25 reasons your business needs content marketing

Content marketing is one of the biggest advantages the Internet has brought to small and medium-sized businesses, but it also has a drawback – very few people understand it, and it takes time, effort and strategy to actually experience its true power. Another problem with content marketing is that it is mostly related to writing and there are very few who take writing seriously.

On the other hand, people take SEO very seriously because they think getting higher search engine rankings is a big deal. Sure, it is a big deal, but getting higher rankings doesn’t guarantee success in terms of increasing your sales or getting more leads.

I often say that the need to implement a well-defined content marketing strategy is same as actually recognising the impact of global warming and taking corrective measures. Very few individuals in this world take global warming as seriously as it should be because they think it is some distant problem. Since content marketing takes time to show some real results and a great amount of consistency, one, people are unable to understand it and two, even those who can understand it, find it quite overwhelming, despite the fact that there isn’t more effective way of marketing your business than content marketing.

Why your business needs content marketing

Here are 25 reasons:

1. It is cheaper compared to traditional advertising and marketing (sometimes even free if you don’t count time as money)
2. It is much more effective than traditional advertising and marketing
3. It helps you consolidate your online presence
4. It makes your brand relatable and recognisable
5. It encourages people to do business with you rather than convincing them to do business with you
6. It organically improves your search engine rankings
7. It gets you more qualified traffic from social networking websites
8. It helps you engage your prospective customers and clients meaningfully
9. You get repeat traffic to your website
10. Your online presence becomes more authoritative if you continuously write about a particular subject and people can use your writing to improve their life or their business
11. Content marketing is self-sustaining – a web page or blog post that crosses a particular threshold level brings you business for months and even years without you having to spend any money
12. As your content marketing succeeds, its cost moves towards zero
13. It increases your sales as, the more people read your content the more they are eager to do business with you
14. Content marketing generates more leads for you
15. As more and more people link to your content you generate multiple traffic sources and consequently, you have to depend less on search engine whims
16. With content marketing, as a small business you can compete with big business by making your content more approachable and personal
17. It helps you build long-term relationships with your existing and future customers and clients
18. It helps you create a helpful resource on your website or blog continuously drawing people to your business
19. Content marketing gives you an edge because most of your competitors don’t have the needed patience to succeed at it
20. It encourages your customers to reach out to you and share your content on their own social networking timelines
21. When you encourage your employees to create content for your business website it improves their confidence and makes them more productive
22. As an independent consultant or service provider, as your authority increases due to content marketing, you can charge more for your services
23. As your audience feels more educated, they will be more inclined towards doing business with you rather than another website that doesn’t publish helpful content
24. Every piece of content you create and distribute is an invaluable business asset
25. Sustained content marketing builds you a broadcasting channel with your own dedicated audience through which you can carry out PR campaigns and product promotion campaigns without having to depend on third-party broadcasting channels

For medium-sized and big businesses, I personally believe that the 25th point is the most important. Content marketing helps you build a broadcasting channel which very few businesses have.