By now, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of content marketing. This inbound marketing tactic helps you attract, engage, and delight customers and prospects by delivering quality content that provides value for everyone who visits your site. As with any new marketing craze, you may be wondering, does this strategy really have staying power?

The short answer: Yes.

Content marketing is one of the most effective, practical, and useful digital marketing strategies that your brand can use to reach and engage more quality leads and customers. Below, we’ll cover the top 25 benefits of content marketing and explain how this powerful inbound marketing tactic can help transform the way your organization reaches and engages your target audience.

1. Content marketing drives conversions.

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of content marketing is that it helps your company drive more conversions over time. Research shows that companies who create consistent marketing content experience conversion rates that are nearly 6 times higher than their competitors who don’t focus on convent marketing. This shows that tough content marketing often requires a significant investment of time, money, and resources, it eventually pays off by leading to more conversions.

2. Effective content will bring more traffic to your site.

Publishing consistent blog posts that are engaging and effective can help you bring more traffic to your site over time. In fact, according to HubSpot, companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month got almost 3.5 times more traffic than those that only published 4 or less posts. If you want to improve site traffic, publish quality blog content more often on a more consistent schedule.

3. Build brand awareness with useful content that engages target buyers.

Let’s face it. There are consumers out there who are a perfect fit for your products or services, but they haven’t yet gotten the opportunity to learn about your brand. By creating useful content that provides value for your target buyers, you can work to engage these leads and help build awareness for your brand. Brand awareness is one of the most important benefits of content marketing.

4. Your company can use quality content to educate your customers.

Your customers and leads have a problem that your brand can solve. What better way to educate them about their challenges and your solution than to provide them with engaging content? Be sure to develop content topics around your customers’ biggest pain points to help them better understand what steps they need to take to solve their problems.

5. Content can help you build trust with your target audience.

The more that you educate and provide value for your target audience, the more trust you can build over time. By educating and informing your target audience about their biggest challenges and pain points through blog posts and other types of content, you start to establish a relationship with customers and work to build trust based on the value that your content provides.

6. Good content helps you build and foster stronger customer relationships.

Speaking of relationships – if you want to encourage repeat business and turn customers into brand advocates, it’s vital that you nurture your current customer relationships. One of the best ways to do this is to continue to provide value for your customers through quality, engaging content. Whether you keep them updated through email marketing content or educate them on important topics through your blog, you can work to build and foster these relationships through relevant content.

7. Valuable content helps you build credibility and authority.

As you start to create quality content that provides value for your leads and customers, you work to build credibility and authority with your target audience. For instance, writing blog posts about common challenges that your customers face or issues that pertain to your industry helps show site visitors that you really know your stuff. This will encourage them to trust your advice and guidance when it comes to products and services that can add value to their lives. Valuable content will help you leverage all of the benefits of content marketing.

8. You can use quality content to position your business as an industry expert.

By using engaging content to build credibility and authority within your customer base, you can start to position your brand as an industry expert. Consumers look to thought leaders in the industry to get relevant information that helps them better understand their needs and challenges. By creating quality content that others find valuable, you can start to position your business as an industry thought leader that others can look to for guidance and support.

9. With great content, you can help move buyers through the buyer’s journey quickly.

Every consumer goes through stages before they make a final purchase. First, they need to recognize their challenge, then they need to identify and evaluate potential solutions. And finally, they will make a purchasing decision based on their research. By providing content that engages consumers during each step of the buyer’s journey, you can help guide them to making a purchasing decision more quickly. 

10. Blogs and other types of content continue to generate traffic long after they’re published.

Blogs are a lot like a gift that keeps on giving. According to HubSpot, 1 in 10 blogs are compounding, which means that these blogs help increase website traffic through organic search over time. What’s more is that though compounding blog posts only make up 10% of all blog posts, they still generate 38% of all traffic. The key to creating blog posts that continue to bring organic traffic to your site long after they are published is to focus on topics that will remain relevant to your target audience forever. This is what we call evergreen content, and it can help you get the most out of your blogging efforts.

11. More content gives your site visitors a reason to stick around.

Your company has a short amount of time to engage consumers once they’ve landed on your site. The more quality, engaging content that you provide on your website, the more reasons your visitors have to stick around. Content helps engage, entertain, and educate them so they better understand the value that your brand can provide.

12. Content helps you improve search engine optimization (SEO) and online visibility.

Many consumers turn to search engines when they are looking for a product or service. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your site to rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). We have many affordable SEO services for small businesses. The more quality content you have, the better your SEO. The more optimized your site is for search engines like Google, the more visibility you will have online. For instance, if someone searches for “What is an air compressor?” on Google and they find a blog you’ve written with the same title, this will help bring this interested person to your site to learn more about their inquiry but also find out more about how your brand can help answer their questions and solve their challenges.

13. Content marketing is cost-effective.

Content marketing is more cost-effective than many traditional outbound marketing tactics. Since content marketing is typically easier to get started with and more popular with customers who are tired of traditional advertising messages, this tactic can often help reduce the amount of money that marketers need to spend when engaging leads and customers. In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing even though it generates more than 3 times as many leads.

14. Targeted content can help you reach a specific audience.

When it comes to reaching consumers online, you need to be picky about who you attract to your website. Not every online consumer is interested in your products or services. Content that is created with your target audience in mind helps you better reach those who are most likely to be interested in your products.

15. Blogging and other content creation helps you bring in more qualified leads.

Blog posts and other types of content not only help you bring more leads to your site, but they help ensure that these leads are relevant and qualified to buy. By creating content around topics that are relevant to your products and services as well as important to your audience, your business can work to bring in more targeted, relevant website traffic.

16. Publishing blogs and other types of content helps you remain competitive.

Did you know that 53% of marketers say that create blog content is their top inbound marketing priority? That’s because blog content is so effective at attracting, engaging, and delighting your site visitors and customers. If you want to remain competitive in the busy online marketplace, you will need to make publishing blog content and other content assets like e-books and infographics a priority.

17. Buyers are checking out your content before contacting sales.

Yet another one of the powerful benefits of content marketing is that it allows you to start a conversation with potential customers before sales physically reaches out. According to a 2016 Demand Gen Report, 47% of buyers view between 3 and 5 pieces of content before they engage a sales rep. This shows just how powerful of an impression your content can make before the customer is actually contacted by a real person. Make sure that you’re making the right first impression by publishing quality content that helps leads better understand their greatest challenges and how your company fits into the process of solving them.

18. More content gives you more touchpoints with your leads and customers.

The more content you have published on your site and shared on other channels such as social media, the more opportunities you have to engage your target audience. Considering that most customers will visit your site a few times before making a purchase, you will want to make sure that you have the chance to engage them and start a conversation to help guide them down the conversion path. Content marketing offers you many touchpoints where you can communicate with leads before they make a purchase.

19. With content marketing, you can provide value without any strings attached.

Another valuable benefit of content marketing is that it allows you to provide value to your leads and customers with no strings attached. Often, businesses will only help those consumers who are actively buying their products. Though this may seem like it is in the best interest of the company, it can actually impact their ability to attract new customers and build relationships with leads. Content marketing allows you to provide value to your customers through informative and interesting content without asking for anything in return. This increases your chances to engaging consumers who are not yet ready to buy.

20. Content is shareable!

One of the best ways to increase visibility online is to get your current customers, leads, and brand advocates to share your business with others. Content just happens to be very shareable. Whether consumers forward one of your email marketing messages to a co-worker or share one of your social media posts with their friends, getting your content shared is a great way to increase visibility in the marketplace.

21. Content marketing can help you make a personal connection.

Many times, it can be difficult to show the human side of your business. However, your content allows you to make a more personal connection with your leads and customers while showcasing your brand voice and character. Don’t be afraid to put a little personality in your blog posts, videos, social media posts, or other types of content.

22. Get more customers to engage with effective content marketing.

Increased engagement is another one of major benefits of content marketing. The best way to start a conversation with your leads and customers is to present them with helpful information on relevant topics that can get them thinking and talking. Sharing your content on social media is a great way to encourage engagement and get your customers to interact further with your brand.

23. Content marketing works for businesses in any industry.

You may be thinking, “Yeah, content marketing is great, but it would never work for my industry!” However, the truth is that content marketing is an effective digital marketing tactic for businesses in any industry from consumer retail to technology to manufacturing. The key to success is finding the right topics and types of content that best speak to your unique audience.

24. Content marketing can help you bring in unexpected customers.

By creating and promoting valuable content that speaks to your target audience’s greatest challenges, you may find new customers in unexpected places. Maintaining an active blog and social media presence helps you introduce your company to people that you may not have realized have a need for your product or service.

25. The more content you share, the more social media traffic you can generate.

Social media marketing is a powerful way to reach and engage new leads while fostering long-lasting relationships with your current customers. The more quality content you create, the more material you will have to share on your social media channels. Once consumers start to see how useful and valuable your content really is, they will have no choice but to follow your brand on Facebook, Instagram, and wherever else you may be!

With so many powerful benefits of content marketing, it’s easy to see why more and more businesses are making moves to develop a content marketing strategy and start producing quality content for their brand. No matter what industry you are in or what size your company is, you can start using content marketing today to reach and engage your audience.

Need help getting started? The content marketing experts at Alamo City Marketing Marketing Solutions are here to help you get the most out of your marketing content.