Companies and businesses need to ensure they are consistently communicating with their audience in order to retain customer loyalty. Advertising alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Customers expect more in order to be drawn into a business’ website. There are a few reasons why content marketing is so important:
Importance of content marketing
Why is social media so important? As well as a platform for your content to be shared on, social media and the views shared on it is highly influential in the customer purchasing cycle. In fact, 84% of consumers say they either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family, colleagues and friends about products and services. Furthermore, 68% trust online opinions from other consumers. For millennials, word of mouth is the number one influencer in their purchasing decisions about select items. If you are able to produce content that is shared on social media, this will then be seen by an extended audience, increasing your chance of conversions.
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- Influence: Content marketing is an effective way to influence your readers. You can produce content about the services you provide. This means you can gain readers and traffic, while also making the readers aware of your services and problems they may potentially need help with.
- It increases authority: If you can produce quality content on a frequent basis you will be able to increase your authority. This means you can build trust with your potential customers, this is an important factor when customers are making purchasing decisions.
- Improves SEO: Producing high-quality content will help increase your SEO. Content which is relevant and well written will have more of a likelihood of being read by customers and shared. This means there will be more traffic to your website and an increase in your search engine ranking.
- It builds a community: When you’re running a business you want to grow a community. Content marketing is a great way to communicate with your existing community, while also working to expand it. If you are producing something that solves a customer’s problem, the customer will value your brand more, and then become loyal and invest time in your business. Customer loyalty is an important thing for any business, and content marketing is an easy way to work to achieve that.
A conversion occurs when a customer completes a call to action, whether that be downloading a form or signing up to your mailing list. When you’re producing content, it creates more opportunities to include a call to action. Don’t make it quite as obvious as “call me now” written in your blog post. Calls to action can be alongside your content, at the header, a pop-up when you visit the page or even a button at the bottom of the content. It’s very easy to include a call to action into any piece of content and this could result in increased conversions.
The relationship between content and conversions
No matter what size business you’re running, it’s a good idea to include a blog on your website and to be frequently producing content for it. Producing content has many benefits for businesses. Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links, while small businesses that blog can gain 126% more lead growth.
Content accelerates the purchase cycle
It is important for businesses to focus on BOTH content marketing and conversions, rather than one or the other. You will need your landing page to be optimised, while still producing content frequently. When producing content, you need to always keep conversions in mind. So how does content marketing promote conversions?
Content marketing is a very important tool in today’s digital environment. In fact, by 2019 it is predicted that content marketing will become a 0-billion industry. That’s definitely an industry that businesses will want to capitalise on.
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Call to action
However, to do content marketing successfully, you need to make sure the content you’re producing is relevant and something that the customers will want to read. Generally, good content will be something that answers a question or something that will help the customer.
Social media
Content marketing without conversions is a big missed opportunity. To do effective content marketing, you must always keep conversions in mind. This way you will be able to increase conversions through your content.
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Through your content, you’re trying to build a community and customer loyalty. The first step is to make the customer aware of your product or service. You then need to produce content at different stages of the purchase cycle to continue to attract new visitors. This will make the customer aware of your brand and products or services, and bring them closer to making a purchase. This will make the purchase cycle faster than if the content was not produced.
Social media loves content rich websites, particularly those that produce lengthier blog posts. Quick Sprout analysed its content and found posts greater than 1500 words on average received 68.1% more tweets, and 22.6% more Facebook likes than posts under 1500 words. Businesses should ensure they produce good quality, lengthy posts in order to capitalise on social media shares.
People don’t just buy something from the first store they visit anymore. It takes a bit more effort to entice people. Customers are going to do research before they buy a product or service. In fact, 81 percent of shoppers conduct online research prior to making a purchase. Customers need to be informed before they commit to a purchase. Producing blog posts will give customers the information they need, and let them know your business is a store they can trust.