As sure as night follows day, show me a marketing blog and I’ll show you a post about how ‘content is king’.
But everyone must be talking about this marketing strategy for a reason, right? In case this idea is new to you, content marketing is about becoming an authority in your niche by providing valuable information to your audience. This value could be in many forms: interesting, entertaining, educational… whatever really. The common theme being that people find it useful in some way and want to come back again to consume more of it.
But why is content marketing such a successful way to do business?
- When people can see you’re a subject expert they’re more likely to hire you.
- By offering your advice, guides, tips, tricks and industry news, you’re building trust and credibility.
- Instead of intrusive advertising (which people increasingly reject), you attract people to you, often via social media conversations.
- It gives you a competitive advantage by broadening and deepening your relationship with potential customers.
- It will help you generate more qualified leads.
- It’s cheaper than traditional forms of advertising.
- Creating great content improves the effectiveness of your social media activity. Much better to be the company that shares interesting and engaging information with your followers and friends, than the company who just uses social media simply for their latest promotion.
- Visitors to your site – once they’re ready to purchase the kind of service you offer – will be loyal to you because you have helped them in the past.
- You’re positioning your company not just as a seller of goods, but as a reliable and trusted source of information.
Why I know this works…
It’s easy to read marketing blogs and believe everything that is said. But I also look at my own consumer behaviour. I have been reading a great content marketing and copywriting blog called Copyblogger for many years now. It is a fantastic resource, I would highly recommend it. And the amount of free content is huge.
But only now have I become a paying customer, the time was right for me. I had no doubt I could trust them and I had no doubt they had a good product. In fact, I had no doubts at all. I was looking to spend my money with them. That’s because they earned my trust and loyalty by providing me with free, high-quality content.
