There are countless options available to business owners and marketers interested in promoting their brand and products online. One of the little-used options that most companies overlook is content marketing. If you’re unfamiliar with content marketing and its potential value to your business, you’re in luck! In this post we’re going to offer a brief overview on content marketing, and then follow that up with some statistics highlighting the potential it could hold for your brand as a piece of a larger online marketing campaign.
What is Content Marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute offers the following definition of this lesser-known approach to online marketing:
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience, with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
In short, content marketing is the use of things as simple as blog posts and infographics, or items as complex as how-to videos, to promote your brand and products on the web. By providing greater, visual and informational insight into your brand, you are pushing your products into the view of consumers.
Daily Creation is the Key
According to Emarketer, the key to success with content marketing is the daily creation of new content. It doesn’t have to be the same type of content you produce each day. You could have a rotation of Monday blog posts, infographics on Tuesday, Wednesday podcasts, Thursday social media polls, and Friday guest articles. What you create isn’t as important (in this instance) as keeping your brand fresh in the minds of readers. 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content daily.
Content Marketing is Cost Effective
Marketers are always looking for the most effective way to promote a brand or product for the least amount of money possible. The beauty of content marketing is the ability to provide quality content regardless of the size of your budget. In fact, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing methods.
Social Media Content is Beneficial
Not everyone can create great infographics that get shared and reposted on other blogs or sites within a given industry. If the visual arts aren’t your cup of tea, content marketing on social media can help level the playing field. The benefit to your business is that social media content marketing ranks higher in most search results than video and podcasting. That’s probably why 68% of B2B and B2C marketers use content marketing through social media.
Blogs Remain Vital in Connecting with Customers
Content marketing is so important to various brands and industries that there are 2 million blog posts written every day. The key to producing written content that matters is to find a way to stand out while remaining relevant to your target audience. Writing a blog post just to have a post each day isn’t as valuable as providing a new post two or three times a week that your readers find invaluable to their purchasing decisions and help foster a better connection to your brand.
Word Counts Still Matter
At one point in time, there was a hyper focus in online marketing on specific word counts. While some of Google’s web updates to search engines have changed the value of word counts, there’s still data suggesting a connection between word counts and shared content. Google’s top-ranked content averages anywhere between 1,140 words and 1,285 words. The long and short of that is that quality, relevant content is valuable and cannot be understated. Never try to cut content short just to stay under a certain number, but don’t leave out potentially valuable information either.
Generating Traffic Remains Problematic
The majority of companies still report generating traffic and leads as the top marketing challenge facing their brands. Content marketing is all about attracting an audience to your online presence (social media, blog, etc.), and with 65% of companies failing in this bid through other means, content marketing is a strong tool to help your business generate the traffic it needs to convert lookers into buyers, and repeat customers.