Is your team investing in content marketing? Whether you’re dabbling with a few blog posts or are committed to content creation, investing in articles, videos, infographics, and everything in between is an effective strategy.
Top reasons to invest in content marketing
Ninety-six percent of marketers say content is effective for their brand. Here is a look at why:
Increase search engine visibility
Every additional page on your website or blog creates a new opportunity for your company or brand to rank in search queries. Put in a little effort with long-tail keywords and your customers and prospects are even more likely to find you among the results when searching for a product, service or solution to their problem.
In addition, adding high-quality content to your site will likely earn you more inbound links. With links from external sources, your domain authority will increase, which will also boost your organic search visibility.
Position your company as an authority
Whether your team reps makeup, running shoes, software, or machinery for manufacturers, you can position your company or brand as an expert within the industry. Expertise — conveyed through free tips, downloads and tutorials — can help your brand become the “go-to” source when consumers or businesses need assistance, solutions, or answers to their questions.
When graphic design platform Canva created free content to better help users master its product, the company launched itself to expert status. Using blogs, tutorials, and online courses, the team became leaders in their industry, boasting 75 million active users by 2021.
Working with B2B influencers can also help establish your brand as an authority. LinkedIn is a great place to make connections with influencers.
Increase followers, engagement and brand loyalty
Posting an ad for a product on social media isn’t likely to attract a tsunami of new followers or tantalize existing followers to comment, share or even like your post. But when you combine ads with useful or entertaining content, you can increase exposure and engagement.
At the same time, you build brand loyalty. Boosting your content through social catches the attention of soon-to-be brand advocates. A little more than half of all content marketers (52%) are using their content to drive customer loyalty, according to the B2C Content Marketing Report.
Keep users on your website longer
Engaging content will give users a reason to stay on your site longer, which is always beneficial. In turn, this quality content will build trust, showcase your products and services, answer prospects’ questions, and lead to higher conversion rates.
While the average time spent on a page is 54 seconds, you can increase that with content that’s relevant, targeted, and easy to understand.
Decrease demands on customer service
Nearly 9 out of 10 Americans say that customer service is a factor in deciding whether to do business with a company. If you don’t already offer it on your website, blog, or social media platforms, consider adding frequently asked questions, video tutorials, feature highlights, downloadable schematics or instructions, and information about returns, exchanges, recent upgrades or fixes.
The more your customers or prospects can get their questions answered, the less likely they are to become frustrated or need customer service. This, in turn, will decrease wait times and reduce the chances of unsatisfied customers making unnecessary returns or leaving negative comments or reviews.
Having a database of content to draw from can also enhance artificial-intelligence-enabled customer service applications. After searching for relevant topics to answer customers’ questions, the AI can offer links to self-service portals to facilitate resolutions.
Reduce marketing spend
Rather than spending the bulk of your brand’s marketing budget on advertising, why not designate a fraction to create content? Whether it’s created by your team, repurposed from an influencer marketing campaign, or provided by users (such as reviews, tutorials, and videos), content marketing is one of the most affordable and effective tools at your disposal.
In addition to reposting content on social media, you can repurpose it to make slideshows, billboards, brochures, e-commerce ads, newsletters, podcasts, and even commercials, the latter of which Old Navy did with TikTok user comments.
Work for all industries
Even the most obscure and niche industries can use content marketing to their advantage. Beyond existing customers and potential customers who may still be in the consideration stage of investing in a product or service, content can also alert others to a solution they didn’t know existed.
Just imagine being resolved to doing things “the hard way,” “the long way,” or “the expensive way” only to run across content explaining that there’s a better option. That’s where content marketing shines!
Now that you’re aware of the many benefits of content marketing, it’s time to put the strategy to work. Start by discussing the most-asked questions your customer service team fields and get to work producing materials that address these problems and concerns.
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