Content Marketing: Facts and Figures
Content marketing has been around long enough that you shouldn’t think of it as a trendy buzzword anymore. The question really becomes: Is it right for my business? The answer to that question is absolutely yes.
At the heart of content marketing is content. And content in any form is used to tell your brand story and get your message out to your target audience. Content marketing just means using that content you are creating as part of an overall strategy to help you reach your goals – both in marketing and your overall organizational goals. It’s great because it can work for any industry.
Content itself had to adapt over time for us to be able to use it in so many different ways. While in the early days content was focused on features, sales, and advertising, it has shifted to focus on relationship building with readers and their networks, which ultimately leads to sales conversions. The shift in how we view content has lead us to various forms of content such as:
Ebooks
Cheat sheets
Workbooks & templates
Whitepapers & reports
Infographics (like the one below!)
Slide decks
Video
With so many different forms of content, a great content marketing strategy will look at multiple channels to use each type of content to reach customers and the general target audience. It is a long-term strategy that focuses on building relationships over time. The reality is you need to commit to your content marketing strategy because you won’t see results right away, but when you do see results, they are lasting. If you are doing it right, it can have many positive effects on your organization. Some of these positive effects are:
Increased website traffic: Because you are updating your content regularly (blogging!) your target audience is more likely to return to your site again and again.
Search engine visibility: The more content you put out with your keywords, the more chances you have of being found by your customers frequently searching for those keywords.
Increased referral traffic: If you write guest articles/blogs people will link through to your website from other websites. Your audience will also share great content with their networks.
Increased social media engagement: The more content you have, the easier it is to reach out via social media to your audience in a meaningful way.
Establish yourself as an expert: People won’t know you know what you are talking about unless you show them.
Despite all of the above benefits, 70% of marketers don’t have a set content marketing strategy. That is a lot of brands leaving things up to chance. As you know, marketing is based on more than hope and chance.
So, if you are one of the 92% of organizations that believes content is a business asset, but you don’t have a content marketing strategy in place, have a peek at the infographic below. If you are part of the 30% of markers that do have a content strategy in place, congratulations! You have taken the first step already. Is your content marketing strategy as effective as it could be?
If you don’t have a content marketing strategy in place and you don’t know where to start, be sure to give us a call!
Content marketing infographic