Marketing has always been about the process of implementing a promotional strategy for a product. In the past five years, content marketing has become a huge part of the promotional cycle.
In 2012, 39 percent of marketing, advertising and communications budgets were dedicated to content marketing which is up from 26 percent in 2011. The reason is simple: in today’s hyper-connected, multichannel world, it helps to make sure that customers are engaged with the content on their laptops, desktops, mobile devices and anywhere else where they might want to learn about your offerings.
The days of a simple ‘About’ section that gets updated once a year are over. The time is now for exclusive, premium content that does the following for your business:
· Establish thought leadership within your markets
· Educate visitors about your market segment through professionally produced feature articles, news announcements, case studies and more
· Bring higher levels of engagement with site visitors
The following graph of Google searches for “content marketing” since 2007 shows how vital the term is becoming. The surge in popularity from 2011 to 2012, in particular, shows that content marketing is catching on fast.
The Majority of CMOs Believe that Custom Content is the Future of Marketing
While it’s easy for executives to become trapped by the old habits of interruption-based marketing campaigns, content marketing shows a great deal of respect for its audience, providing engaging, custom content that grabs a reader’s attention through the sheer quality of the content.
An increasing number of corporate executives are realizing the influence and power of content marketing—in fact, 78 percent of CMO’s surveyed believe that custom content is the “future of marketing.”
Content Marketing Will Help Save You Money
Traditional marketing can often feel like a “Wizard of Oz”-type situation. Your company hands over money and are promised results, but often times it’s difficult to tell how much of a quarterly earnings statement can be attributed to marketing versus the quality of the product and hard work of the sales team.
Image via shutterstock
With content marketing, your strategy becomes transparent with no tricks or illusions to be found. Content marketing teams track the activity of the unique content being produced for your company, informing clients of page views, how it’s tracking on search engines and social media. Also, if a content marketing team makes, for example, a short video for your website, you gain access to data regarding the number of views that the video has received and can keep track of whose sharing it and talking about your video on social media.
Buyers Do Their Homework
Many think of product implementation as drawing a direct line between the customer and sales, but the fact is that buyers go through 57 percent of the purchasing process before they ever talk to sales. The Internet now allows those interested in a product to do their homework and get the information they want before deciding whether or not to buy your product.
When that buyer does arrive on your homepage, you want to make sure that you have premium, up-to-date content ready for them, making it clear that you respect their time and want to help them make the best decision possible.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
