Consumers today look to a brand for alignment in values, in what your company supports with your time and money and more – much more knowledge of their needs. Many of these new expectations are met through an effective content marketing strategy.
Content is king, because it offers value to your target market through a variety of formats and platforms. From sharing a video on social media to distributing an email newsletter, there are a myriad of platforms to use to connect with your audience in ways that benefit them. It’s a whole new world from television, radio and magazine ads, with a drastic change where it’s never about the company and always about the consumer. Here are five reasons you need to invest in content marketing:
Build Trust: If a member of your target market discovers that your how-to video helped her finally solve a common problem in her manufacturing site, or if you provided just the information necessary at just the right moment, you begin to build a trusted relationship with your target market. When they need information again, they’ll turn to you because you solved their problem and added value.
Build Credibility: Being recognized as an expert in your industry is always helpful to your brand, and when you do it in a way that’s designed to be helpful to your audience, you’ll build a solid reputation. When you offer an opinion on a controversial topic, your voice will increasingly hold weight as you consistently put your customers and social media followers first in your messaging.
Generate Leads: Including a call to action button in your content allows you to encourage visitors to your site to subscribe to your email newsletter or follow you on a social media platform. These are leads that you can now nurture to a conversion.
Improve SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) algorithms favor sites that frequently update their content, and even crawl your site to determine whether you have a healthy mix of text and visual content. Using content marketing to be discovered through organic search is a great way to build traffic to your site.
Increase Conversions: This is the ultimate goal of marketing, but sometimes it can be difficult to see a straight line from marketing investment to conversions. Your content pieces should be tailored to the stage your leads are occupying in the buy cycle, so that each piece moves them gradually toward conversion. As you refine your strategy, that straight line will increasingly emerge to give you a clear idea of your return on investment.
It’s more important than ever to connect with your target market via content marketing. Our team at SJC Marketing can help you with new ideas to get your content working for your customers and for you.