What is content marketing?<\/h2>\n
Content marketing is the marketing process of creating, publishing, and promoting relevant content to a pre-defined online audience.<\/p>\n
The goal of content marketing is to assist an online business in increasing brand awareness, achieve better SEO rankings and engage with its audience in the various digital marketing channels.<\/p>\n
To take advantage of all the benefits of content marketing, you need to have a content marketing strategy.<\/p>\n
Through a content strategy<\/strong><\/a>, you can specify what type of content to create and when to publish it, which audience to target and how to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n Resources to Learn More about Content Marketing<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s see below the 10 most important reasons why content marketing is essential for the success of any business.<\/p>\n Content marketing is important for online businesses because:<\/p>\n Content marketing is not a low-cost process but it has a great ROI. Creating high-quality content on a regular basis is expensive as it requires a lot of time and money but it\u2019s the best investment you can make for your business.<\/p>\n Good content is considered an \u201casset\u201d for an online business that can generate profit in the form of more organic visits<\/strong><\/a>, brand mentions, and social media engagement.<\/p>\n In terms of numbers, studies<\/strong><\/a> show that companies that run content marketing campaigns get more traffic and leads compared to companies that don\u2019t have a formal content strategy.<\/p>\n In addition, content marketing costs 62% less<\/strong><\/a> than traditional marketing and every dollar spent on content marketing generates 3X more leads.<\/p>\n Content marketing is part of digital marketing. Digital marketing<\/strong><\/a> is the process to follow to promote your business using ALL available online marketing channels.<\/p>\n For all other digital marketing channels to work and generate good results, they need high-quality content that is relevant to their target audience<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n For example:<\/p>\n For your SEO campaigns to work and help you rank high on Google<\/strong><\/a>, you need content that satisfies the intent<\/em> of the users and at the same time is also SEO friendly<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n For your social media campaigns to generate engagement, followers<\/strong><\/a>, likes, and shares, you need content that will entice your audience.<\/p>\n For your email marketing campaigns to generate sales, you need content that is convincing to encourage users to take the final step and make a purchase.<\/p>\n Content marketing is one of the best ways to increase awareness about your brand and how your products or services can help solve people\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n This can be done using various channels, the most important being search engine optimization<\/strong><\/a> but also paid advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see below some examples of how this is done in practice:<\/p>\n When users have a problem or need, they will most probably use a search engine<\/strong><\/a> to look for information and solutions. They are still in the awareness<\/em> face and want to find out how to solve a problem or get an answer to a question.<\/p>\n With content marketing, you can get generate content that educates, informs and suggests possible ways to solve their problem or answer their question.<\/p>\n If you do this successfully, people will most likely take note of your brand (or bookmark your website, share it with your followers, subscribe to your newsletter) and re-visit it to get more information and updates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They will eventually become loyal followers and ambassadors of your brand and this positively influences other users (and search engines) to trust your brand.<\/p>\n This is exactly the same process we follow on our blog. We strategically provide content that helps users learn SEO and answer questions related to digital marketing.<\/p>\n Through content, we establish our brand as a trustworthy source for all their online marketing needs and as a result, we get tens of email subscribers per day that join our community, more leads for digital marketing services and sales of our online SEO courses<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n When you start an online business<\/strong><\/a>, the ultimate goal is to run a successful and profitable business that will generate money. To make money you need to have conversions and content marketing can help a lot in this process.<\/p>\n Consumers are \u2018bombarded\u2019 with ads in their Facebook feed, Google search results, Twitter, Instagram, and all online networks they use and it\u2019s getting harder and more expensive to get their attention.<\/p>\n The competition is high on all niches and the number of ad placements is limited. A better way to utilize your resources, and that includes time and money, is to create content assets to position your brand in all stages of the customer journey.<\/p>\n By providing them with valuable content at all stages of the journey, you\u2019ll be able to get their attention and establish a long-term relationship between your customers and your brand.<\/p>\n This relationship will eventually lead to more conversions as it will be easier for users to buy products or services from brands they trust and have proved that they can help them.<\/p>\n Content marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand. Once you setup a website and ensure that it is SEO friendly<\/strong><\/a>, the next step is to come up with a content marketing plan to target specific keywords to make your website visible on Google<\/strong><\/a> and other search engines.<\/p>\n Content marketing is important in SEO because:<\/p>\n So, instead of thinking of trying or relying on any other techniques to trick Google algorithms, the best way to improve your SEO is by publishing high-quality content that satisfies the needs of the users on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Resources to Learn More<\/span><\/p>\n Everything mentioned so far work towards a common goal which is to use the content as the medium of communication between your company and both your existing and potential customers.<\/p>\n In content marketing, this is known as inbound marketing<\/strong><\/a> and this is the way for companies to build channels of bi-directional communication with their customers.<\/p>\n Bi-directional means that potential customers can communicate with you in the form of post comments, social post comments, feedback forms, messages, etc.<\/p>\n Without content marketing this form of communication is not possible because either you publish the wrong type of content, promoting it to the wrong type of people or not measuring and monitoring user responses.<\/p>\n With content marketing, this process is clearly defined with metrics, tools, and ways to optimize user engagement with your content.<\/p>\n Content marketing when done right, can help you differentiate your business from competitors.<\/p>\n Consumers using Google or Facebook can easily spot brands that care for the customers by providing them with valuable content.<\/p>\n![\"Content](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/content-marketing-process.png\")
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Why is content marketing important?<\/h2>\n
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1. It has a great Return on Investment (ROI)<\/h3>\n
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![\"Content](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/content-marketing-roi.png\")
2. It provides fuel to run all digital marketing campaigns<\/h3>\n
3. It\u2019s a great way to increase brand awareness, to improve brand reputation and build user trust<\/h3>\n
4. Content marketing can help increase conversions<\/h3>\n
![\"Customer](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/customer-journey.png\")
5. It\u2019s the best way to improve your Google Rankings<\/h3>\n
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6. It\u2019s a great way to engage with your potential customers<\/h3>\n
![\"inbound](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/inbound-marketing-process.png\")
7. It can help you differentiate your business from competitors<\/h3>\n