Orig. Post July 10, 2015 by Charles Mburugu, Biz Community | Re-Post July 14, 2015
Content marketing is a powerful marketing strategy and for many brands, content marketing has replaced traditional advertising and is considered an important tool to make an impact on their followers and clients. Small business owners should consider investing in content marketing as it helps to attract customers through creating, distributing and promoting content. Here are a few reasons why content marketing is so important and how it can benefit your company.
1. Content marketing increases brand awareness
Creating brand awareness is vital for most small businesses and aspiring brands. Content marketing is a great way to gain more visibility to your target audience, as it helps to drive brand awareness, engage customers and generate more leads. Not only that, it also helps you to build trust among your customers and increase loyalty. Creating content that is informative to your customers is a great way to educate them about your products or services.
2. Make your mark as an expert in the field
Maintaining a blog is certainly not an easy task. Keeping a consistent social media presence and providing high quality content is time-consuming and will surely cost you some money. But if you can do it right, it will surely pay off. A great content marketing strategy not only helps to develop a reputation for expertise, but also gives your company a strong voice.
3. Opportunity to communicate with your customers
Creating relevant and high quality content plays a vital role in the content marketing process. It engages your customers in ways that were never possible before, as your target audience now has the ability to better understand your business and comment about your product or services, and you can directly communicate with them.
Rissy Roos is one such small business that has integrated content marketing with all their content marketing efforts. Apart from operating their owned media channels, they have ensured presence across most social media platforms popular with their client demographic – graduating high school students. They report that Tumblr and Pinterest remains their strongest channels, and allows them to directly communicate with interested buyers. Content marketing helps them to learn more about their industry and understand what their customers are looking for. If you can consistently provide high quality content, you will be able to generate readers into potential customers.
4. Build a community that lasts
Social media is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to content marketing. Content is what drives social media. By providing your customers with interesting and engaging content, your audience begins to talk about your business to others, and also bring new readers. When people know that you can consistently provide interesting information, they are going to continue to come back.
5. Increase sales
As you keep building trust and loyalty through your content marketing efforts, you’re more likely to generate your customers into potential buyers. People want to trust businesses and their products or services, and for that, they need more information. A study by the Content Marketing Institute shows that 60 percent to 70 percent of consumers tend to buy products from companies that create custom content.
There are so many reasons why you should consider investing in content marketing. What we have discussed so far are just some of the underlying benefits and how it can affect your business. Content marketing is a huge topic among so many businesses, and just like any other kind of marketing strategy, it actually needs to have a plan. Be sure to check out some of the leading content marketers out there.
