7 Signs You Should Invest in Content Marketing

Content marketing continues to become a critical technique for increasing web traffic, leads and improving a company’s search engine optimization efforts. If your organization isn’t using content marketing yet, here are 7 signs that will have you reconsidering your investment in content marketing.

1. Content marketing is a proven technique for increasing website traffic and leads.
HubSpot has some great statistics that demonstrate the value of content marketing, and how it increases website traffic and leads. These statistics really highlight the tangible, measurable value that content marketing can bring an organization.

• Companies with 51 to 100 pages generate 48% more traffic than those with 1 to 50 pages.
• Companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing landing pages from 10 to 15.
• Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5X more traffic than companies that don’t blog.

“Impact of Website Content on Inbound Traffic” graph and associated information provided by HubSpot, Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000+ Businesses. Source: http://offers.hubspot.com/marketing-benchmarks-from-7000-businesses.

HubSpot’s statistics are based on over 7,000 companies, so the validity of the data is pretty strong. I can also attest to the fact that Jacobs & Clevenger has seen even greater increases than the averages cited. Our personal experience had the following results:

• Doubled the number of pages on the website within 90 days
• Increased inbound visits to the website by more than 900%, versus a baseline from the month prior to initiating the program to 90 days later
• Generated 50 times more inbound leads than the prior period
• Increased the number of inbound links 8-fold in 90 days and 25-fold in 120 days

2. Content marketing will enhance your natural search and help you get found when prospects are looking for information about your product and services.
Content marketing should be based on keyword analytics, which will improve your company’s search engine optimization. Strategically and analytically determining keywords and content topics is essential to ensuring search engine optimization success. Google has significant resources and complexity to put their algorithm in place. It’s pointless to try outsmarting the algorithm. It is a better use of resources to concentrate on developing great content that users will find insightful. This is the best of any strategy for search engine optimization.

Utilize analytics to ground the strategy and build a depth into the content marketing strategy. Think through what problems or solutions a prospect might search for via the web.

3. Content marketing can provide reasons to communicate in social media.
Many companies grapple with which topics make sense to promote within their social media strategy. A proactive content marketing strategy can provide more communications options that can support your social media communications.

Social media can also be an effective means for promoting content and engaging users. Social media is most effective when utilized as a teaser, leading users to a web page or additional source for more information. Content marketing is the perfect synergistic strategy to help social media have more depth and richness in building quality customer relationships.

The reality is that users need to have a compelling reason to follow or connect with a company via social media. Content marketing can be that reason. Social media can provide users with a snippet and then allow them to self-select content for additional engagement.

4. Users want to be empowered.
According to HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing report, 73% of people prefer to get information about an organization through a series of articles rather than in a traditional advertisement. Content marketing can be an extremely powerful technique to allow users to seek information, shop and formulate opinions independent of a hard-sell selling process. Content marketing should be considered as a technique to provide information in a self-serve format.

5. Content marketing is efficient.
Content marketing can be an extremely efficient means of lead generation, as it pulls in those prospects that have an interest. By being in the right place at the right time, content marketing can serve as a vehicle to generate hand-raisers. According to HubSpot, companies that spend more than 50% of their lead generation budget on inbound marketing and content marketing report a significantly lower cost per lead.
Capturing email addresses and growing an email opt-in list are top goals for many marketers. Content marketing can be an extremely effective mechanism to capture email addresses. The first step in building an email opt-in list is to promote content and get visitors to your website. Now that the user has clicked through to learn more, it’s essential to make an exchange. We’ll provide you with more information if you provide us with your email address.

Once you get a user to a data capture landing page, entice them with a great content offer that relates to other pages they have visited. It’s essential to leverage other web behavior to target relevant and meaningful offers.

7. Content marketing can help build a more effective outbound strategy.
Content marketing is a strategy that can fuel more meaningful outbound communications by applying behavior to deliver relevant and personalized lead nurturing communications. Once users engage, behavior can be leveraged to develop targeted, relevant communications. Email is one of the most effective channels to marry inbound with outbound marketing. And triggered emails that contain relevant behavioral information tend to perform significantly better than general, basic emails.
 
Content marketing continues to evolve as one of marketers’ key strategies. This article presented 7 signs that should help you get on board with this trend.