The power of online content marketing has gone main stream. Not just in marketing circles, but to the C-Suite as well. This is reflected in Joe Pulizzi’s Coca-Cola Bets the Farm on Content Marketing: Content 2020. It’s true that some niche industries can excel online without publishing lots of content. However, as soon as the first company in that niche starts to publish frequently, the success the others experienced will begin to diminish.
Also, consider that mobile web browsing is poised to overtake the PC soon. The way people shop, buy and research products and services today and into the future, mandates that companies produce lots of content on the Internet if they wish to be found and considered. Below are eight reasons why companies must use content marketing to compete on the Internet.
- Cost – According to HubSpot, the cost per lead for inbound marketing is 62% less than traditional outbound marketing. Content is the foundation of inbound marketing. What kind of competitive disadvantage would a company be facing if one of its competitors spent that much less for leads?
- Web Traffic/Leads/Customers – As demonstrated in The Content Marketing Manifesto, content marketing directly impacts the amount of website traffic, leads and customers a web property delivers in an accelerated fashion. It substantially affects organic, direct, social and referral traffic over time.
- SEO – With Google’s Caffeine update “Freshness,” Panda and Penguin, content has never been more important for successful search engine optimization. Companies that subscribe to robust content marketing will undoubtedly hog up most of the oxygen in Google’s SERPs.
- SERM – Content marketing is the best search engine reputation management (SERM) tool that exists. Companies with popular, robust content marketing campaigns shouldn’t have to worry too much about search engines containing negative or blasphemous links. Most of them will be crowded out.
- Online Influence – A brand’s thought leadership status and online influence is directly impacted by its social media reach, website traffic and buzz—all of which are pushed northward by frequent content publishing.
- Brand Building/Bolstering – Since good content marketing drives lots of website traffic and social media engagement, it makes sense that many more people will be confronted with the publisher’s brand on a much more frequent basis; purposely or not.
- Sentiment Sculpting – If a company doesn’t tell its story, someone else will. By utilizing content marketing, a company is being proactive in sculpting its own sentiment online as opposed to relying on other people with little or no stake in the success of the company.
- Social Media Marketing – There are three types of content shared in social media: the publisher’s content, other’s content and conversation. Other’s content and conversation do not drive consistent, measurable or scalable campaigns. However, content produced for the campaign will drive web traffic, leads and customers in a much more predictable fashion. It also produces brand evangelists and builds community around the content.
Search engines, social media and the mobile web have fundamentally changed how people make purchasing decisions, and there is no going back. No longer can businesses say its target demographic is not connected. According to the latest Pew Internet Research poll, more than 50% of seniors 65 and older are online. Businesses can choose not to be online, but the majority of the rewards will be reaped by the companies that choose to be online and use content marketing.
Image: Marion Doss
Join us for an exciting new webinar on Wednesday, July 11 at 12PM EDT, 9AM PDT. Backed with real data, we'll prove that content marketing in an invaluable business tool and is the foundation of successful Internet marketing. We'll also discuss how content marketing affects organic, referral, social media and direct traffic to a website.
The Business Case for Content Marketing - Register Now!
