Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. The goal of B2B content marketing is to generate leads from your website, PPC, or social media channels, build relationships with your buyer personas and ultimately increase sales — with each digital asset carefully optimised to drive profitable customer actions.
Interruption Advertising And Content Marketing
Unlike traditional advertising, which ‘interrupts’ audiences with content they don't necessarily want to see (e.g., adverts on many TV/streaming services and YouTube), content marketing provides audiences with ‘opted-in’ content that they actually want to consume (e.g. blog articles selected from a Google search results page). In the business-to-business (B2B) digital marketing world, content marketing takes many forms, from blog posts and downloadable eBooks to video webinars and snappy infographics. Each item of content is treated as a unique digital sales asset and is closely monitored and tracked to assess its effectiveness, social impact, cost-to-benefit ratio, conversion rate and engagement level.
When carried out correctly, B2B content marketing is an extremely effective way to generate leads, drive sales and build brand awareness. However, to be successful, B2B content marketing must be strategic and well-targeted to the correct audience. After all, business decision-makers and high-level personas are busy people and they're not going to waste time reading content that isn't relevant to their needs at that particular time.
That's why it's so important to understand your target audience and what kinds of content will appeal to them, and the issues they need this content to address. Once you've identified your audience, you can start creating content that is helpful, informative, and persuasive – nurturing prospects through the buyer journey to become paying customers. With the right content marketing strategy, you can build the kind of relationships that lead to increased sales revenues and higher long-term value from each customer.
Here are the top 7 reasons why your business should invest in a content marketing strategy in 2023:
1) Increased Online Leads
By creating targeted content that speaks to the specific pain points of your ideal customers, you will be more likely to attract them to your website and eventually convert them into leads. Inbound digital content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing, but costs significantly less, making content marketing an extremely effective way to generate leads without stretching your sales budget.
2) Greater Engagement Levels
Content marketing can also result in greater engagement with your target audience. By providing valuable, relevant information that helps your customers solve their problems, you will earn their trust and build a stronger relationship foundation with them. When used correctly, content marketing can help you create a community of engaged followers (consisting of both current and potential customers, as well as suppliers and business partners) who are interested in what you have to say. Engagement can be measured in various ways, including touch points on social media, content shares, recommendations/referrals, and positive comments – as well as direct sales enquiries and purchases.
3) More Effective Lead Nurturing
With lead nurturing content (such as email drip campaigns), you can continue to provide value to early-stage leads even after they've left your website or blog. This keeps you at the front of the prospect’s mind when considering certain solutions and increases the likelihood that they'll come back when they're ready to buy.
By using content marketing effectively, every sales lead can be cultivated to the stage when he or she is ready to make a purchase – even if they are not ready to buy straight away. You’ve got time on your side and should write all of your marketing content from the perspective of progressively building up a value proposition and sales argument, over time. Unlike traditional advertising, you don’t have to throw everything at one ‘all or nothing’ sales opportunity.
4) Increased Brand Awareness
Content marketing will help you increase brand awareness and technical/industry authority, thereby driving website traffic. By creating compelling content that is widely read and shared, and that increases the prominence of your business on the top search pages for relevant keywords, you increase the relevance of your products and services as viable business solutions. A business whose blog posts and webpages appear several times in the top 10 Google searches for an important keyword will have an intrinsic level of credibility and authority before a prospect even makes contact.
5) Improved Search Engine Visibility
Publishing quality content consistently over time will boost your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy for building organic traffic through keyword searches. This is because search engines are constantly looking for new, relevant information to draw upon in response to search queries, giving precedence to regularly updated blogs, social media profiles, and web pages. When people find your content helpful and relevant, they are more likely to cite it in their own content, which also helps improve your search rankings and domain authority through inbound links.
6) Improved Sales Conversion Rate
Once you've attracted leads with your targeted awareness stage content, you can publish more specific content (such as product pages, case studies, eBooks, etc.) to move prospects further down the sales funnel through consideration and decision, towards a purchase. Content-rich websites convert at a rate that is six times higher than those without engaging content, making content marketing a powerful way of increasing the sales potential of your website and upping your conversion rate.
7) Better Marketing ROI
Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business online. Written digital content can often be published for free on your website or social media pages, and often costs significantly less to produce than traditional outbound marketing methods such as print ads or direct mail. Pairing inbound marketing with content marketing is the perfect recipe for driving more website visitors and converting them into paying customers, lowering your cost per sale, and increasing your marketing ROI.
Next Steps
Content marketing is vital for any business that wants to succeed online. By creating unique, high-quality content, you lay strong foundations for attracting more qualified sales leads, creating a platform for engaging with your target audience, improving sales conversions, and saving money on marketing costs.
To find out more or to discuss your digital marketing goals with one of our specialists, please call JDR today on 01332 343281.
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