In the current business world, the benefits of content marketing are countless—no wonder why it is the number one option for marketers today. Many of them are getting articles written in bulk because the importance of content can never be overemphasized. Content is king.
If you have been having doubts about it, this write-up will clarify those uncertainties completely.
What will you gain from this article?
You will learn about the history of digital marketing and the top advantages you can enjoy.
→Download Now: Free SEO Checklist For 2020
An Overview Of Content Marketing
Before we even dive in into the benefits, let’s have an overview of what content marketing is.
Digital marketing is a process that entails the promotion of products and services over the internet or other forms of electronic media or digital channels.
Interestingly,
Today, more than 170 million people are social media users. It is evident that the highest number of potential customers are based on cyberspace, and companies need to find ways of reaching them.
Content marketing has numerous advantages over traditional marketing. For instance, digital marketing is cheaper. Technology is connected to the market, and therefore, marketers need to use their online presence to reach their customers in a short time.
And thanks to this technology,
A digital marketer can reach millions of people in any part of the world. That is possible, whether from the comfort of his home, office or wherever he/she is working from.
On the contrary,
Traditional marketing is limiting and expensive. Reaching many customers in different locations can be time-consuming and costly as many hours and resources are involved.
At the same time, conventional marketers can be limited by distance. To discover more advantages.
Therefore it is prudent to say that.
Digital marketing has absolute dominance over other forms of marketing, and it is vital to understand where it all started and where it is headed.
For me I call it the holy grail of marketing.
The Evolution Of Digital Marketing
The history of content marketing dates back to the 1980s. In 1981, the first-ever personal computer was created by IBM.
By 1986, the ANSI (American National Standard Institute) approved SQL as a standard. In 1989, the storage capacity of computers was 100mbs.
100mbs? Sounds like a joke right? No it isn’t. Back that was such a big storage capacity.
These milestones indicate that this time was full of innovations and computer-based advancements that made it possible to store customer information.
Additionally,
During this period, companies understood the relevance of building customer relationships instead of just selling products for the sake of money.
The famous Robert Shaw and Robert Kestenbaum, the fathers of marketing automation, created several database-marketing models that greatly assisted Barclays and BT.
These solutions had several features, including campaign management, sales channel automation, marketing analytics, contact strategy optimization, and marketing resources management.
History Of Content Marketing In The 1990s
Evolution of Digital Marketing in the 90s Source-Simplilearn
The CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software brought more changes in the 1990s. By the year 1995, the number of worldwide internet users arrived at 16 million.
According to statistics, in 1996, a study showed that Americans would spend 30 minutes a day online. In 1998, 41% of internet users logged into AOL.com frequently. In the same year, Google was launched officially.
The CRM tool was popular in the 90s, and it enabled the tracking of interactions between current and future buyers. SFA (Sales Force Automation) was the earliest form of CRM and gave vital information regarding monitoring and inventory control.
CRM was tremendously upgraded towards the end of the 90s when more vendors such as Oracle, Baan, and SAP entered the market.
That increased competition between vendors to offer marketing, sales, and service applications as well. With the entry of Google in 1998, digital marketing rose significantly.
Today, it is among the most utilized search engines and has a significant role when it comes to the optimization of search marketing and digital marketing campaigns.
In 1999, the internet again came into the picture with its support for eCRM vendors. It allowed for the storage of huge volumes of client data online, increasing the competition even more.
The History Of Content Marketing In The 2000s
Evolution of Digital Marketing in the 2000s Source-Simplilearn
By 2002, the number of internet users stretched to 558 million. In 2004, Google was publicized, and in 2007, the iPhone was born.
In the mid-2000s, customer behaviour changed. People began researching products on different search engines such as Google before buying products.
Marketers could not explain or predict this behaviour, and understanding customers became difficult. Luckily, market automation provided by companies like Pardot, Act, and Marketo solved the issue.
The following is a short history of the most popular social media channels showing when they were formed.
- GeoCities -1994
- Classmates -1995
- Six Degrees -1997
- Open Diary – 1998
- LiveJournal – 1999
- Ryze – 2001
- Friendster – 2002
- LinkedIn – 2003
- hi5 – 2003
- MySpace – 2003
- Orkut – 2004
- Facebook -2004
- Yahoo! 360° – 2005
- Bebo – 2005
- Twitter – 2006
- Tumblr – 2007
- Google+ – 2011
The popularity of social media made software companies to devise solutions for social, mobile, search, and analytics. However, this also came with challenges.
The History Of Content Marketing In The 2010s
During this period, consumers became tech-dependent, but most were not tech-savvy. Facts show that Americans spent about 11 hours online daily.
Also expected loading time fell to 250 milliseconds making it easy to do product research and checkout. 67% of people also check their phones even without notification.
This tech-dependency diversified marketing technologies and elevated the digital expectations of buyers.
To date, young companies are emerging to provide these upgraded customers with the best digital marketing solutions. Big brands like Google, Oracle, and IBM are working with such companies to remain at the top.
Marketers have a range of options that they can use, and most are opting for the integration of the technologies.
It is up to the marketers to determine how best to integrate the technologies while maintaining customer focus and enhancing user experience.
New channels such as AI (Artificial intelligence), AR (Augmented Reality), and neuro-marketing are slowly emerging, and they will be the future of content marketing.
Other technologies like crypto-currency and Blockchain are already here for new-age marketers will take digital marketing to greater heights.
The Benefits Of Content Marketing
Having understood the evolution of digital marketing, you can see that it has a promising future. Hence, as a marketer, you need to utilize this technology.
All the benefits of content marketing are discussed below.
- Quality Content
- Valuable Data And Analytics That Helps You Strategize
- Sales Driven
- Total Control Of The Conversation
- Puts Sales On Autopilot Hence Higher Revenue
- Less Interruptive And More Cost-Effective Than Conventional Marketing
- Increases Your Brand’s Awareness
- Enhances The Credibility Of Your Brand
- Higher ROI
- Grows Your Social Media Following
- Drives Visibility To Your Product Pages
- Makes Customer Service Easier
- Allows Scaling Of Retargeting Audience
Quality Content
How is this achieved?
Content marketing focuses on quality content. It aims at giving buyers what they want when they are actively looking for it.
You need not worry about countless adverts coming your way and distracting your customers. Most clients view the ads as negative advertising and block them, and this might be a turnoff.
With digital marketing, you can help customers instead of interrupting them with the ads.
Google ensures that you provide your clients with a memorable search experience. And what better way to do that than to offer them quality content.
That will help you rank higher in Google. You want those top rankings because they translate into traffic.
The higher your ranking, the more the traffic your website attracts. According to a study by SparkToro in 2018, Google redirects 10x more traffic to an average site than Facebook.
Valuable Data And Analytics That Helps You Strategize
The best thing about content marketing is that you can know the number of your website’s viewers in real-time.
Also, you can understand the geographical location of the visitors, their sex, age, and interest, traffic sources from different gadgets, website bounce rate, and how much time your visitors spend on your site.
That is all thanks to tools such as Google Analytics.
The intelligence provided allows you to improve your marketing tactics, and you can optimize your budget by investing in the best performing marketing campaigns.
Sales Driven
It does not make sense if your website attracts traffic but does not convert the numbers. The good news is that content marketing will help your convert leads to sales.
Many clients will not be willing to purchase your products the first time they know about your business. People usually go through a buying process before finally committing to buy your products.
The process is fast for smaller products such as chocolates, but the process is slow for larger products such as machines.
Larger products have specifications, and their prices are higher. Hence, a customer needs to understand all about them before finally deciding to invest large sums of money in your product.
Inbound marketing methodology. Source-Hubspot
The buying process involves creating awareness. Here, clients need to understand the problem your product is going to solve.
Then the consideration stage follows where customize research about the issue and probably other solutions.
Finally,
The decision stage comes in where customers decide the best solution. An excellent content marketing system achieves all these stages by educating potential customers regarding what they want.
Therefore, digital marketing helps you to bring potential buyers closer to making a purchase.
Additionally, it helps build a relationship with your audience, and that increases the likelihood of them working with you rather than your competitors.
Most importantly,
Outbound leads (from direct mail, cold calling, etc.) have a 1.7% conversion rate compared to a 14.6% close rate from inbound leads (from online marketing).
Total Control Of The Conversation
One of the benefits of content marketing is that you can control the conversation. It is important to note that convincing a buyer during the research process is critical if you want them to buy your product.
For instance,
Assume that you are selling car insurance. It is not easy to convince somebody looking for a $200 policy. By the time they reach out, they already know the plan they want.
However, talking to the person when they were researching could help you convince them to pay a premium for quality before deciding on the budget. The same applies to all products, including furniture, electronics, etc.
You can include these points in your content to guide customers in decision making. It is much simpler to convince a customer to buy a given product before deciding.
Puts Sales On Autopilot Hence Higher Revenue
It is hard to convince buyers to choose your product and even harder to force them into buying it. In most cases, cold sales outreach requires you to push the client to make a purchase.
You might succeed with the first interaction, but most clients will avoid you after that. Clients want to work with people they view as useful resources, and you do not want them to feel like you are after the money.
One of the main benefits of content marketing is that it helps you to build that valued relationship with buyers.
If a trusted relationship exists, customers will contact you when they need you. Ensure that you explain how your product is in line with their goals and why it is the best solution to their problems.
Additionally, ensure that you advertise your brand accordingly by having a simple layout that allows easy navigation.
Your digital marketing platform should also help you understand client patterns and offer solutions that meet customer needs.
Most importantly, you should use multiple content marketing channels to collect relevant data and use it to reach potential clients. Once your brand is out there, you are likely to enjoy high revenue.
Less Interruptive And More Cost-Effective Than Conventional Marketing
Customers are fussy, and you do not want to interrupt their activities, trying to sell them a product. 40% of internet users are turned off by ads and use ad blockers.
The number is likely to rise over time. Banner ads can help you promote your brand, but other ads like TV and radio commercials that interrupt your clients might not be a good idea. They are not only interruptive but also costly.
Another one of the benefits of content marketing is that you build customer relationships that make clients put you first. It is less costly and effective.
There is no need for those expensive ads and endless interruptions. Additionally, with methods such as email automation, you can quickly boost your leads.
All you need to do is pre-load content and plan how you will send it to potential clients and at what time and interval.
Increases Your Brand’s Awareness
If you have higher rankings on search engines, then you can place your brand in front of many users. Ideally, more pages do not translate to high traffic, quality pages do.
Content marketing enables you to determine what your clients frequently search for, and you can tailor your content based on that. Ideally, you need to use long-tail keywords and relevant keywords and phrases to get a high ranking.
It goes without saying.
If you write content that earns a top rank on Google, you can place your brand before thousands of potential clients yearly.
For example, you can write an article about ‘investing in stocks.’ Over 40,000 people search for that phrase on Google each month. Your brand is presented to 480,000 potential buyers each year.
There are other close variants to the words, increasing the number of clients that might get interested in your brand.
That means that you can reach over 1 million potential customers a year. All you need to do is select the right keywords and key phrases for your audience.
Enhances The Credibility Of Your Brand
If your content reaches over one million potential buyers per year, about a quarter (25%) of them will click on your articles and visit your website.
If your content is helpful, thousands of people will rank your brand highly and will approach you. Once they build trust, they will turn into your frequent customers.
Higher ROI
Digital marketers optimize conversion rates to realize high ROI (Return on Investment) for their businesses. With better revenues and smarter branding, content marketing can earn higher ROI, unlike its traditional marketing counterpart.
You can use effective monitoring and evaluation methods that allow you to analyze results. Hence, you can take the appropriate measures as early as possible to keep your marketing strategy on the right track.
You can also ensure a constant flow of traffic that is converted into leads and sales. The faster the conversion, the higher your ROI becomes.
Grows Your Social Media Following
According to a study by Marketingtechblog in 2014, posting on social media is the leading online activity performed in the US.
The average American uses about 37 minutes per day on social media. Also, 99% of all digital marketers utilize Facebook to market, while 97% utilize Twitter, 69% use Pinterest, and 59% prefer Instagram.
Similarly, 70% of B2C marketers have gotten buyers from Facebook. 67% of Twitter members are likely to purchase from companies that they follow on the platform.
83.8% of luxury brands use Pinterest. Most importantly, the top social networks that marketers use are Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedln.
With such a heavy presence of consumers on various social media platforms, you can quickly grow your following.
Additionally, digital marketing facilitates the easy availability of products to clients at all times.
Drives Visibility To Your Product Pages
Among the many benefits of Content marketing includes its ability to drive more visitors to your product pages, both directly and indirectly.
Directly
When you write articles that are related to the products you sell, most readers will go to your product pages once they read the articles, mainly if they are linked to those product pages.
Indirectly
When you write quality content, other websites are likely to link back to your content. Search engines consider backlinks as proof that your article is useful.
Hence, every page that links to your article is seen as a helpful resource too. Consequently, your product page receives visitors every time someone links to your articles.
The more the visits to your product page, the higher the chances of ranking first on Google. And, the more the people that will be willing to buy your products.
Makes Customer Service Easier
Your customer service team can get overwhelmed when they have to reach out to different customers with the same questions. Besides, answering the same questions, every time can get tedious and boring.
Luckily, digital marketing is the solution to this problem. Whether it is a general query about resetting passwords or specific questions about your services, write informative content to answer these questions.
You can then compile the information into a blog post, and your team can share them when they encounter such questions.
That saves a lot of time, and the information that is shared is consistent as well. Besides, clients can easily find answers online instead of contacting your customer service team.
Benefits of Content Marketing: Allows Scaling Of Retargeting Audience
Display ads are the most effective marketing strategy that a majority of e-commerce firms use. You can include some ads in your content to catch the attention of the reader.
However, note that your readers might be turned off by the ads if they are too many or unrelated. If your content is about finding the right car, your readers are likely to purchase a vehicle in the future.
You can use display ads of the cars you are selling, and that might trigger an interest to buy from you.
Conclusion: Benefits of content marketing
Digital marketing is, without a doubt, better than traditional marketing. Luckily, you can enjoy numerous benefits of content marketing as described in this article.
You can save money, enjoy higher returns and ROI, make use of real-time analytics for better strategies, just to name a few.
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing helps a business to improve conversions because it allows you to connect with and educate your leads and customers.
How does content marketing help?
Content marketing will help to increase your brand awareness and it will also lead to higher conversions
Is content marketing effective?
Yes, as long as it is executed in the correct manner.If you do that you can even ave a lot of money.
What makes a good content marketer?
A good content marketer is the one who understands his/her audience.