5 Ways Content Strategy Benefits Your Bottom Line

Content Strategy Benefits Your Bottom Line

A content strategy maps out the type of content your business needs to create to reach your buyer personas at each stage of the marketing funnel – awareness, consideration, decision and delight.

Businesses with a documented content strategy are more likely to succeed. A content strategy maps out the type of content your business needs to create to reach your buyer personas at each stage of the marketing funnel – awareness, consideration, decision and delight. A robust content strategy allows you to deliver a personalized message to your audience that inspires action. According to Content Marketing Institute’s 2018 Annual Report, 75% of 870 organizations surveyed currently do not have a content marketing strategy, but plan to create one in 2018. Here are the top 5 ways content strategy benefits your bottom line.

Stats from the Content Marketing Institute's 2018 Annual Report

1) Generates New Leads

“Businesses that invest in content marketing generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t.” – HubSpot

Content marketing meets your audience where they are searching for information that relates to your business. Creating valuable, long-form content allows you to require an email address before it can be downloaded or viewed – this is called gated content. Long-form content is typically more than 2,000 words and can be done in a variety of mediums including blogs, e-books and how-to tutorials. When you offer value to your audience by answering their questions in-depth, they are more likely to trust you with their contact information.

2) Improves SEO

Improves SEO

When content creation is a consistent part of your marketing strategy, you create more opportunities for Google, and therefore customers, to find you via search engines. The more you update your site with fresh content, the more often search engines like Google will crawl and index your site. Every time content is updated on your site, search engine algorithms notice this change and will analyze the content, adjusting your search ranking accordingly. Blog posts, downloadable PDFs, content offers and landing pages are all examples of content that can be implemented on your site to improve Search Engine Optimization. Organic search relies primarily on keywords. The more frequently you add relevant, keyword rich content to your site, the more often you will rank in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

3) Builds Credibility

“82% of customers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.” – Demand Metric

Speaking with authority about topics that directly relate to your business builds credibility with your customers. Content marketing presents an opportunity to position executives in your company as thought leaders by encouraging them to author blogs on your site. Instead of writing about an industry trend, introduce your company’s opinion and perspective to showcase expertise and build trust with your audience. This extra effort will go a long way to securing relationships with existing customers and showing prospects why they should invest in your business.

4) Increases Site Traffic

Increases Site Traffic

Increasing site traffic goes hand-in-hand with improving SEO. When you create more content with relevant keywords, you are more likely to rank in Google search results. When you rank more often and higher up on the page, more people will click on those results and visit your site. A solid marketing strategy is built on relevant, frequent content. The best way to make sure your content is relevant is to look at your buyer personas, identify their purchasing motivators and concerns, and create content that speaks to them. This approach ensures that the people who find your content actually matter to your business and are more likely to take action.

5) Nurtures Top of the Funnel Leads

“Buyers go through about 57% of the purchasing process before ever talking to sales.” – Gartner

Content marketing is all about building relationships. You can’t expect someone to buy your product or service after hearing about your company for the first time. You have to prove your business is credible and offer value to your audience. Content marketing gives you a platform to answer consumers’ questions through blog content, FAQs, fact sheets and customer testimonials. Consumers are conducting more independent research than ever before making a purchasing decision – this means they are spending a lot of time in the awareness stage, at the top of the marketing funnel. Your business needs to create content that answers their questions in the awareness stage in order to build a relationship and encourage them to consider your business once they are ready to move into the consideration and decision stages of the funnel.

Ready to Take Action?

We offer a Digital Content Strategy Workshop that will lay the groundwork for your marketing efforts over the course of a year. You’ll walk out of this workshop armed and ready to deliver digital content in a strategic and impactful way that provides value to your customers. Our strategic approach to digital marketing will equip you with a tangible content strategy and an understanding of which digital channels deliver results, providing the largest ROI for your marketing budget. Contact us to sign up!