Why Content Marketing Is The Best Way To Advertise Your Business

Content marketing is indisputably a cornerstone of the business world. Most successful companies understand its worth and have thus spent years reaping the benefits that it has to offer.

In fact, one study showed that 93% of marketing managers in North America have strong commitments to content marketing. Gone are the days when you would spend thousands of dollars on billboards, radio ads, and TV commercials.

In our modern, digital world, the best way to spread information is through content.

Even content marketing specialist Nathan Collier said:

“Content marketing is important when you need to teach prospective customers something new. It works best when used to teach people how to solve problems — sometimes problems they didn’t even know they had.”

Today, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about content marketing including what it is, what it has to offer, and how other aspects of your advertising strategy can benefit from it.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is an approach to marketing centered around producing, publishing, and promoting online material that both provides value to readers and generates attention for the company itself.

The most common form of content marketing involves publishing articles on a blog and promoting it through social media.

Proper execution

Results are equal to length times quality.

Emilia Korczynska of Wisemont Language Services explains this equation quite eloquently:

“Good content should be long (content that gets most backlinks and social shares are about 2,000 words in length. Just look at the study by Brian Dean of Backlinko which analyzed 912 million blog posts.

A major problem is the poor quality of content on a lot of business blogs. Content needs to be well-researched and valuable — i.e. having practical utility and being actionable.

It should also be well-written using clear, concise language and explaining complex concepts in a simple manner. Good content writers don’t shy from showing their personality and sense of humor in their content — and it definitely makes the content more interesting and valuable.

Short, cursory posts that don’t bring any real value to the readers can do your business more harm than good. Can you imagine wilted flowers in a window display of a florist? Of course not. So why do you keep bad content on your business blog or website?

A lot of my clients come to me with a really tight budget, expecting us to simply write several blog posts for their website. If you’re on a budget, you don’t need to give up on content marketing, but remember that “less is more.”

It’s better to publish and promote one really good blog post per month than create four posts of poor quality. The problem with content marketing nowadays is that it is that there is very little awareness of what it actually takes to do content marketing effectively.”

The benefits

Builds credibility

Have you ever been to a reunion from your wife’s side of the family? Well, the world of business is kind of like that — a crowded room full of people you don’t know.

There are countless companies out there making astonishing claims about the product or service that they’re offering, but not all of these claims hold substance. That being the case, many consumers are hesitant to trust companies that they’re unfamiliar with.

Content marketing helps you earn your customer’s trust by providing useful information — thus establishing yourself as an authority in your industry.

Targeted attention

The one thing that most companies can’t get enough of is attention, and for good reason. You could have the best product in the world and still go bankrupt if no one hears about it.

However, it’s important to differentiate between useful attention and useless attention. You might be wondering how attention could ever be useless, but bear with me.

If you’re selling computer parts, then attracting the attention of someone interested in collectible action figures won’t do you any good — and vice versa.

When you utilize content marketing, you can ensure that you only get useful attention. By writing articles on topics relevant to your industry, you effectively filter out any useless attention since no one would even bother clicking on the link unless the title lines up with their interests.

Many marketers see their website traffic go up without any increase in revenue, failing to realize that this is a direct result of them attracting too much useless attention.

Leaves a pulse

When someone logs onto your website, they have no way of telling if your company is still in business. For all they know, your website might just be a remnant of a failed startup.

The best way to remedy this is by regularly posting content on your website’s blog. The periodic posts serve as a literal pulse to your website and set it aside from the digital corpses of your competitors.

Gives your brand a voice

One of the best parts of content marketing is the fact that it gives your brand a voice. Brands are just like school mascots — they display personality and attract attention through their messaging.

Your customers will be more inclined to stay loyal to your brand if they hear its voice on a regular basis.

Flexes with your budget

The great thing about content marketing is that it can work with budgets of varying sizes. If you have a high marketing budget then you can produce a lot of content and if you have a lower marketing budget then you can still produce content, just less of it.

In fact, if revenue ever drops and you can’t allocate any funds to marketing, you can pause your content marketing campaign altogether and still reap the benefits of your past labors.

This in contrast to paid advertising in which you need to constantly pay for your ads if you want to keep them up or TV commercials that are very costly to produce and only run for a limited amount of time.

Even a decade after starting your campaign, the first article that you published will still be grabbing attention and bringing in sales.

Encourages repeat visits

If your customers enjoy the content that you post on your blog, it will encourage them to return to your website on a regular basis to check if anything new is up. While on your site, they might stumble upon a sale you’re running or a product release.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways of staying in your customer’s mind over a sustained period of time.

Other areas it compliments

SEO

SEO — short for search engine optimization — is a great way to increase online visibility for your business, but it’s hard to get any results unless you couple it with a strong content marketing campaign.

Most SEO consultants understand this which is why you’ll often find a lot of content work being done within the campaigns that they run. Informative articles will also lead to more people linking back to your website which can improve the results of your link building campaign.

The relationship between SEO and content marketing was succinctly explained by world-class marketer Neil Patel:

“SEO demands content. Content marketing is content.

There is no such thing as SEO without content. You need words, articles, substance, keywords, verbiage.

I wince whenever I have to say it because it’s so cliche, but it’s true: content is king.”

Steven Kang, Founder of SEO Signals Lab, also said something to that effect:

“Attempting to rank without content is like attempting to sell a book without letting buyers know what the book is about. You may sell some if you push hard enough but you’ll end up with lots of refunds.”

Social media marketing

Social media marketing on its own is already an effective way to advertise your business, but combine it with a solid content campaign and you’ll create an unstoppable force.

It’s far easier to drive traffic to your website and increase user engagement when you’re regularly promoting your articles on social media. Content is to social media marketing what flippers are to swimming — ergo it makes the activity both easier and more efficient.

When you regularly publish (valuable) content, you’ll also increase the odds that someone else might share it on social media — thus making your customers do the heavy lifting for you.

Pitfalls

Cheaping out

There’s nothing wrong with having a tight budget. Everyone needs to start somewhere. Before Jeff Bezos grew Amazon to its current multi-billion-dollar state, he was attaching four-by-fours to wooden doors to save on desk costs for his employees.

You can’t blame young businesses for not having the same marketing budget as Coca-Cola or McDonalds.

Still, it’s important not to cheap out when it comes to content marketing. Hiring the cheapest writer you can find will end up costing you more in the long run than finding someone competent.

While a 1,000-word article for $5 may sound like a great deal, you’ll quickly realize that it’s the marketing equivalent of flushing a $5 bill down the toilet seeing as anything produced for that price will be unusable. Stick to writers who can actually get the job done.

Plagiarising

Seeing as many startups aren’t in a position to hire experienced writers, some might think that plagiarism is the best way to reap the benefits of content marketing. That being said, copying existing articles will end up doing more harm than good.

For one, it won’t help your website rank higher due to the fact that Google’s search algorithms can detect duplicate content.

Furthermore, if the original writer discovers your misdeeds, you could end up paying a $50,000 fine and spending a year in jail. “Crime doesn’t pay,” that truth applies to plagiarism just as much as it does to any other illicit activity.

Rushing

Everyone is working on a specific schedule and deadlines are omnipresent. That much is both true and fair, but to rush a writer would be the equivalent of telling Da Vinci to hurry it up with Mona Lisa’s smile.

There’s nothing wrong with setting deadlines, but you need to ensure that your writers are given enough time to research and write a high-quality piece. The exact amount of time needed to craft a great article will vary based on the topic, niche, length, and typing speed of the writer.

If you’re unsure as to what deadline you should set then ask the writer how long they think it would take them to produce a valuable take on the topic. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so don’t expect your writer to come up with a masterpiece overnight.

Conclusion

As you can see, content marketing brings countless benefits that you can reap, but just as many pitfalls that you need to avoid. As long as you stick to hiring qualified writers — cough like me cough — then you shouldn’t have any issues along the lines of quality or plagiarism.

I hope the information that you acquired through this article helps you succeed in your next marketing campaign. If you did benefit from the piece, pay it forward by sharing this with someone in your network who might be struggling to achieve results with their marketing efforts.

That’s all for today and stay profitable!