“Content is king.” If you’ve been in the online marketing space for even just a short while, it’s likely you’ve heard that adage. It’s any wonder then that so many businesses still operate without a dedicated content marketing strategy.
The thinking seems to be that content creation is too demanding and time-consuming a task. There’s truth to that, of course. A robust content marketing strategy does take a significant amount of time. Time to conduct extensive industry research, time to analyze the market and map out an effective approach, and of course: time to create the actual content itself.
The business women who hire me to create regular content on their behalf already have enough on their plate — but they understand that content marketing shouldn’t be neglected. They know it can help them scale their business like nothing else.
In fact, here are just 5 of the benefits of content marketing, and why you should implement a content marketing strategy for your business growth right now:
1. Free website traffic
The average cost-per-click for Google Adwords is $2.69. In some industries, it’s as high as $6.75. If there’s no room in your marketing budget for decadent spending, that price tag may be hard to swallow, especially when only 2-5% of those clicks will result in a conversion on your website.
But traffic generation doesn’t have to break the bank. Did you know that something as simple as publishing regular content on your website can result in 8 times more traffic?
In my experience, even that’s a conservative number. For one of my existing clients, web traffic increased by a whopping 2,000% within months of me implementing my content strategy. How would an additional few hundred/few thousand/few tens of thousands of web visitors increase your bottom line each month?
The key is consistent content creation. If you’re not already blogging on a regular schedule, try to create new content at least once a week. This should be content that addresses your audience’s paint points and provides value by solving a problem for them.
2. Cost-effective lead generation
As they say, the money’s in your email list. It’s no surprise then that business spend top dollar on lead generation, with Software and SaaS companies in particular spending on average $344 to generate a single lead.
That’s an extreme, of course, as other industries tend to hover around $30-$60. Nonetheless, even at those numbers, lead generation isn’t an inexpensive business.
That’s why content marketing is one of the top strategies employed by online marketers as a top-of-the-funnel lead generation channel.
In fact, 93% of B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies, with conversion rates being up to 6 times higher. Better yet, inbound leads from content marketing cost 61% less!
3. Competitive search engine rank
Do you want to raise brand awareness and boost visibility for your business? Then you’ll want to curry favor with search engines like Google, especially considering that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. And with 5.6 billion searches conducted on Google every day, there’s a wealth of warm leads waiting to learn about your brand.
Naturally, there’s a catch. If you want your target audience to take notice of you, you’re going to need to rank high in search engines, preferably on the first page. The websites listed here get 91.5% of the traffic for a search query, with the website in the very top spot getting a whopping 32.5% of traffic all to itself.
The only way to rank in search engines and win this kind of visibility is to publish regular content. Take note, however: the content you produce must be comprehensive, valuable, and of the highest quality in order for Google to give it consideration. In fact, the average length of an article on Google’s first page of search results is over 1800 words long.
SEO (search engine optimization) plays a big role here, but even if you’re not a technical person, understanding basic, on-page SEO practices can go a long way in helping you to rank on Google. If you use WordPress for your business website, consider downloading the SEO plugin Yoast, which will help you optimize your content every time you create a new blog post. If handling your own SEO is overwhelming for you, you might want to consider hiring professionals who can help you. If you want to determine your biggest opportunities, you’ll need a strong SEO action plan.
4. Lead nurturing
Content can be said to be the lifeblood of any effective lead-nurturing funnel, with 47% of consumers viewing 3-5 pieces of content created by a company before reaching out to its sales team. More impressively, 61% of consumers have made a purchase as a direct result of content they read.
There’s no doubt about it: content is a powerful tool of persuasion and influence. And when used as low-hanging fruit, by which consumers can interact with your brand with no-strings-attached, it’s also an effective means of educating potential leads. If you wow these readers with meticulously crafted content that’s of the highest value, the odds are in your favor that their engaging with your content will result in a conversion.
But the journey doesn’t end once they’re in your pipeline, not when nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Regular, high-quality content is the best way to nurture your audience and keep them warm, while also affording you the opportunity to keep your brand in front of them and therefore at the forefront of their minds.
5. User experience
The average bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page) for B2B websites is just above 61%. Anything higher than 70% may be reason for concern.
There can be a variety of causes for a high bounce rate. Slow loading times are one of the most notorious offenders. Another popular cause is a poor user experience, where a website visitor is bombarded with popup ads or simply finds your website too confusing to navigate.
An often overlooked cause, though, is low-quality content. These days, 77% of internet users are regular blog readers. They can judge within seconds whether or not a piece of content has been developed with care and excellence.
If you consistently deliver high-value, comprehensive content that addresses your audience’s pain points, however, user experience on your website will naturally increase, with visitors often sticking around to consume even more pieces of content. By that point, chances are extremely high that they’ll convert to your email list in order to continue hearing from you, and just like that, you have new warm leads in your pipeline.
The key is to avoid creating content just for the sake of it. Every piece of content on your website needs to serve a purpose in your overall marketing strategy. Ask yourself these questions: what problem am I addressing? How am I solving that problem for my audience? What would be the ideal next-steps/call-to-action for someone after reading this content?
More than ever, content marketing plays a crucial role in some of the most successful businesses online today. In fact, 86% of highly effective organizations have someone specifically in charge of content strategy.
That’s no coincidence. Content is here to stay, and a year from now, those who leveraged it to their advantage will find themselves ahead of the curve and more than likely outperforming their peers in the industry as well.
Whether you decide to hire a content strategist to develop your content marketing strategy for you, or you take on the task yourself, your business will benefit from an effective, well-executed strategy that will lead to increased website traffic, leads, and sales.
