10 Benefits of Consistent, High-Quality Content Marketing

Content marketing has become a trend, especially in the highly competitive B2B marketing landscape. More and more companies are now investing in it as it works wonders for all types of businesses and produces better results than most other marketing tactics.

Content marketing is also a proven strategy to grow audience engagement, enhance your brand authority, and drive sales. For many businesses, content marketing works even when other tactics stop working.

Producing consistent & high-quality content can be a game-changer for your business. Here are some of the major benefits of content marketing that you should absolutely consider.

1. It Improves Organic Visibility & Search Traffic

To rank higher on Google, you need to have higher domain authority, and for a higher DA, you need to publish content that can earn quality backlinks. Google also prefers authoritative content and ranks it higher.

To earn Google's love, your content should also meet the E-A-T factor, i.e., Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

You can check the overall content quality of the page based on the following factors.

• The Purpose of the Page: Your page should have a beneficial purpose. It should offer value and information that helps users. Let's discuss what it means.

• The Beneficial Purpose: It's a major quality indicator according to Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG). According to these guidelines, you should create a page to help users and provide them with the relevant information. In other words, it shouldn't be designed just to make money.

• Expertise, Authoritativeness, and TrustworthinessLet's see how Google determines the E-A-T of a page.

• The E-A-T Factor:
• Ā Expertise: It stands for the expertise of the main content creator. Adding information about the website or the main content creator helps a page rank higher, as Google will consider the creator's credentials while evaluating the content.
• Authoritativeness: It refers to the authoritativeness of the main content creator, the main content itself, and the website.
• Trustworthiness: It refers to the reliability of the main content creator, the main content itself, and the website.
• Quality and Volume of Main ContentBoth the quality and volume of main content are crucial for ranking. You can also create pillar content for this purpose.
• ReputationGoogle also considers the reputation of the website or the author of the main content.

Traffic also increases along with improvement in rankings and search visibility.

To attract tons of traffic, you should do the following:

A. Create quality content

B. Optimize it for the relevant keywords

C. Offer a beneficial purpose to the readers

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The SEO advantage you get through these activities is one of the major benefits of content marketing.

2. It Builds Brand Awareness

Brand awareness defines your customers' level of familiarity with your brand. So, beyond a basic knowledge of your brand and its logo, brand awareness conveys everything that differentiates your brand from others. It also entails why someone should choose your products or services from the different options available on the shelf.

New brands have a long way to go to establish their brand identity. They can start by asserting their presence and getting their "foot in the door."

Pro Tip: Use content to build brand awareness and differentiate your brand from others.

Here are a few steps to build brand awareness.

• Know your audience and analyze their behavior
• Determine your goals and create a content strategy
• Create brand awareness using your blog content
• Create communities and regularly interact with them
• Leverage email marketing to amplify your reach

3. It Increases Brand Affinity

Brand affinity is synonymous with a customer's natural liking for a product or brand. It's the kind of customer relationship every business strives for. It represents the collective feeling that the customer feels while experiencing different brand elements such as content, quality, user experience, website, sales, customer support, etc.

Since it's directly related to the utility, it also conveys that the brand is relevant to the buyers' needs and best suits them.

Forging such affinity adds loyal customers to your brand who are most likely to make a purchase. Content marketing helps you achieve brand affinity if you consistently publish quality content. Remember that your objective shouldn't be limited to assisting the customers. Rather, it should be to delight them.

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4. It Helps You Build Thought-Leadership

Some business leaders go beyond the traditional route and attract the limelight by building thought leadership. Seth Godin, Oprah, Anthony Robbins, Dave Ramsey, and John Assaraf are thought leaders who are highly acclaimed professionals and experts in their respective fields.

As a marketer, people expect you to be an expert in your field so that they can trust your word. Apart from that, thought leadership is not limited to personal branding; it's much more than that. To establish yourself as a thought leader, you must exhibit some social proof. It includes driving traffic to your website, building brand authority, and nurturing and converting leads.

Thought leadership is also used as a strategy by content marketers to build credibility and differentiate themselves from others. When someone is recognized as an expert, people consider them a go-to resource for advice and information in their field. It leads to hundreds of marketing benefits. Therefore, they are expected to create and promote tons of educational content to help others and strengthen their position as a thought leader. They are also supposed to be active in their community and social media.

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Tips to Implement Thought Leadership

• Know your audience well and keep on learning about them
• Be active on various social media platforms
• Publish educational content and distribute it aggressively
• Do thorough and regular competitor analysis
• Create content that adds value and helps people stay on top of trends
• Be original and genuine

5. It Helps You Establish Your Expertise and Brand Authority

You may not be able to achieve brand authority overnight, or even after a lot of time, yet it's essential to succeed as a business. It comes with unmatched benefits. The biggest challenge for a new business is to build trust, which you can easily overcome by building brand authority.

At some point, trust leads to sales. Here are a few tips for building brand authority through content marketing.

• Use your content to answer people's queries in your niche
• Develop case studies and create newsworthy reports and updates
• Collect proof of expertise by promoting reviews and case studies
• Collaborate with other brands with authority
• Leverage the authority of experts, both in-house and freelancers
• Share secrets, strategies, and tips that are not so common

Apart from the above tips, here are other ways to help you build your authority:

• Pick a topic and conduct in-depth research on it
• Increase your knowledge through
• Attending training programs and courses
• Networking
• Attending industry events, seminars, and webinars
• Reading reputed blogs in your niche
• Tracking the latest trends through social media
• Keeping yourself updated through forums and channels like Reddit
• Creating unique content based on the insights gathered

6. It Allows You to Use More Touchpoints to Generate Quality Leads

A viable sales lead requires 6-8 marketing touches, and you need content to create these many touchpoints. Unlike a few decades ago, when a customer had exposure to just the print media or TV, they go through lots of digital content these days before making a decision. So, the path to purchase has become complex. There can be many twists and turns here, and you never know which touchpoint can turn out to be decisive in helping them make the final purchasing decision.

Customers' apathy towards traditional marketing and advertising methods is increasing. Sales methodologies are also changing rapidly. People don't trust advertising completely these days; instead, they prefer to conduct more independent research before getting convinced. Since different people are exposed to different touchpoints, their journey is also not always the same.

Here are some popular brand touchpoints:

• Product reviews
• Videos
• Blog posts
• Ads
• Social media posts
• Business Listings

Content marketing ensures that the prospects pass through the appropriate interactions to determine sales-readiness. At the beginning of the buyer's journey, customers need more informative content to raise their awareness about your products and services. But, this information is often inadequate.

At the next stage, they need detailed information to compare your product with other similar products available in the market.

Pro Tip: Create content according to the different marketing and sales funnel stages.

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7. It Helps You Build and Maintain a Loyal Customer Base

According to MarketingProfs and CMI study, 75% of B2B marketers have successfully used content marketing to build trust and create a loyal customer base.

The ultimate objective is to create a foolproof reputation for your business that makes customers' purchase decisions easier. Content marketing allows you to build a loyal fan base that regularly engages with your content. A powerful content-led brand can achieve its objectives and maintain an existing customer base, all the while adding new customers.

Here are seven steps to building a loyal customer base.

• Define your target audience with vivid detail
• Establish honest dialogue and have an authentic voice
• Maintain high standards of content quality
• Use storytelling wherever possible
• Discover your passion and focus
• Entertain, inform, and engage using your content, don't just sell
• Offer outstanding customer experience and incredible value

8. It Leads to Improved Social Media Engagement & PR

Social media engagement is measured using likes, comments, and shares. The number of followers is always a positive indicator of your success on social media. Ultimately, the engaged audience drives tangible results, sales, mentions, click-throughs, and revenue.

So, what should you do to improve engagement on your website and social media channels? Here are a few tactics to try -

• Use social media analytics and track the sudden ups and downs in engagement
• Define your social media engagement goals such as conversion, changing the customers' perception of your brand, and attracting business leads.
• Know your customer, so you can define the language, tone, and resources that resonate with your audience
• Keep the conversation going
• Show your human side
• Keep your response timeless

Knowing your customer will also help you figure out the right social media channels and brand voice for your campaigns. It also allows you to determine the type and timing of publishing content.

To know more, read the 30 Content Marketing Tactics You Can Try.

9. It Helps You Build a Robust Sales Funnel

Content is not created just for its sake. Every piece of content that we consume is created for a specific purpose. Online content is produced for several objectives such as:

• To achieve a business goal
• To create awareness
• To get sign-ups for a newsletter
• To educate readers about a product
• To help customers make a purchase decision

Even the seemingly funny and silly pieces of content are created to stimulate a specific response. The content we consume online 24x7 is part of a specifically crafted content marketing funnel strategy. The ultimate objective is to attract customers' attention and make them loyal towards a brand.

What is the Content Marketing Funnel?

When a potential customer considers a purchase, he goes through a journey, which we can visualize using the content marketing funnel. It is now an integral part of content marketing strategy formation.

Different content pieces are needed to support the customer journey at different stages. For example, a person who is not yet familiar with your brand will not be interested in a product comparison study.

It can happen at a point when the customer is fully aware of the product and the brand. Good content pushes the customer to the next stage in the sales or marketing funnel.

The four major stages in the content marketing funnel are categorized as follows:

• Awareness
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Delight

Every customer has a different journey as there can be more touch points involved before someone makes a purchase. This is what creates a diverse customer experience. As each stage has a distinct purpose in this journey, you should present different types of content in those stages.

Here is an overview of how content can be used to match different stages in the overall customer journey ā€” right from discovery to purchase. This customer journey map will help you leverage content marketing to achieve your marketing and sales objectives.

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10. It Helps You Save Money on Your Marketing Strategy

Content doesn't come cheap, so content marketing is considered expensive and beyond the reach of startups and cash-strapped small businesses.

A blog content might cost you around $150 to $3000 a post if you hire freelancers to write it for you. However, hiring a full-time writer will be more cost-effective as you need content regularly.

Content marketing wins the battle over other forms of marketing such as paid ads and traditional marketing in the long term, so investment in high-quality content will always pay you back.

Conclusion

To drive results from content marketing, you should have a well-documented content strategy, and you should audit it periodically. There is no reason for it not to work if you implement it in a wise, timely manner. Regular audits and measurements will ensure that you are working in the right direction. It will also help you discover what works best for your business.

If you are new to content marketing, please go through this Beginner's Guide to Content Marketing.

Further reading:If you want to know how content marketing helps businesses, go through the following articles.

11-Point Content Marketing Checklist Proven to Boost Your Engagement

Ep.3 ā€“ How We Multiply One Piece of Content and Overflow the Web to Get High Valued Incoming Leads