In marketing, you often hear that “content is king,” but what exactly does that mean?
The term content refers to any form of digital or written information that is created and distributed to a target audience. “Content is king” is a metaphor for the importance of content in the attraction of views and leads.
Content marketing is a powerful tool that can help businesses establish credibility, attract new leads, nurture existing ones, and drive conversions.
Establishes Brand Credibility And Authority
One of the key benefits of content marketing is its ability to establish brand credibility and authority. In today’s overly saturated business markets, it’s essential to build trust with your audience in order to drive business. Think of popular shoe brands, they’re generally trusted as they are known for providing quality products and services. Many people are brand loyalists and will choose a brand they trust and favor over alternatives. Content marketing gives businesses the opportunity to show off their brand and establish credibility through content.
Producing high-quality content that addresses the pain points of your audience is a display of your expertise and paints you as a trustworthy resource for information and eventually as a product or service provider. Creating a positive impression through your brand sets you apart from your competitors and encourages your more cautious audience members to go forward with a purchase.
Attracts New Leads
By consistently producing quality content that connects your target audience, you can create a positive impression and encourage potential leads to interact with your company. In some cases, your target audience will tell others about your company. Generally you would have to have engaged with members of your audience and helped them out in some way before you start getting referrals.
One way to get new leads is to create educational content, this can include how-to content, detailed explanations on topics, and can even extend to industry adjacent topics. By providing valuable information that helps solve problems, you can establish your position as a trustworthy expert in the field. This will increase engagement and new lead generation opportunities.
Nurtures Existing Leads
Content marketing can also be used to nurture existing leads and keep them engaged for as long as you produce quality content. Uploading content regularly can lead to deepening relationships with your audience, which is one step closer to making them customers.
For example, you can create content that informs reads about news about the industry, any trending topics, updates happening within your company that impacts your audience, and this will help attract more people to your brand and associated sites. Things like exclusive offers, promotions, or discounts offered by your company will also entice your audience to engage with you or even make a purchase.
Increases Website Traffic
Content marketing can drive more traffic to your website, if optimized properly can generate more leads and even customers. In line with producing content that is new, relevant, and high quality, you can bring new visitors to your website and increase your reach. This will result in more leads and potential customers.
An example of this can be seen when the social media of any brand includes links that reverts back to their own main website. Nike has informative articles on fitness topics on social media that link back to their site. The more obvious example would be when a company shows off their products on social media such as TikTok or Instagram and include a link back to their main site’s store page to make the customer journey a better experience for all interested parties.
Improves Search Engine Visibility
Search engines have become important in the business world, specifically in terms of visibility. There are SEO (search engine optimization) experts who can help optimize your content in order for search engines to rank you higher. This is important because a majority of people using search engines will only look on the first page, meaning if you aren’t ranked high enough, you’re losing out on a huge potential market.
Following SEO protocols, such as including relevant words and optimizing the actual webpage, search engines will deem your website worthy of those highly coveted first page results spots.
Provides Valuable Insights
Proper monitoring and management of your content will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. You can get an exclusive look at their interests, needs, and possible pain points. With this information you can better refine your lead generation strategies. Future content can be tailored to certain audience members in order to increase conversion rates. This can also impact what types of advertisements you create and where you decide to post them. Content that resonates better with your audience will bring better results, meaning you’ll have more leads and potentially more customers.
The Wrap Up
Content marketing is an essential part of any successful lead generation strategy. With all of the benefits, content marketing allows you to organically gain leads while also helping you create more impactful targeted ads. In order to succeed, you need to focus on your audience and actually listen to them. Figuring out their needs, goals, pain points, and creating content that addresses these topics will make it more compelling for your audience to actually engage with you. These engagements, when nurtured turn into leads and have a higher chance of actually becoming customers.
