Back to Basics: What is Content Marketing and How Can it Benefit your Business?

content marketing

No doubt you’ve heard the phrase ‘content marketing’ being thrown around in the last few years; but do you really understand what it means? Everyone knows that the ultimate goal of marketing is to grow a business, increase sales, and therefore increase profit. So where does the ‘content’ come in?

Content marketing grows a business by creating and sharing information with your target audience. This content may educational, insightful, or simply entertaining; and by engaging with people through this content, they will be more likely to buy your products and services.

The Content Marketing Institute sums it up nicely:

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Why is Content Marketing Important to Your Business?

In order to understand why content marketing is important to a business, it’s useful to describe the four steps of the buying cycle (as outlined by Forbes Magazine).

Awareness. Prior to awareness a customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution.

Research. Once a customer is aware there is a solution, they will perform research to educate themselves. For example, a car buyer will try to find out what different types of cars exist, and which one will fit their needs.

Consideration. At this point the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they’re getting a high quality product at a fair price.

Buy. Finally, the customer makes their decision and moves forward with the transaction.

Traditional Marketing vs. Content Marketing

So, traditional marketing is perfect for the latter 2 stages, in so much as it allows customers to educate themselves about the solution, and provides them with the information to compare products. But content marketing goes that little bit further; it enables companies to raise awareness of solutions, and educate consumers about products that they may have never thought about before.

Content marketing allows potential customers to get to know your company before you’ve even met them. They can find your content, find value in it, and by the time they pick up the phone or send an email to make contact, they’ve already made the decision that they want to work with you. The trust has already been established, meaning that high pressure sales tactics are no longer needed. Customers are already well into the sales cycle by the time they contact you. Genius, right?!

Content Marketing, Social Media and SEO

The benefits of content marketing don’t stop there. Content marketing supports other digital marketing channels by providing additional content that can be shared on social media. It will also have a positive effect on your SEO as it will generate natural inbound links, and build up good content on  your website or blog that will be found by search engines.

Expert Content Marketing Company in Sheffield

Are you too busy to get to grips with content marketing, or don’t have time to manage it in-house? Here at Seven Creative, we’re content marketing specialists, and we can help. We can write engaging, informative content on your behalf; content that potential customers will find interesting, engaging and useful. We’ll even share it across your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts for you, increasing the return on investment from your social media. Give us a call on 0114 383 0711 or email us at info@sevencreative.co.uk to find out how we can help to grow your business with content marketing today.