Today’s world is digital. Digital technologies continue to emerge as traditional advertising and sales fall by the wayside. As always, business owners continue to search for the latest and greatest digital marketing strategies with the best ROI. Content marketing now chimes in at the top of that list.
Content marketing is now a golden opportunity to infiltrate the digital world with the potential to surpass the ROI of traditional advertising and sales combined. Content marketing targets potential customers not only already interested in the product or service but also ready to make a purchase – and with money in hand.
The potential ROI of content marketing is not to suggest you fire your sales team but instead to open your eyes to this now authoritative marketing medium. Businesses from all industries would benefit to consider these five compelling reasons to build a content marketing strategy.
1. Content marketing earns you an evergreen income.
Sales forces typically adhere to a strict one-customer-at-a-time policy. Rarely can a salesperson schmooze more than one customer at a time.
Traditionally, ROI depends solely on the amount of time the salesperson invests. There’s no money to be made after closing up shop. Salespeople go home and take the potential sales with them.
But a sales pitch written as content on a webpage…now that’s a horse of a different color.
With the potential to reach multiple customers at once, the content-driven sales pitch sidesteps the standard one-customer-at-a-time policy. It continues talking even after you punch out for the day, boosting ROI by leaps and bounds.
Digital marketers can also promote the content-driven sales pitch via press releases, social media and other online avenues to provide value long after its release. In the industry, we call this an evergreen investment – and it’s a very good thing!
You try finding a salesperson who can win customers while asleep.
2. Content marketing spreads virally to reach the masses.
Social media spawned a medium now known as viral marketing. Today, a single piece of content can spread through cyberspace in record time.
Imagine consistently pulling in viewers from all over the world, not quarterly or monthly but by the day – or even better, by the hour – opening thousands of doors to draw people into your message, brand and business. And to think, all you need is content that is useful, interesting, valuable or creative.
Exactly how powerful is content marketing in a viral online world?
Comparing traditional advertising to modern content marketing is like comparing the potential of a single fishing line to that of a net. Actually, content marketing is more like fishing with dynamite – and BOOM it goes.
3. Content marketing targets customers already interested in your product or service.
Consider the following two scenarios:
• a potential customer casually flipping through an industry magazine
• a potential customer typing a search phrase into Google
Which one provides more value to the marketer?
The question is best answered with another: isn’t it easier to lead a horse to water if he’s already thirsty?
People who type “electrical services New York” into Google are thirsty, much more so than those skimming through an industry magazine.
Already on their way to the trough, these thirsty horses are often cash-ready searchers looking for someone with a solution to their problem.
Quench their thirst with content and you can attract people who want to buy from you – before you even knew you had the opportunity to sell them.
Bottoms up!
4. Content marketing attracts users and search engines alike.
Peanut butter and jelly, cheese and crackers, cookies and milk – some things go great together. But traditional marketing and search engine optimization – not so much.
In the new digital age, content marketing is one of few ways to kill two birds with one stone. It makes your users happy and keeps the search engines working for you.
So, what exactly is successful content marketing?
Inside the dynamic algorithm known as Google, half of all successful content marketing is relevancy. Naturally high in keyword density, relevant content attracts search engines like blood attracts sharks.
Quality is the other half – and both users and search engines are checking for it.
Well-written and well-targeted content attracts the right users to your site – hook, line and sinker. Make that content engaging and you open up the doors to thousands of backlinks and social shares that consistently rank you higher in Google.
Write for the user – and for the search engine – and content marketing will take your ROI to new heights.
5. Content marketing reaches the Millennials.
Who are the Millennials? They’re the 79 million fascinating people born between 1980 and 2000 who anticipate just a little more time before dominating the purchasing power in the U.S.
Obviously, marketers see dollar signs in the eyes of the Millennial generation.
But how do you reach a notoriously unreachable generation?
To say “Millennials don’t trust traditional advertising” is an understatement. In most cases, they don’t even see it.
Bombarded with more than 6,500 advertisements and marketing messages a day, Millennials either close, tune out or skip traditional advertising altogether.
And try this statistic on for size…
As many as 8 out of every 10 Millennials sleep next to their mobile phones – and that’s not because Millennials like talking on the phone. It’s because mobile phones provide unlimited, always-on access to the digital world.
Just to clarify, that’s 63 million people scouring the Internet while lying in bed seeking information to make a purchasing decision.
Want even more incredible statistics about the Millennials?
The generation navigates between 60 and 80 percent of their decision before talking to a salesperson – most of which takes place in the digital world with content as the medium.
Content is everywhere. And if you’re not there, you might as well be square.
Linx
Linx is a strategic marketing organization that can accelerate your brand in ways you never thought possible. To get started with content marketing, be sure to ask about the Linx Strategic Content Marketing Scorecard – the only tool you need to assess how content marketing supports your overarching marketing and business strategy.
