, your content helps bring them in contact with your brand for the first time.
#5. Establishing thought leadership
Once customers learn about your brand, your content allows you to show what that brand is about. Compared to advertising, content marketing gives you a platform to share deep insights and perspectives and showcase what makes your brand unique.