A lot of our clients ask us about adding content to their overall marketing strategy in the hopes it will boost SEO. While content can help you drive more organic search traffic, it plays a much larger role in your overall strategy. Let’s explore six content marketing tips that add value to your business by boosting your overall marketing performance. Hopefully, this helps you make your case to double down on content at your organization.
1. Keeps Brands Top of Mind
As much as we might hope, we are not the only thing on our customer’s mind. Nearly every minute of every day, customers are bombarded with marketing messages. Content gives you an opportunity to keep your brand top of mind by providing a touchpoint that entertains or informs without asking for anything in return.
2. Build Trust With Your Customers
Customers don’t buy from people they don’t trust, and brands are no different. Publishing regular, informative content positions your brand as an authority, building trust with your customers and potential customers alike.
3. Segment Your Customers
Content that has been targeted to a specific persona allows you to segment your customers and other website visitors. When a customer or other visitor reads the blog, a small piece of data is attached to the user’s web browser. This cookie can be used in the future to customize website content, measure website analytics and deliver targeted advertising.
4. Customers Come To You
Creating relevant and quality content is a great way to increase your inbound marketing efforts, or the organic means that allowed the customer to find you. It engages the audience by connecting them with useful content the customer found through a search engine or a shared link from a friend. These inbound marketing results are often what our clients have in mind when they ask for content.
5. Lead Nurturing
Your customers have found your website, and have been reading your blog. Now what?
Content brought them to your website, and now it is content that will guide them through the sales cycle. Not everyone will be ready to purchase your product the first time they find you…especially in B2B sales. Content that is created with a specific persona in mind at a specific stage in the customer journey will help to address the customer’s needs, moving them through the point of purchase and beyond.
6. Grow Your Database
Content gives you an opportunity to engage with your clients outside of a promotional or sales message, allowing you to build a long-term relationship with them. This is beneficial as it gives you a list of engaged customers to reach out to when you do have a sales or promotional message. This engaged customer list is also viewed as an asset if you ever decide to sell your business.
Next Up
To realize all six benefits, you must create high-quality content that is consistent. In our next blog post, we will take a look at the four components necessary to create high-quality content.