If you’ve dabbled in the art of digital marketing, you’ve probably heard about content marketing, but do you know why content marketing works?
The creation and publication of online content can feel like a fruitless pursuit for business owners who are used to directly measuring the returns of their investments.
Content marketing isn’t as measurable as an ad campaign and that’s why it’s harder to quantify why content marketing works.
This leads some business owners, marketers and entrepreneurs to decide against implementing content into their digital strategy.
In this article, I’ll be explaining (in mostly immeasurable terms) why content marketing works and what you can do to get the most from your content marketing campaigns.
Let’s get into this:
Drives Traffic
You’re on our website right now because content marketing drives traffic.
And because you’re on this page you see our brand name, view our other pieces of content, see a lead magnet offer, view my author’s name and find out more about our business.
Whenever I advise new businesses about content marketing (especially those who are new to the game), I always recommend that they publish content on their own website. You’ll understand more about this as I reveal more reasons why content works – but for now, understand the massive benefits (to us) of you being on our website.
If you sell stuff on your website, make any form of offers (free or otherwise) or sell stuff elsewhere on the internet, your website acts a bit like a shop (in the real world).
Just by having people in your ‘shop’, you increase your business’s chances now and in the future.
Content Marketing Qualifies An Audience
The Einstein Marketer blog publishes and shares valuable blogs on the topic of digital marketing, including the categories of ‘Content Marketing’, ‘Social Media Marketing’, ‘Paid Traffic’ and ‘Funnels’.
Why would somebody visit the Einstein Marketer website if they weren’t interested in any of these topics?
Purely by publishing blogs, a content marketer qualifies their audience’s interest in that topic.
This is a massive reason why content marketing works – and it allows for many other digital marketing tactics to take shape.
If you’re reading this blog, I can be pretty sure that you’re either interested in implementing content marketing for your business or are already doing it – that qualifies you as the right audience to discover more about ‘content marketing’.
Think about your business and how you could use niche content to qualify an audience for future offers.
Content Marketing Allows For Data Tracking
Content drives traffic and qualifies an audience as interested in a specific topic.
This is something that a content marketer must capitalise on in order to make content marketing work. One way to do that is to install tracking codes and pixels (cookies) on your websites.
Tracking codes discover more about the people who visit your website (as a collective group – not as individuals), as well as creating custom audiences – allowing for marketers to retarget these people with ads.
If you’ve ever visited a website, exited to social media and been shown an ad for the same product you were just looking at, you have been retargeted.
Your experiences of being ‘retargeted’ might have felt irritating, but they actually convert at sky-high rates compared with most other ad tactics – and when they’re associated with videos, podcasts and blogs, they’re the results of content marketing.
Content Marketing Creates Trust
Trust has never been more important online.Click To Tweet Almost everyone knows somebody who has been stung online, and I’m sure that all of us have bought a product that hasn’t met our expectations in real life.Content marketing allows you to build trust from an audience before (or during) making an offer to them.
Who would you trust more:
- Somebody you’ve just seen in an ad
- Somebody who’s content you’ve been following for the last 6 months because their ideas have really helped your career
There is simply no competition.
Is your content platform growing? 🤔
Your growth relies on content that returns all year round 🙌.
Discover 🔎 everything you need to know about evergreen content in this complete guide…https://t.co/48yTReoWPC#contentmarketing #marketingtips
— Einstein Marketer (@EinsteinMktr) October 19, 2020
Videos and photos give us the opportunity to put a face to the brand and written content allow us to share are most valuable ideas.
Trust is a clear exponent of the immeasurable benefits of content marketing.
Content Marketing Builds a Presence
The more content you produce, the more webpages you fill, the more links you gain, the more content you have on social media, the more followers you gain, the more people talk about you, the more forums you’re mentioned on, the more industry fans you reach, the more other websites cite you, the more relevant places you’re featured…
…and this all adds up to more presence.
Search and social media ads disappear when the financial taps are switched off – content doesn’t – it stays there forever.
If you’re committed to content marketing, create evergreen content and reap the benefits for years to come! And remember, the more presence you have, the more likely you are to be discovered (and trusted) by the right people.
Content Marketing Evokes Reciprocation
It’s known in marketing psychology that by giving first, you’re much more likely to receive in return.
This is known as the theory of reciprocation.
Creating and publishing valuable content (which is a crucial step in your content marketing funnel) should be a major focus for your business.
Give away your knowledge and insights, share information that your competitors would normally charge their clients for – do anything to help your target market up their game – because when you do, they’re much more likely to further their relationship with you (i.e. subscribe or purchase).
The more you give away, the more you’ll get in return!Click To TweetContent Marketing Positions You
Another reason why content marketing works is aligned closely with trust, and that is positioning.
You may have never heard of me and you might not have seen Einstein Marketer’s brand before, but now you have – and by sharing this content you can see that I know about content marketing (it’s my work after all).
Sharing my knowledge in the form of content, positions me as an expert on the subject.
If I hadn’t published content, you would’ve never known about my knowledge and skills in content marketing.
The higher somebody is positioned in their field, the more they can charge with very little price sensitivity (from their prospects).
Share your skills and feel the benefits of expert positioning with content marketing.
Content Marketing Creates An Audience
When you have a loyal brigade of return readers, email list subscribers and social media followers, you have a captive audience that you can promote to FOR FREE!!
But, why would anybody follow your business (other than massive brand fans) if all you were doing was promoting products?
Content marketing gives people a reason to follow brands and businesses.Click To TweetThink about your favourite brands on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, how many produce awesome videos? Blogs? Podcasts?
The answer, I’m sure, is almost all of them.
Build a captive audience with awesome awareness building content – and use this to capitalise on our next point…
Content Marketing Makes Returns!
Content marketing is not all about publishing content, it’s marketing, and the aim of digital marketing is to generate leads and sales.
When planned and implemented correctly, content marketing can become the central strategy for almost any business online.
And it is!
Many of the biggest brands in the world focus the majority of their marketing resources on content – proving the power and potential rewards that any business can achieve with content marketing.
Just remember, content marketing is NOT publishing blogs, podcasts or posting videos – it’s a strategic method that directs the journey of a cold visitor into a customer.
A lot of the reasons that content marketing makes such an amazing return online are listed in the points before this, but just remember, they’re all worthless if you don’t have a strategy in place – this means creating a content marketing funnel.
Conclusion
The reasons that I’ve listed about why content marketing works are just the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, the returns can be difficult to track when you’re starting out, but when you’re able to tag and personalise offers to visitors who have engaged with your content – promote to the following you’ve built and streamline a content marketing strategy that clearly works – the ROI will become clear.
Content marketing isn’t for business owners who are interested in short-term gains, it’s for the brand building entrepreneurs preparing to dominate digital.Click To TweetThis is why content marketing works, now it’s your chance to make it work for you.
Want more content marketing advice and guidance? Check out one of these posts:
- What is Inbound Marketing?
- How to Never Run Out of Content Ideas
- How to Create Months of Social Content From One Blog Post
- Facebook Page Likes: Get 1000s!
- Instagram Post Reach: 9 Tactics to Reach More People on Insta
