Marketing demands experimentation, so one single strategy is never enough. Methods that pay off big usually require tons of work at the beginning. Content marketing is no exception. It includes quite a bit of planning, maneuvering, and volume, but it has become a crucial piece of successful marketing across channels like social media and ecommerce websites.
Far from traditional marketing, content marketing is not just about numbers and discounts anymore. With content marketing, you’re aiming to build relationships and turn your followers into loyal customers through the content you share with them. But what makes it effective?
Content marketing generates three times more leads compared to outbound marketing. That’s a baffling increase, especially considering that content marketing costs 62% less as well. Thus, today, we’re bringing you solid reasons to prioritize content marketing and optimize your strategies regarding it.
6 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Important
If you’re at a crossroads wondering where to invest your time and resources, content marketing is a viable option. Here are reasons why we firmly believe this:
- It Builds Trust with Your Audience
Trust remains one of the most decisive elements influencing customers’ behavior. 81% of buyers in a survey said that the level of trust they had in a brand determined whether they’d buy from it or not. Building trust is your duty as a marketer, and content is your tool.
For instance, highly personalized content, often user-generated content (UGC), builds trust and positions your brand among customers’ favorite choices. You can gather customer reviews, testimonials, and ratings, distribute them on your channels with the help of tools like Pixlee TurnTo, and supercharge your content marketing game.
UGC is an incredible way to add social proof to your marketing efforts. Whether you’re showcasing your customers’ original content in an on-site, shoppable inspiration gallery or an Instagram post, you’re reassuring other potential customers that people actually like your product.
Trust-building content doesn’t imply the use of flowery language and fancy designs. As a content marketer, you’re expected to find your audience’s most burning questions and then dish out content that answers these questions while positioning your brand as the hero.
- It Turns Buyers into Loyal Customers
Customer retention is difficult to achieve without a solid marketing plan. When you focus only on promotional content, you’re not really leveraging the full power of content marketing to turn shoppers into long-term, loyal customers.
A versatile content strategy helps you connect with buyers on a deeper level. Posting only promotional content simply won’t build you a tribe of loyal buyers. Instead, you should try to post educational content, how-to guides, and tutorials. Educational content is part of a solid content marketing strategy, and it increases the chances of purchasing by over 131%.
UGC also helps brands incorporate more diverse content forms into their marketing campaigns. From tutorials and unboxing videos to product reviews, your customers may come up with new ways to display your product and convey its value that your marketing team may not have thought of.
- It Generates More Sales Leads
Capturing sales is more challenging today because users have a multitude of options. They need a strong reason to pick you in the sea of competitors. High-quality content can change their minds quickly. The more useful and relevant value you provide through your content, the more they’ll want, giving you the chance to nurture them into qualified leads.
Your potential leads could fall into one of three stages during their buyer journeys:
- Awareness. They’re aware they’re struggling to achieve the results they want and are searching for help when they stumble upon your content.
- Consideration. They have identified their exact problem and are now browsing for possible solutions.
- Decision. They’re aware of the possible solutions and are now searching for the business that offers the most reasonable option.
You can create relevant content for all three types of buyer stages through effective content marketing to attract the most leads. With the help of content distribution software, you’ll minimize the time and effort needed to share your content via multiple channels.
- It Increases Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a popular topic nowadays, but how do you differentiate yourself among the ever-growing number of competitors? The answer is: by producing exceptional content and marketing it to reach both partners and customers who can further spread the word about your brand. You’ll also want to make sure your content is present on the most valuable platforms to your audience. When it comes to social media, consider using a platform like TikTok that isn’t quite as saturated with competitor brands as more established channels like Instagram are.
Once set in motion, content marketing will continuously bring eyeballs to your website and social media. For instance, publishing evergreen content on your blog will earn views for months and years to come. Additionally, users who have encountered your content on social media may be more likely to recall your brand later on when thinking about products to buy.
- It Helps Define the Ideal Buyer More Accurately
Knowing precisely who your ideal buyer helps you create better content and tailored offers. One or two customers aren’t enough to understand the ideal buyer. You need more data, which can be obtained by analyzing reactions to your content.
Social media tools are a smart investment to help you publish more content and track your customers’ reactions to it. As you understand what your ideal buyers like and dislike to consume by analyzing the metrics from these tools, you can describe them more accurately.
The content you create for social media, your brand’s website, and other marketing channels should have your target audience in mind from the get-go. However, keep an open mind and always be monitoring ways to improve that content to more closely align with your target audience.
- It Drives New Visitors Organically
The best content offers maximal outcomes. Content marketing increases your viewership only when you produce the right prose. This means you must include keywords with high search volumes that are relevant to your brand.
Once you’ve published a considerable amount of content on your brand’s website, you’re likely to get ranked in search engine results pages (SERPs) and gain visitors organically. Along the same lines, producing evergreen content for your social media channels brings organic visitors as well.
User-generated content and Ratings & Reviews can actually improve search engine optimization (SEO) for brands. This is because shoppers are typically more likely to engage with UGC over branded content, and reviews feature long-tail keywords that shoppers are likely searching for. Over 25% of the search results for the 20 largest brands in the world are linked to UGC.
The Best Social Media Marketing Tools For Insane Engagement (2023)
Depending upon what kind of content you produce and the social media channel you target, pick the one that fits your need and pocket. Most of them offer a free trial, which should be sufficient for you to test out before you commit yourself to a long-term agreement.
- Missinglettr (Use Artificial intelligence to create social media content)
Let’s just accept it, creating social media content is a time-consuming process. This is what Missinglettr is solving for agencies and content creators. This is perhaps the fastest way to automatically create social media content from your existing articles.
Nonetheless, Missinglettr also takes care of social media scheduling and publishing.
- Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a popular tool that can help you manage and schedule content on Twitter. Apart from Twitter, they also support other social media networks such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest.
One thing I like the most about Crowdfire is the topic suggestion. It let you discover articles based on topics that you are interested in and with one click you can also add them to your Twitter or other social media account. It also suggests the best time to tweet which is a bonus.
- Agorapulse
If I have to recommend only one solution for managing your Twitter profile, that will be Agorapulse.
This is one of the best social media marketing and engagement tools on this whole list for dramatically increasing your engagement on Twitter, Facebook, and a few other supported platforms.
While you are picking the right social media marketing tool for this job, you should look for one that lets you publish, monitor, and engage from a single dashboard.
If your business has a social media team, the team feature of AgoraPulse will make your life easier.
- SocialPilot
Do you really want to take your social media campaign to a greater height?
Then SocialPilot is the best way of achieving that dream.
SocialPilot enables you to schedule up to 2,000 social media posts using their Business Plan. You can access and analyze the activities generated by the posts you’ve made.
You also have the right to grant access to up to half a dozen members of your team or staff. They also have a mobile app that makes it easier for you to schedule content right from the comfort of your fingertip.
- Adobe Express
With Adobe Express, it is easy to create videos and graphics that are visually appealing and socially engaging.
If you want to create ads that enjoy a high CTR (click-through rate), then Adobe Express will be your best friend.
The more attractive your posts are, the more you will be seen as an authority in your niche. Leveraging the power of Adobe with Adobe Express will surely help you get there.
Another thing that I liked about Adobe Express is; that you can create perfect-sized images for every social media platform. This is a nifty feature that makes it a powerful social media mobile app for all kinds of users
- Canva
When people hear something, they are only able to remember 10% of that information after a week. However, if there’s a relevant image alongside that information, the retention rate increases to 60%.
This is the reason social media marketers give preference to the use of visual content marketing on social media, even more so than on blogs.
And Canva is a great tool for creating great images.
Who cares if you are not a good graphic designer? With Canva, you can create some amazing visual content for your social media websites by making use of the templates they offer.
This tool is so good that it can make any novice look like a professional with minimal effort.
- Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media tools on the internet.
Like Buffer, Hootsuite helps you instantly connect with more than 35 popular social media networks. With one click, you can plan your posts and have them delivered to your profiles across various social media platforms.
On Hootsuite’s online dashboard, you can quickly engage, collaborate, analyze, and integrate your best content.
- Edgar
Content marketing is the backbone of social media marketing, and if done right it can do wonders for your business.
Creating relevant and powerful content is not easy and can take a lot of time. So why waste the effort when you can reuse it to market yourself again?
Fact: Almost 60% of marketers reuse their content.
But keeping track of old content and scheduling it for reposting takes a lot of effort.
With Edgar, you not only can schedule posts, but Edgar also keeps a stack of the old content for you. This stack keeps chipping away at old content and moves it out of the cue as a piece gets republished.
This tool helps you manage your old content with ease and efficiency.
- WhoUnfollowedMe
Have you been following some people on Twitter and want to know if they are following you back?
Or, are some followers quietly leaving without you knowing?
Well, with WhoUnfollowedMe, you can get an accurate picture of those who are unfollowing you.
This will give you insight into whether or not your content is engaging the kinds of users you are seeking to attract.
- Iconosquare
Iconosquare provides important metrics regarding your Instagram account.
With this excellent tool, you can get a vivid picture of the number of likes received, the average number of total likes, your most liked photo ever, a growth chart of your followers, and some even more advanced analytics.
This makes it easy to track lead conversions and send private messages just like on Twitter.
Iconosquare really assists you in enhancing communication with your Instagram followers.
- Pinterest Analytics
Everyone loves to know how many people are pinning from their website, seeing their pins, and clicking their content.
With Pinterest Analytics, you can quickly see all of these stats. With metrics from your Pinterest profile, you can improve on how to create your pins and boards.
It also gives you an insight into how people are using the ‘Pin It’ button on your site to pin your content to Pinterest.
This tool also shows your highest-performing Pins of all time while giving you insight into the demographics of your Pinterest followers.
- TailwindApp
This tool is designed to help you with your Pinterest marketing efforts.
Being the official marketing partner for Pinterest, it helps you with bulk uploads, calendar scheduling, and multi-board pin creating.
It helps you find the best time when you should be sending your pins to get the best response from your target audience.
- Sprout Social
In this world where everything evolves at jet speed, people want quick responses to queries that they consider critical.
Sprout Social provides you with a fast and reliable way to respond to your client’s queries.
It makes your customer service more professional by letting you respond to questions and resolve issues as quickly as possible across all social networks.
This social media management tool makes your communication faster, smarter, and more efficient.
