Do social media work without content? Does advertisement work without content?
The Answer is NO.
This is quite impossible as content is everywhere. There is sales content, product, customer service, event, marketing and campaign content. Nowadays content marketing has become the main source to attract your audience.
In the world of digital marketing, there is a well known phrase – ‘Content is King”. The message that is conveyed by this phrase is that Digital marketing has no existence, if there is no content. Some marketing professionals agree to it and some don’t.
However, if we analyze the entire process of digital marketing, whether it is social media marketing or Search Engine Optimization, we will find that the entire process revolves around the content only. It is the content only that is used by SEOs to optimize searches on search engines like Google. Similarly, the metadata used in posts, keywords used in web page and product description, etc., is nothing but the content. So, it is pretty clear that the content is heart and soul of digital marketing. It is the medium through which the marketers talk to their customers, clients or readers.
So, in short, we may describe content marketing as making use of content to meet marketing goals of any organization. Marketing strategies may focus on various objectives such as developing a customer base or retaining the existing ones, brand promotion and a lot more.
Some companies really don’t understand the significance of content marketing, so they hesitate to allocate resources to it. Content marketing brings so many benefits. You should know how your content talks about your brand. You can share it in any form or at any platform. This proves to be a highly effective mode of marketing.
Tangible Benefits:
It produces statistics and numbers and can be analyzed, monitored and tracked.
Intangible Benefits:
It does not produce any real statistics or numbers. For example: brand awareness. You cannot analyze, monitor or track it.
Some intangible benefits of content marketing
The catchier and engaging the content will be, the more it would be talked about, shared and recommended by the readers. It helps increase the brand awareness and loyalty. It is not easy to track the magnitude of this benefit, but it is a very significant benefit of content marketing. The entire sales platform built by Apple Company, is based on consumer loyalty. This shows how significant this content marketing is?
Let’s start with an example.
It offers your audience something to talk about
This may be the conversation of two different people among your audience. If you create a good, crisp and interesting content for your audience, you will offer them something to talk about. When they talk about your content means they talk about you and your brand. Content marketing helps make people aware about your product and service.
2. Industry respect and authority
This is the best way to gain respect from your audience. If people talk about your content, then it means that it has made you noticeable online. You have to earn trust, admiration and respect from your audience. It takes time and it all depends on your online reputation. You should have a good reputation in industry and once you have proven your integrity and knowledge, you become popular.
To be known by name, can be the most significant benefit of content marketing. People always want someone whom they can trust. If you build up your integrity and brand authority, you will find it easy to turn lead into sale. You can increase trust and authority with the help of content marketing by providing authentic advice and ideas to the people.
It keeps you ahead in Competition. You should go for a good quality content without any misleading information or bad advice. By doing this, you will gain authority and make the readers choose your services over all competitors.
3. Indirect customer conversion
Targeting potential customers is must and creating content for them shortens distance between your products and those people. You need not to always mention what you sell in your content, indirect customer conversion is also important.
4. Increase team coordination
This is not only about a foundation of advertising campaign but content marketing is also the foundation for team coordination, cooperation and interaction. Whenever a blog post, article, Facebook or Twitter post is put up, it needs combined efforts from content team, social media team and design team. These are individual teams and operate independently in any organization but when it comes to content marketing they operate as a whole.
Some tangible benefits of content marketing
Great content tell search engines that you are authoritative and important. Without content, there is nothing to optimize for search engines.
There is a complex relationship between content marketing and SEO. Search engine optimization will be in vain if you use or circulate poor content. Increased links and shares will be generated with great content and it will automatically be beneficial for SEO.
2. Site traffic
Great content brings traffic to your site and people get more information about your company and services. This is easy to track. When more traffic drive to your site, it increases the chances people know and learn about your products and services. It increases sales and leads.
3. Increase conversion rate
Content marketing is the best use of words to convey your message and right information about your brand to the audience. Content is more than a blog post, info-graphic, video or social media post. This is a way of communication with your audience. If you improve content quality, you will be more able to convey your message to your audience more precisely.
The more your message will circulate, the more will people receive and like it. They may become your loyal customers. . Informative content is fuel to boost your search engine ranking, CTR in newsletter, fan engagement in social media, audience reach on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook via promoted post.