Benefits Of Content Marketing For Businesses

Compared to traditional marketing, content marketing is cheaper. But despite that, content marketing offers your business more leads.

Weird, huh? Well, it isn't when you look at the statistics.

According to Demand Metric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing. Yet, it generates thrice the leads of the latter.

For every dollar ROI of traditional marketing, content marketing returns three - while costing SIGNIFICANTLY lesser.

Put simply, content marketing trumps all other types of marketing (outbound and paid). And if you have been putting it off, stop. Your business is missing out on a ton of benefits.

[Idea for featured image: content marketing hammering down on traditional marketing]

What benefits?

This article contains some of the said benefits. But before we delve into that, let's see what the hype is all about: why makes content marketing so POPULAR? Why is it important?

Why Content Marketing Is Important

It is no news that marketers (B2B and B2C) and businesses use content marketing. Some even combine several content marketing tactics - up to 13.

You might wonder, what is all the hype about? What is SPECIAL about content marketing? Why is it so important?

Outside being cheap and having incredible ROI, content marketing is unique in 3 ways:

It Is Not Invasive

No one likes being bombarded with ads, especially from a stranger. Perhaps that's why ad blockers are selling so well.

Fortunately, content marketing is not invasive. Instead, it warms up leads by providing value and establishing trust.

It Delivers What The Audience Wants

Unlike ads that show up where they are not needed, content marketing works differently. In fact, content marketing is welcomed.

Consumers go in search of valuable content. They need information about products, brands, and promotions. If you write about these needs, you'll be providing your audience what they want when they need it.

As a result, you'll build a relationship and get sales EASILY.

It Works For Everyone

While the ROI might be different for businesses and the specific strategies used, content marketing works - and for everyone at that, regardless of the niche or size of your enterprise.

Note: we have some concrete examples.

# Drift increased their traffic 138x within 8 months using content marketing.

# Thanks to content marketing (guest posting), Buffer got their first 100k users.

# Blendtec used content marketing (their "Will It Blend" video series) to increase sales by 700% within 3years.

BOTTOMLINE: content marketing works - even for boring niches. It'll work for your business too.

And to answer the initial question:

Content marketing is POPULAR and IMPORTANT because it is an effective and sustainable marketing strategy. It works on a share-trust-sell principle.

Now, let's share the benefits you stand to gain from using content marketing for your business.

Note: you can use content marketing with other marketing strategies. It is compatible with any tactics.

15 Top Benefits Of Content Marketing For Businesses

Improves Visibility In Search Engines

The point of marketing is to get more traffic to your business. Either paid or organic, the outlook is the same:

The more traffic you get, the higher the number of prospects you can convert.

Unsurprisingly, content marketing sits at the heart of all traffic and conversion. You need content written around conversation points.

What are customers' frequently asked questions?

What are their worries and fears?

How does your business help calm those worries?

If you can get the "basics" and write top valuable content, your posts will rank high on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). When that happens, your business visibility will improve.

Ultimately, your websites and pages will receive tons of traffic - even more than you can convert.

Further reading: What Should Be Your SEO Strategy in Digital Marketing?

Improves Domain Authority

Even with the best SEO and content marketing tactics, your rankings on SERPs might take a while. Here is why:

• Several other businesses are competing for your preferred keywords
• Some of these businesses have been in the game before you and hence are perceived to have more expertise.

But don't be put off. More high-quality, valuable, and action content will improve your authority. If you publish valuable posts, bloggers will link back to your website. As a result, your domain authority will shoot up.

And so what?

With higher domain authority, your content will rank better on SERPs. Your businesses will get better visibility than competitors.

More Content Helps Search Engine Bots

Google, and other search engines, love content. When you constantly publish quality pieces, you will seduce Google's bots.

• The bots will spend more time on your website.
• Then, they will crawl and index your pages and posts faster
• Ultimately, the bots will understand your business better - the what, how, and who.

What would you gain?

In addition to indexing your page faster, search engine bots might suggest your business for related queries. How?

Regardless of your content budget, you can only rank for so much. But when the bots understand your business, they would suggest it for related queries outside your plans.

More Content Ties People To Your Website

More content increases traffic by seducing search engine bots. However, bots are not the only ones. Readers are seduced too!

Think of content marketing as a spider web. If you create a "little" cobweb, the captured insect will get out with little effort.

However, if the web is deep-layered, with several concentric circles, the insect gets stuck more as they struggle to get out.

That principle also applies to readers. And beautifully enough, you only need one post to get attention.

Once the attention is captured, prospects will check other content on your blog. In the process, they will:

• bookmark your website
• subscribe to your email list
• look out for new blog updates
• and buy your products

NOTE: more content will only lead to conversion when each of your posts is engaging - actionable, and snackable.

Builds Credibility

As stated earlier, content marketing works on a share-trust-sell principle. Sharing valuable information increases visibility and your domain authority.

But beyond SEO, sharing earns trust.

Publishing resourceful content without subtle sales pitches makes your brand trustworthy. By extension, readers will respect your opinion.

Furthermore, trust creates ripple effects. Readers will preach your business:

• They will share snippets of your content on their social media profiles
• Some users might even quote you on their blogs

The shares and mentions are backlinks (additional vote of trust). They will further seduce search engine bots to rank your content higher on SERPs.

Also read: SEO and Branding

Now, you can start selling!

Sells Products By Showing Their Impacts

Unlike traditional marketing that pushes products on buyers, content marketing helps you build trusted followers.

Your followers already trust you. As a result, they are ready to buy your products or services. Yet, content marketing doesn't even stop at just the share-trust basics.  

Content marketing tactics (especially case studies) weave the impacts of your products into stories. It shows what customers stand to gain from buying from you subtly.

That way, you'll remove any last shred of doubt in your buyer's journey.

Puts You In The Driving Seat

Unlike traditional marketing, you are no stranger to your prospects in content marketing.

Your content is already in place to familiarize people with your business and products. In other words, you have established authority and won't be at the mercy of customers and haggling.

You are in the driving seat!

You already control the conversation points with your valuable content!

If anyone approaches you after reading your content, rest assured that they fully understand your value. Such a person is your ideal customer.

Relieves The Job Of Customer Service And Sales

Once sales start trooping, you'll undoubtedly have loads of customer and sales queries. When will X be delivered? What are the warranties on Y?

Unfortunately, such repeated questions can wear out your customer and sales teams. Imagine having to answer how to fix profile name errors every time!

Good news: content marketing can relieve the stress. You can simply compile the frequently asked questions into a blog post. That way, your team only needs to refer customers to such posts when the questions arise.

Note: you must work with your departments to know their FAQs. So, a pre-designed template won't work. Also, create short video content for technical questions.  

Funnily enough, the answers to your FAQs can also rank on SERPs and fetch you additional traffic.

Enhances Customer Retention

It is one thing to convince a follower to buy from you. But will they become customers? Will the converts regularly buy from you?

Customer retention can be more hectic than customer acquisition. Fortunately, content marketing can help.

Using retargeted campaigns (email marketing works well here), you can target:

• Buyers who abandon their carts
• One-time customers
• Loyal customers who stopped buying

Outside customers who stopped buying, you can use content marketing to appreciate the loyal one who consistently buys from you. Here is how:

1. Send promotional offers to your subscriber list
2. Create a page on your website to show customers current promotions

Plugs Brand-Customer Relationship Gaps

The chances are that your customers stopped buying because they lost touch with your products. The content doesn't engage them anymore.

Your customers have outgrown your spider web.

When this stage surfaces (and it will), only content marketing can still help. Revisit the strategies. This time, involve your customers in the planning and even writing.  

Employ User-generated Content (UGC). Why should you?

1. UGC increases engagements - comments, discussions, etc.
2. It relieves some of the stress off your content team
3. It gets more social shares
4. It shows customers you value their opinion about your business
5. Ultimately, UGC plugs the relationship gap, rebuilds trust, and increases sales

Related reading: Everything You Need To Know About TikTok UGC

Checks And Fixes Brand Reputation

Regardless of how well you build your business, everyone won't have the same opinion about it. Even great products and companies get their share of negative reviews.

If that happens to your business, don't fret. Content marketing (press releases) can help.

Press releases (PRs) help you control the public opinion of your business. But first, you must have a few social listening systems in place - survey what people think about your products.

Once that is settled, you can write and distribute PRs to tell your truth. Like guest posting, PRs also contribute to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Increases Growth On Social Media

Social media has come to stay. It is a part of everyone's lives. And even if you don't necessarily fancy posting on your handles, do it for your business pages.

Your customers must familiarize themselves with you on social media platforms too. Don't stick to just your blogs and websites.

And while you're at it, you don't have to write new content from scratch. You can repurpose some of your already-ranking articles.

Either way, you'll boost your rankings on search engines. Search engine bots also consider mentions from social media.

Further reading: How To Create Content For Social Media

Complements Other Marketing Strategies

Content marketing combines different strategies; it is not just blogging and guest posting. It involves using various content types and social media.

In other words, content marketing doesn't stop you from using additional marketing strategies. In fact, it can assist the latter.

For example, if you use guerilla marketing for your business, you can further strengthen the reach with content.

You can create a PR or blog post about the guerilla marketing tactic. Either way, you'll push more traffic to the ad.

Pro tip: while content marketing supports other marketing strategies, ensure it is the foundation. That way, other tactics can slot in seamlessly.

Compounds ROI

Unlike traditional ads, content marketing results are not one-offs. They offer significant ROI that compounds with time.

For example, if your website ranks for a search query, it will continually get traffic from that query. And if your content contains ORIGINAL statistics, bloggers will quote and link back to your website.

That's additional traffic with zero effort from you.

Now, imagine writing a second article that handles the point from the first in a detailed manner - with screenshotted steps, videos, and examples. And, of course, you'll link back to the ranking post.

What do you think will happen?

The back and forth of the links will further cement your position on SERPs. If you're not already number 1 on the pile, your rankings will increase - and so will your conversions.

The best part: even if you only have one content ranking, the ROI will spill to other posts in your blog.

Cost-effectiveness

SPOILER ALERT: content marketing is cheap. But it is not exactly free.

If you're writing your content without help, you'll spend time researching the articles, writing, and distributing them. You might not have time for that. So, it's best to outsource it.

If you're outsourcing, we recommend using freelance writers. They are cheaper than in-house writers. However, ensure you employ an editor to guide the writers on tone and what to write about.

Either way, you might not spend more than $1-3k per month.

Traditional marketing, on the other hand, will cost you more. When running ads, you'd pay the media house and the actors. In the end, you might be looking at $5K (or above), depending on the run time.

Despite being expensive, traditional marketing doesn't offer half the results of content marketing. In fact, the latter generates twice the lead of the former.  

Furthermore, the ROI of content marketing compounds over time.

Benefits of Content Marketing Trends: Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Content Marketing And Why Is It Important?

Put simply, content marketing is a subtle marketing tactic that creates and shares online media (written and visual) to stir awareness and establish authority.

Content marketing is subtle because it is not salesy. However, its goal remains to draw traffic and convert leads for businesses.

Content marketing generates 3x the lead of traditional marketing, despite being cheaper. That is why 91% of marketers use it for their business.

What Are The Benefits Of Content Marketing?

The overall benefit of content marketing is its cost-effective approach to generating leads. But for specifics, here are the top advantages your business can enjoy by using content marketing:

1. Improve your SEO rankings
2. Create brand awareness and credibility
3. Control and mitigate public opinions
4. Build trust and authority
5. Retain customers

How Effective Is Content Marketing?

According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates 3x the lead of traditional marketing. And depending on the particular strategy used, you can get more than thrice the typical results.

How Does Content Marketing Perform Against Paid Search?

Unfortunately, we have no studies of how the two perform against each other. But we can tell you this: Paid search, like the name, will require consistent backing (money) to perform. Even at that, the content on your site must be convincing. Else, you would have wasted your money.

Content marketing, on the other hand, will fetch organic traffic with little upfront. As a result, it is more sustainable than paid search.

What Are The Benefits of Marketing?

Be it content or outbound marketing, the overall goal of all marketing strategies is to improve sales. The specific benefits or routes might vary. But as long as your revenues are increasing, your marketing strategy works.

Final Thoughts

Content marketing, as we have stated, has unparalleled benefits. It is cheap and yet offers the best results compared to outbound marketing.

But, like all marketing strategies, content marketing still needs time. You have to invest your time and money for it to work.

Good news: you don't have to spend a ton or invest all your time. Legiit content marketing services can help!

Tip for freelancers: use Legiit Facebook Group as a content marketing tool to promote your services. It is FREE!

Further reading: Content Marketing Trends in 2024