The beauty of content marketing is that it has direct, positive impacts in other areas of your inbound marketing strategy and is a crucial component to any business wanting to grow their brand. By offering valuable content that your target audience is looking for, you're able to attract the right people to your website and turn them into leads. From there, you can continue to nurture them along the buyer's journey until they become another one of your many satisfied customers!
The Web Talent Marketing infographic below explains why content marketing works so well and the lasting benefits that creating great content has on a business.
Content marketing is defined as marketing by creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to ultimately acquire an audience and drive sales. Having a good content marketing strategy in place will show itself to you and your customers by the many benefits it offers:
Improve Experiences - 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via content over ads.
Build Relationships with Customers - 78% of consumers believe that companies providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.
Create Thought Leadership - 60% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading customer content on their site.
Establish Credibility - Close to half of people say a website's design is their #1 criterion for discerning the credibility of the company.
Generate Sales - Clicks from shared content are five times more likely to result in a purchase.
Cost Effective - On average, content marketing is 62% less than traditional marketing. There is a positive correlation between the amount spent on CM and the effectiveness from it.
Internal Growth - Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202%.
Boost Morale & Attract New Hires - Organizations with quality content have an edge when recruiting top talent and increase employee advocacy.
Social Media: Social platforms are free, easy to use and have multi-channel sharing capabilities. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are the most popular social sources of content marketing.
Visual Content: Creating visual content helps encapsulate brand virality. Infographics, Instagram, and Pinterest are the top sources.
Blogs: Having an active blog with great content is low cost and easily shareable. It's also top five for effective types of content and has gained traction over the past few years.
Write it down. 65% of those with a documented strategy consider themselves effective.
Learn to track, see your progress, and motivate others internally. Only 43% feel they track their content marketing successfully.
Get out there. On average, the most effective organizations use eight social platforms and 12 content marketing tactics.