5 Reasons why Content is the Best Marketing Investment for SME's
Why content, what's so special about it? In short, it's built on creating and then distributing relevant, interesting and valuable information with the main goal to attract and retain a certain target group, which in turn can become valuable customers. In other words, the focus isn't pitching your products or services, but rather useful content that gives people some kind of benefit. If content marketing wasn't effective, it wouldn't be used by so many leading brands. Small businesses must take advantage of this approach too. Here are 5 solid reasons why it's the best marketing investment you can make.
1. Higher visibility in search engines
With recent changes to search algorithms, having a website with many pages of quality content will always be favoured over a site severely lacking in content. Previously it was possible to use certain SEO-techniques (black hat) to fool the search engines, but they are getting better and better at directing people to sites that truly contain relevant information. Simply spamming keywords does not work anymore. A business needs a substantial amount of content naturally containing the keywords and phrases that their customers regularly search for.
2. Increased trust and authority
Making a purchase or trusting a brand in general is largely about perceiving them as experts in their particular field. Reading high quality content gives the visitor that impression. It also generates more links to your site from external sources, which helps to boost the authority and search ranking even further.
3. Stronger position in social media
When people read and share all the quality content in social media your business will get tons of free exposure. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have only increased in importance and content marketing is both a safe and effective way to gain more attention and more followers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand this also correlates with more traffic to your website.
4. Better conversion potential
Converting leads into actual customers is one of the main challenges in marketing. If readers find information and actual help from content, they will stay longer and pay more attention. Your brand will imprint itself in their minds in a positive way. When they later see whatever you are selling, they are more likely to become paying customers. The caveat is that the content has to deliver, which means it's important to use skilled content writers.
5. Cost-effective
Content marketing is viewed as one of the most cost-effective solutions for many reasons. First of all, traditional marketing techniques are known to be expensive, especially when using mass media such as TV or radio. Investing in content marketing is much cheaper and gives more bang for the buck. Once the content is produced your business can reap benefits for a long time. In a few months the return on investment can be massive. Then it just keeps building as you get increased traffic, better conversion, improved brand reputation and so forth.
CONCLUSION
Daily, we face a flood of information. The scarcity called “attention” is only given to those most relevant, interesting and engaging; if you manage to address your target audience by high-quality content, rather than overly sales and advertising messages, you are best positioned to win their custom. And what is more important than creating those long term happy customers? Would you agree that Content Marketing is the best long term marketing investment you can make?
