From text, video and imagery to infographics, surveys, webinars and podcasts, whatever your preferred content medium is, marketing with fresh and valuable content is a win-win for your business and its customers — your potential clients get the information they require and you get to demonstrate your expertise and usefulness.
1. It's not always about you!
Valuable content will help you sell. It helps your ideal clients find you and makes it easier for them to buy from you, however your position should be not “look how great we are” (as in a traditional brochure) but “let us help you be awesome – we have the answers to your problems.” This approach is truly customer-centred. Create content that is genuinely useful to your customers. Make yourself indispensable.
2. It's great for SEO
Original content on your website’s blog or newsfeed has a significant impact on SEO and search engine ranking for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it keeps your website fresh and this is something that Google takes notice of – there is nothing worse than a website that hasn’t been updated for years. The more often you update your content, the more often your site is crawled, increasing your opportunities to rank. While Google has yet to come right out and declare that fresh content will springboard you into first page results, there’s plenty of evidence to believe that this is the case.
Secondly, if you structure your blog correctly for example: 300-500 words, internal links to other relevant content and naturally placed keywords, it helps your website rank organically for relevant search terms and keywords. A higher ranking ultimately exposes your website to more potential customers.
3. It encourages engagement
Whether it is in the form of a blog post or a social media update, good quality content encourages users to engage with your business. If the content is genuinely good, users will pause to consume the content, understand the brand message and perhaps even comment, like or share the piece of content. If it’s not, they’ll continue scrolling past and the content will disappear into the black hole that is cyberspace. Better yet, if content is pushed out through social media channels it not only makes sharing easy it can also boost traffic to your website if it is linked back.
4. 90% of people have watched a video online in the last month
With the average users spending more than 6 hours on the Internet per day, your video will have more chance being seen on Youtube or Facebook than if you advertised on TV for a month with a fairly substantial budget. Globally, more than 90% of Internet users are watching online videos each month, while 44% are watching vloggers and a further 39% listening in to podcasts.
The key is creating meaningful video content that will engage your target market, while maintaining your brand’s professionalism and identity.
5. It's not only great for B2C but B2B too!
We have a lot of B2B clients that come to us for advice about moving into the digital marketing space. With so many options for B2C marketing, it is often wondered if social media has a place for B2B marketing. Our advice is yes! If you are willing to invest time in getting it up and running, digital content marketing is a perfect strategy for B2B businesses to break into the social media world.
It is also said to improve customer retention for B2B markets. Recent studies have shown that consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content to them regularly. By keeping your current customers engaged and updated with great content, you’ll improve your long-term customer retention.