Here’s How Content Marketing Grows Your Business

How content marketing grows businesses has remained a mystery to some business owners and marketers alike. If you’re struggling with sales every other day, chances are that you’re failing at content marketing, and that’s because you don’t understand how important it is.

Regardless of the quality of your products, the skill of your employees or your advertising savvy, without content, you have nothing.

I know you’ve heard it, I know it’s cliche and yes it’s true that content is king. Personally, I feel like it’s more of a benevolent dictator because in reality if you are running a business without a content marketing strategy, it’s doomed to fail.

You simply can’t run a successful business without content marketing.

But beyond doing content marketing, a smart marketer should understand why he’d put his time, effort and money into it.

You probably know that having a blog on your website where you post articles regularly, engaging on social media, working on your SEO and a ton of other stuff you do is content marketing, but do you really know why you should those things?

There’s only one thing that is in the mind of the business owner. “How does this content marketing grow my business?”

So what’s your answer?

This is the part of the presentation where most marketers get cold feet. Which is why I am writing this article, to tell you exactly how content marketing grows your business.

Let’s go!

In the definition of Content marketing, recall you have to create and distribute valuable content to attract and convert prospects into returning customers and referral agents.

Now, the type of content you share is closely related to your products and services, isn’t it?

And you are not just trying to sell to your audience, but you also educate them so that they know, like and trust you enough to do business with you.

The ultimate goal of content marketing is to promote behaviour that is desirable to customers and profitable to your business.

At its most basic level, content marketing benefits your business by aligning your actions with the realities of buyer behavior.

It’s the smart way to build trusting relationships: provide helpful, educational information that buyers truly care about.

That should convince your boss, but for a deeper understanding, let’s yank it into bits and pieces.

Here are 6 things content marketing does to your business that’s growing it:

Whether you know it or not, any strategic content marketing effort you put out there has a growth effect on your business. However, it needs to be done strategically otherwise you’ll cause a brand damage which is more devastating than not doing content marketing at all.

The following ways explain the role of content marketing in the growth of your business:

1. It builds customer trust

“The brands that do content marketing better than their competition are the companies that realize at the end of the day content marketing is about building trust” – HuffPost

Will you buy from someone you don’t trust? Most certainly not. We are all tilted towards the brand we trust when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

Imagine walking into a phone store, you see an unfamiliar brand standing right next to a brand that you’ve been reading “educational tips on phone care” through their blog, almost impulsively, you’ll walk to the brand that you have read one or two useful things about and it becomes a trusted brand.

The more people learn about you through your blog, social media profile, in search results is the more they trust you to be a true brand.

The more you listen to your customers and write for them in a way that makes them feel you’re a caring brand is the more they trust you. Remember content marketing is customer-centric.

That is what content marketing can do for your business. Like all relationships, trust is a key component of a customer-business relationship.

If the buyer knows what the seller knows, would he/she be happy?

2. It boosts brand familiarity

One day I asked my kid sister to remind me of the USSD code that transfers money from Access bank to other banks.

She quickly told me *737#, I tried it and didn’t work, later I realized she had given me the code for GTBank.

I get it, in the past few weeks, GTBank had been all over social media, TV, and billboards promoting their *737# platform and my sister had subconsciously been converted.

You see how content marketing can expose your brand?

Frequently publishing not just any content but relevant contents is a great way to connect with your audience and boost brand awareness.

Your company name can spread with a quality video, social media or blog post.

It has been said that if your business is not online, it does not exist, but even if your business is online, is the active online community aware of its existence, or it’s merely existing?

Content marketing puts you where your competitors are and gives you an advantage because it doesn’t just focus on selling but educating your audience and gently persuading them to take decisions profitable to your business.

The more people see your brand come up actively on social media, blog updates, commercials etc, the more people get familiar with your brand and it becomes their first choice when they want to make a decision.

3. Generate leads and drive direct sales

Content marketing is geared towards making the audience take profitable action.

A sequence of social posts and blog content can lead your invisible audience to identify themselves in order to download a piece of even more valuable content. That generates a lead.

A business selling products, services or memberships could then nurture that lead toward a sale or other conversion.

Image credit @ Brandanew.co

From the attracting stage to the converting and sales stage, content marketing does the job.

Once you have a lead, content marketing can be used to nurture that lead towards a sale, upsell and cross-sell.

4. Content marketing is good for your SEO

Your customers (potential)  turn to search engines for solutions to their problems. Sometimes your best opportunity to win new customers is to be there when they Google it.

There is no such thing as SEO without content. You need words, articles, substance, keywords, verbiage.I wince whenever I have to say it, because it’s so cliche, but it’s true: Content is king – Niel Patel.

Google’s updates in recent years increasingly reward quality and punish low quality. And what does quality mean for Google? For one thing, up-to-date content is rewarded.

Image credit @ Kissmetrics

So publishing fresh articles, and updating your existing content, will help you maintain a strong showing on search engine results pages (SERPs) and keep people coming back to your site.

5. Content marketing makes people buy intoxicatingly

It’s like a date, the first time is normally introduction and distant handshakes and sparing hugs, after some probation period you both become soul mates and then one person (in this case your customer) will say “I cant live with you”.

At this point, you have proven to your customers that you care so much about their literacy on the subject matter and they believe, that of course, you have their well being at heart.

Utilize this stage of your relationship well and you can sell at any price you deem fit, regardless of whether your competitors are selling for lesser.

Anytime you put out a pre-launch campaign, they will rush and pay for it because they know, if it’s coming from you it has to be good.

Now as a content marketer, you have to always make good your promise.

6. Content marketing is good for your customers

Consumers are less responsive to traditional advertising and old-school sales tactics. According to one study, 70% of consumers prefer to learn about companies through articles instead of advertising.

The world has evolved since the first advertising efforts were made, people have also drifted from the advertising buzz, consumers now prefer to be enlightened before they can make a buying decision.

There are so many review sites and recommendation forums, from cars review to local grocery reviews to app download, people want to get full specifications, user experience, and even customer relationship where people sought information before they commit their money.

Doing your content marketing well will put your brand in a better position to pre-answer all questions your customers are asking – because you care about educating them.

Closing thought

If you’ve read a few articles about modern marketing you know that today’s buyers have changed, demanding changes in the way you go about trying to reach them.

When done well, content marketing is all about a conversation with your audience.

Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks with them.

• Self-education rules the world, so you must become an online teacher.

• Buyers stay mostly invisible during their buyer’s journey, so you must help them see you before you can see them.

• Buyers are looking for helpful information, so you can’t just pitch products to them.

• Buyers don’t care about you or your company (at least not initially), so you must understand and serve their needs, not yours.

Content marketing gives you a huge opportunity of becoming an authority in your field as it doesn’t only drive sales but gives you an opportunity to engage with your audience.

I believe strongly in the value of content marketing to support your business. There are so many ways it can bring you benefits, from aligning with your buyers’ needs to driving specific business metrics.

How are you using content marketing to grow your business? 

I’ll like to hear from you.