Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing content that is relevant and valuable to attract, inform, and engage consumers. Since customers are more able to skip commercials or ads and simply ignore traditional marketing, the idea that “content is king” has never been more true.
A customer that has never heard of your company will experience a 28% increase in brand awareness if you can keep them engaged with your content for just 30 seconds."
The financial benefits are apparent as well when you consider that the cost per total lead generated drops by 80% after just five months of content marketing. Inbound leads cost, on average, 61% less than traditional outbound leads, so the more shares and inbound links you can get, the better off your company will be.
Make sure the content is good quality as well, or it might have the opposite of the desired effect. If your content is well-written, but not edited, just one spelling mistake can drive away visitors, cutting your online sales in half. It takes only 10 seconds for consumers to decide if they want to stay on a web page, so if the content isn’t valuable and high quality, you will likely lose them.
Content is also the number one factor in ranking your site for search engines under Google’s new Panda algorithm. There are now four main factors that affect your ranking, including Content, Sharability, Quality, and SEO Focus. This last one is actually something to avoid, since sites that focus too highly on old SEO tactics without actually creating valuable content are now penalized. A site that includes a lot of duplicate content with different keywords will now receive a lower ranking than a site that focuses on creating original content.
To read more about Content Marketing, especially a description of the major content types and how they’re used, download the full Ebook from Protocol 80.
