Content marketing involves providing reliable and valuable content or information to prospective customers with the goal of branding, positive sentiment, building trust and awareness. This is done through podcasts, social media posts, standard videos, webinars, e-books, email newsletters and white papers. Let’s now discuss the importance of content marketing.
Marketing Strategy
“It has been estimated that approximately 60% of companies currently use content marketing as one of their main marketing strategies. In the last two quarters of 2019, it is predicted that this percentage will increase significantly,” says Michael Fletcher, Content Marketing Director at APA Style service. Unlike earlier when content marketing was just a catch-all phase, it will have distinct relevance in every organization that has embraced it.
Top Marketing Job
Due to the increased awareness of the importance of content marketing in the recent past, most companies and organizations will be more inclined in implementing strategies documented in content marketing to achieve their business objectives. Various studies analyzing the trends of content marketing reveal that more budgets will be designated for content dissemination and creation as companies invest in content marketing management. “Companies that will not embrace content marketing and assign experts to develop and manage it will lose out,” notes Brenda Hook, Head of Content Marketing at ConfidentWriters.
Software Companies Will Flourish
It will become difficult to track and measure Return On Investment (ROI) because content marketing results will be spread over time. Businesses will have to come to terms that results of marketing techniques will not be measured on the basis of case-by-case but rather calculated as a whole over a longer period of time. As a result, Software as a service (SaaS) software companies will attempt to help companies calculate ROI of content marketing investment and most CEO’s trying content marketing for the first time obviously will require visibility into profitability of their investment and as a result, the SaaS software companies will definitely make good business.
Tech-savvy Businesses
There is a significant increase in the usage of mobile devices especially GPRS-enabled phones that utilize location as well as personal information to support flash deals on the basis of the current location of the user. This technology is slowly becoming pervasive and will become even more so toward the end of the year. It means that storefronts that will fail to adopt location-based strategies of content marketing will decline in sales. On the other hand, companies with location-based flash deals, coupons and offers will thrive. As a result, tech-savvy businesses will flourish capitalizing on the mobile device trend by implementing strategies based on mobile content marketing.
Content is More Than Text
Content marketing is more than just written content. There are numerous ways this can be done; using video, audio and other information media. There are people with disabilities, whether hearing or seeing and this in a way makes it hard for information to reach them, therefore denying them equal changes as compared to those individuals with a disability. With content marketing, all these disabilities are catered for effective marketing. For some individuals, they better listen than read about something to get information, therefore with content marketing, more people are reached.
Content is Permanent Therefore Long-lasting
Comparing online content and content marketing, online has very short-term value but once content is published, it will be there forever; hence, it will have long-term value since it can be archived or recorded in a way.
Content Serves Two Masters
Published content does not benefit readers or viewers alone; it also helps improve search rankings of the respective company or organizations being marketed. Creation of high quality content signals search engines that the company or organization has the authority in the industry. The more this is done often, the stronger the signals send. The content created is directly proportional to the opportunities created through organic search for prospective customers.
Content Gains Trust in Customers
Well-known brands have gained customer loyalty through content development; e.g. Coca-Cola, Amazon and Apple just to name a few. The content forms a perfect platform for building trust. High-quality created content educates customers about the company’s products, industry and services making them comfortable purchasing from it. Future-thinking and educational content is very effective in positioning any brand as trustworthy, credible and highly interested in customer needs.
From the discussion, the importance or benefit of content marketing is evident not only to organizations providing the content, but also for software companies, customers and other businesses. It is expected that content marketing will be embraced to realize its fruits in the consequent years. Content marketing will play a big role in the expansion of companies in the near future.
The guest post was written by Paul Bates, a marketing and EdTech expert. He currently consults a few educational startups such as Paper-Research and SwiftPapers with offices in the United States and the UK.
