If you haven’t considered using content marketing to help bolster your business, then ask yourself what are you in business for? For those living in the fast-paced 21st century, content marketing is a key component in building and establishing a successful business.
Without content marketing, your brand suffers tremendously. Not only does using valuable content to increase your businesses exposure, it also serves as the first point of contact between you and potential customers. Content marketing also helps build a strong connection between your business and current customers or clients.
Why Content Marketing Matters
Content marketing has become the hottest buzzword in business in the past decade. As consumers gravitate to online markets more often, content marketing has become the most viable way to not only advertise your company but build and maintain a strong following as well.
In fact, many business experts agree that content marketing can make or break a business, even more than traditional marketing strategies.
Not entirely convinced? Consider these statistics recently found in the B2C Content Marketing 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Report, which found that 70 percent of B2C marketers believe that content marketing is extremely successful. For B2B marketers that number increases to nearly 80 percent.
According to a recent McKinsey Research report, strong brands have increasingly outperformed the market by a whopping 75 percent in 2014, a near 10 percent increase over the previous year.
Since 2010, the total value of the world’s top ten brands has increased exponentially from $433 billion to $650 billion and that number is still rising.
Those are strong viable numbers for some of the world’s most well-known brands. Imagine what content marketing can do for you and your brand. Not using content marketing is not only missing an opportunity to build a strong brand, but could possibly cripple your business as a whole.
Let’s take a look at some strategies that can help boost both your content marketing abilities and your company’s brand value.
Personalising your brand
“Brand,” is such a vague term these days. Nearly everyone claims to have a “brand,” of some type no matter what the industry. Content marketing is a strong tool to use to help your brand stand out from everyone else’s.
It’s a way to place a unique face on your company and brand. Content marketing is all about personalizing your brand to meet both your company’s needs and your clients.
That’s why using content marketing as a strategy to connect with your customers is so important. It gives your brand a “human face,” something that consumers can relate to. It also gives you an advantage when determining which of your company’s core values and strengths that you want to highlight.
Using humorous videos, testimonials, and graphics in addition to blogs and forums, helps your brand become personable, meaningful, and unique. Displaying your customer’s reviews and benefits on your pages can boost your branding and create a positive impact on the visitors.
With these, your company has a distinct voice, look, and appeal to consumers that may give you an edge against competitors.
Controlling brand Perception
It’s no secret that in life, perception is key. It doesn’t matter how qualified you and your business are or how much in sales you make per quarter if the perception of your brand is negative, your business falters.
Content marketing allows you to control the narrative that surrounds your company and brand. It’s through regular blog posts, video updates, and forums that you show what’s your company’s true culture.
Content which shows employees taking time out of their busy lives to give back to communities, or employees working together as a team, or even a client’s satisfaction with your work, all reinforce positive images for your company, thereby boosting your brand value.
Educate and Engage With Consumers
Content marketing can be used to both educate and engage with your consumers.
By using questions that customers frequently ask, you can craft specific blog posts that help establish your business as a leading authority and expert related to your industry. If this content is high-quality, you’ll find consumers flocking to your business for all the information they need.
This creates a bond between the customer and you, allowing you the chance to directly engage with your customer’s needs.
High-quality content is also a great way to maintain search engine rankings, as your content will consistently remain at the top of search results, thus driving more traffic and business toward your company.
Increasing Brand Exposure
The most important result of content marketing is increasing your brand exposure. In fact, that might be the single most important part of content marketing. But increasing brand exposure doesn’t mean tossing together a bunch of incoherent blog posts and finding what sticks, instead, it’s about investing in relationships outside of your area of expertise.
For example, a company’s Facebook page is only the beginning for many people. Utilizing additional social media such as Instagram or Twitter can help expose your brand too far more followers than the usual Facebook crowd.
Additionally, quality blog posts that offer up expertise in your industry can be quoted and used by other outlets increasing your company’s exposure tremendously.
It goes without saying that content marketing is the most valuable component of building a strong brand.
To recap, content marketing helps build a strong relationship between your company and its consumers while boosting business and sales. It is also a valuable asset when establishing the public narrative you want for your business.
Keep in mind that by educating and engaging with your consumers through your content marketing strategies you will increase exposure for your brand. This exposure will certainly give you an edge over your competition, making you a leading expert in your field.
For all, it’s worth content marketing is a sure-fire way to establish your business, create a strong brand, and set a solid foundation for future success.