The term “Content Marketing” was coined by John F. Oppendahl in 1996. He is known as the man who finally named the marketing method organizations had used for decades.
When marketing went digital in the 1990s, content marketing was pushed to the sidelines. Many businesses took the easy route and decided to promote their brands and sell their products using digital marketing tools such as television advertising without any content marketing.
It wasn’t until the early 2010s that businesses realized that, despite producing a lot of content, they were generating significantly less revenue.
Brands realized they were making a lot of content without effort to ensure it was of good quality. Although their target audience knew about their brand, they had no reason to patronize them because they only saw them as businesses that were out to get their money.
They then concluded that they had to combine digital marketing with an effective content marketing strategy to gain their target audience’s attention and build brand trust.
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After content marketing, businesses found it much easier to showcase their brands, connect with their customers, and build brand trust. Not only did they create catchy tunes that entertained their target audience, but they also answered questions about their products.
You must have an effective marketing strategy to reach your target audience and do it in a way that catches their attention and sticks to their memory.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a digital marketing method that strategically creates and shares relevant content like blog posts and videos to drive traffic and stimulate your target audience’s interest in your products and services. It helps you build a relationship with your audience and influence their decision with consistently quality content.
A good content marketing strategy shortens your sales cycles by building trust with your target customers, clearing their doubts, and answering all the questions they might have about your products and services.
It helps you attract customers by creating content that provides information and solutions to problems. You must create a content marketing strategy suitable for your business, effectively reaching your target audience.
Customers choose you when they make purchase decisions because you consistently create valuable content that helps them regularly. Content marketing lets you keep your customers’ attention by showing them that you care for them.
Although quality content is an essential tool to generate leads for your business, it would be useless if you create content in a form that does not appeal to your target audience. You must know the different content marketing types and understand which is best for your business.
Types of Content Marketing
Blogs
Having blogs on your website that contain information about your products and their related markets attracts potential customers and generates traffic.
When people visit your page in search of answers you provide in your blogs, they stay and look to you for more content. As a result, you influence their purchasing decisions and generate more sales.
HubSpot studied over 6,000 businesses and discovered that blog users receive twice as much email traffic as those who do not. Quality blog content creation keeps your visitors engaged longer on your website and helps you boost your traffic organically through improved SEO.
Videos
Video content catches your target audience’s attention quickly and engages them longer. It is a very versatile type of content marketing that helps you capture your prospective customers’ attention for the desired period and give them as much information as possible.
A Cisco research report said that by 2022, 82% of all internet traffic would be either video streaming or video downloads. You can use low-cost tools like video capture software to create content like tutorials and self-help videos for your audience and keep them returning for more.
Infographics
An infographic uses elements like texts and images to represent information visually. Through those, you get to convey your message to your audience in a way they would understand at a glance.
Visuals such as charts, graphics, color design, and images boost readership by 80%. However, you must keep your infographics simple and meaningful.
Infographics content marketing uses eye-catching and persuasive materials to educate your target customers, solve their problems, and influence their purchase decisions.
You could use graphic design software with templates like Canva to make infographics, so you do not have to start from scratch.
Podcasts
Podcasts make use of audio files to create entertaining and informative content. Most of the time, podcast content helps make a good impression of your brand, keeps you in the minds of your audience, and keeps them returning. Podcast advertisements are the most effective way to reach 50% of podcast Super Listeners.
You can use a podcast network to create professionally composed podcasts that showcase your brand and build better. You can also share these audio files on your social media platforms and put them on your web pages as additional content for your visitors.
Social Media
With social media content marketing, you can use social media platforms to reach your target audience. In 2021, 77% of social media marketers believed social media marketing has been moderate to extremely effective for their company.
You must find the social media platform your prospective customers use and create content that attracts them to you and makes them follow you.
With social media marketing, you can import other types of content like podcasts and video content and repurpose them for your social media networks. Quality social media content allows you to improve your customer relationship.
Why Should You Use Content Marketing?
Customers usually do not buy products they have not used before because they are skeptical about the quality of their products and services. What better way to improve your conversion rate than to build a relationship with your target customers and answer all the questions they may have about your products?
Content marketing is no longer an interesting new concept that you could use to help your business grow. It is now an essential marketing tool that every business must use to stay updated and create quality products and services that attain customer satisfaction.
It offers you different exciting ways of connecting with your customers without being overly self-promotional. People do not take you seriously when all you do is push them to install an app or buy your product without even establishing a relationship with them first.
Content marketing helps you avoid this by giving your target audience reasons why they should buy your products while also solving some of their problems and entertaining them.
Good content generates more brand awareness by consistently increasing your website’s traffic. You get to create and optimize content, so your target audience can find your brand and products with little or no effort. Here are some benefits of using content to bring awareness to your brand:
Better Search Engine Ranking
SEO software like google rank websites with quality and authentic content higher than others. This helps you reach your target audience faster and with no paid ads.
Content marketing also ensures that you produce quality content regularly, keeping you at the top of the search engines, unlike static websites with no new content.
More Brand Awareness
People do business with brands they know and trust. You can not generate many sales if your target customers do not know about your business.
Content marketing showcases your brand and the people behind it. It helps you to provide your target customers with helpful information about your products and gives them reasons to patronize you.
Builds Customer Trust
Customers trust you more when you give them information and solve their problems with no strings apart. It makes them feel cared for by your business, and they
Content marketing lets your audience see you as a trustworthy figure they can rely on for regular information. And when they are ready to make purchase decisions, they will choose you.
Shorter Sales Cycles
Most content marketers use marketing strategies that they explicitly designed to generate more sales and close deals faster.
With quality content, your prospective customers are educated and equipped with the correct information that helps them make choices and close sales faster.
Higher ROI
Since content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates more sales, it is safe to say that you would be making more money and cutting the cost of production simultaneously.
With content marketing, you can use low-cost tools like marketing automation software to support your campaigns and generate a higher return on investment.
There are many reasons why businesses use content marketing to create awareness and grow their brand. What better way to highlight its effectiveness than by letting its statistics speak for it?
20 Statistics About Content Marketing That Highlights Its Effectiveness
A Blog Can Increase Website Traffic by 434%
Blogs are one of the most popular types of content marketing, second only to video content, used by businesses. Most marketers use blogs to create extra content and captivate their readers regardless of what type of content they use primarily.
Since quality written content gets businesses’ websites to rank higher on SEO software pages, content marketers use blogs to showcase their brands and engage their target audience. (Content Marketing Institute, 2017).
86% of Marketers Use Video Content as a Marketing Tool
Content marketers have used web analytics software to know what type of content consumers like more and concluded that they prefer videos.
Video contents are the most widely used type of content created by marketers because It is easy to make and can be shared on almost all social media platforms to showcase brands and reach their target audience quickly. (Wyzowl, 2021).
84% of Surveyed Marketers Successfully Used Marketing Automation To Achieve Their Top Priorities
Manually creating relevant content in different forms and distributing it on all platforms at the right time is difficult for many organizations.
As a result, they turned to tools like marketing automation software, as 34% of marketers believed marketing automation would improve customer engagement and experience. You increase your marketing efficiency when you automate your content. (Ascend2).
82% of Marketers Use SEO Software
It would be hard for content marketers to know when they are on the right track if they have a way to measure their content’s success. Search engines have tools that let content marketers know when they are producing quality content by placing them higher in the search engine ranking.
Content marketers use SEO software like SE Ranking to monitor their website’s success and know just how good their content is. SEO tools help you promote your website and improve your content strategy. (SEMrush state of content marketing 2020 global report).
88% of Content Marketers Use Web Analytics Tools
You need to know how the content you have created and distributed on different platforms is doing to understand what you’re doing right and what you need to improve.
Content marketers use web analytics software to know essential statistics about their websites. Analytics tools help you track how many visitors you have on your website, how long they stay, and the kind of content they engage more. (SEMrush state of content marketing 2020 global report).
Over 3 Billion Internet Users Have Watched Video Content in 2020
Since consumers enjoy watching videos, you get to entertain them and give quality content and information in a short time with video content. By 2020, 83.3% of internet users in the United States had accessed digital video content.
Just under half of content marketers say that video content is the most effective form of marketing, while 81% of marketers believe that videos have a direct and positive impact on sales.
You can support your target audience with video tutorials made with low-cost tools like video capture software on how to solve their problems and convert them to your customers. (Statistica).
Infographics Can Boost Website Traffic by 12%
Since infographics are easy to make and portray messages quickly, content marketers use them to support other types of content they create.
Visuals can increase page views and improve business results because they are quicker and simpler for the brain to process.
Infographics are the perfect way to create quality content at a low cost. Most brands that use infographics spend little or nothing to create content with it. All you need to do is edit templates on graphic design software like Canva and put in their data and content. (Demand Gen Report).
87% of Marketers Say Video Has Helped Them Increase Traffic
Video content is the most popular type of content companies use. Not only are videos easy to make, but they are also versatile and give content marketers many ways to be creative while creating quality content.
Video content marketing has especially become more relevant in the marketing industry than in the past as, in 2022, 88% of people say they’d like to see more videos from brands.
Content marketers also say that video editing software like Adobe Creative Cloud Express helps them edit videos and ensures they are of good quality. (Wyzowl Video Marketing Statistics 2022).
88% of Content Marketers Say Video Content Generate High ROI
Your main goal as a business owner is to generate profit. Marketing will be useless if it does not cause a high return on investment.
Almost all content marketers are satisfied with the return on investment on the video content they create and distribute on social media. Video content has a high conversion rate, which leads to more sales. (Animoto, 2018).
90% of People Learn About New Products on YouTube
Although there are many social media platforms where consumers watch video content, most people mainly use YouTube.
There is no doubt that YouTube is an excellent tool for content marketers looking to promote brands with video content.
You get to not only create quality video content and share them, but you can also make money from the streaming platform when your visitors stream your videos by putting ads in them. (Thinkwithgoogle, 2019).
48% of Buyers Say They View About 3–5 Pieces of Content Before Making an Inquiry
Survey respondents say they first let brands’ content speak for them before making further inquiries or purchasing their products and services. If they dislike the content they see, they leave that brand for another.
Your content is what speaks for you when a prospective customer visits your website. You get to give your business a personality and present it in a way that entices your visitors and makes them patronize you. (Hubspot, 2022).
52% of Buyers are More Likely to Patronize a Business after Reading its Content
The more customers know about your brand, the better they trust you. More than half of survey respondents say they are likelier to patronize a business when they get written information about its products and services.
Marketers create written content not only with blogs but also through infographics and social media posts. You get to reach out to your audience and give them information about your products to influence their purchase decisions. (MarketingCharts, 2020).
70% of Marketers Say that SEO Generates More Sales than Paid Ads
Content marketers say that creating quality content that gets SEO software to rank their websites higher on their web pages generates more sales than paid ads.
Although you could use methods like paying for pay-per-click ads, it is better to have original content that gives you an authentic SEO ranking because it makes your visitors trust tour products more and leads to a higher conversion rate. (Databox)
53% of Content Marketers that Use Podcasts Say it is the Most Effective
Although audio contents like podcasts generate low ROI compared to other types of content, many content marketers say it is the most effective form of content they use.
Podcasts do not only generate one-time sales for you, but it also helps you build loyal customers that return to patronize you. It also allows you to improve your customer relationship by building a better bond. (HubSpot, 2022).
Content Marketing Generates 6x More Conversion Rate
Businesses that use quality content for marketing their products and services generate a lot more sales than businesses that do not. That is why companies no longer consider content marketing a fun new tool but a necessary aspect they must invest their time and money in to grow.
Content marketers use tools like customer engagement software to monitor customers and see their preferred content. They can then make more of that content to generate more sales. (Aberdeen).
Content Marketing Costs 62% less than Traditional Marketing
Not only do you generate more sales with content marketing, but you also get to spend less on your content marketing strategy.
Most types of content marketing are way cheaper than their traditional counterparts. You can use low-cost tools like the help desk software to provide a knowledge base that gives your website visitors the necessary information about your products and services. (Demand Metric)
69% of Marketers Say Content Is Better Than Direct Mail
Direct mail is a very powerful marketing tool. It used to be one of the most effective types of marketing that helped brands improve their customer relationship and get feedback from their consumers.
Most marketers say content marketing generates more sales than direct mail and builds better customer relationships. It is also faster and makes it easy to consistently create and distribute quality content to their target audience. (Custom Content Council).
52% of Marketers Have Used Content Marketing to Build Customer Loyalty
When marketers use web analytics software and tools to monitor their progress, they realize that customers return to patronize them when they create quality content.
An efficient content strategy helps you build a good relationship with your customers, making them loyal to your brand and marketing your business by word-of-mouth. (Content Marketing Institute).
72% of Marketers Think Authentic Content is More Effective Than Newspaper Ads
Before blog content, brands put their written content in newspapers and magazines to catch their target audience’s attention.
However, most marketers now believe that it is preferable to create blogs and customize them with tools such as website builder software to give customers a sense of your brand.
Customers trust you more when your brand has features like your logo and color code that stand out in a sea of sameness. (Neilpatel.com).
About 82% of Marketers who Create Blog Content Get High ROI
Blog content is never a waste when done correctly. Almost all content marketers that create written content like blogs say they get a high return on investment.
Consumers want you to answer their questions and solve their problems. You would attract more potential customers and make more sales when you create relevant blog contents that are useful and entertaining to your visitor. (HubSpot).
In Conclusion
Content marketing is an essential tool you must take seriously to grow your business. However, it is not enough to create a few good-enough contents and keep recycling them. You must consistently make quality content relevant to your target audience.
Ensure that your primary content type is in a form that your potential customers consume most. You should also use modern tools and content management software that helps you create and regulate your content.
As the forms of marketing change with time, businesses must learn to adapt and ensure that they create quality content regardless of its form. Remember, Content is King.
Sources
- Content Marketing Institute, 2017
- Wyzowl, 2021
- Ascend2
- SEMrush state of content marketing 2020 global report
- SEMrush state of Content Marketing 2020 Global Report
- Statistica
- Demand Gen Report
- Wyzowl Video Marketing Statistics 2022
- Animoto, 2018
- Thinkwithgoogle, 2019
- Hubspot, 2022
- MarketingCharts, 2020
- Databox
- HubSpot, 2022
- Aberdeen
- Demand Metric
- Custom Content Council
- Content Marketing Institute
- Neilpatel.com
- HubSpot