Importance of content marketing – benefits and inspiring examples

Content marketing is one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence, and driving sales.

In today’s competitive landscape where every business is trying to get a portion of the audience’s attention, businesses are making substantial investments as a part of their content marketing plans and initiatives.

More than 80% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. Find out more content marketing statistics.

Below let’s review content marketing- benefits and inspiring examples.

Okay.

So why is content marketing that important?

I would say that it allows your audience to know about you through the channels they consume content.

Is it that straightforward?

Hell yes!

Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts audience decision-making more than any other technique.

Should your content be unique every time?

NOT REALLY- but should be useful(every time) and consistent across your distribution channels. Your content needs to carry a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch.

Consistency in your content and its scale of usefulness establishes your credibility, builds awareness and trust, and strengthens your online reputation.

1. It educates your audience
   "My theory is that people don’t sign up for your tool and then learn how to use it. My theory is that people first learn how to use your tools, and they sign up because they know how to use your tool – CMO, ahrefs"
   Your potential customers want to know about you as a business. Creating content in different forms keeping in mind the trends like- short form video content, designing content for voice search, etc allows your audience to connect with and vice-versa. Educate your customers through content
2. Provides visibility and awareness to your business
   The more useful content you produce, the more consistent you are, the more visibility you get, thanks to SEO. You will even start to receive better traction on your social channels.
3. Content marketing helps to nurture and convert leads
   Buying cycle for your customers is not linear, they go on a journey instead. Firstly they get to know you. Then, they learn about your services/products essentially to understand if you can solve their problem and then if you stand out from the other providers, they choose you.
   Attract your target audience in the awareness stage through types of content your audience consumes, it could be podcasts, weekly articles, content for voice search can be very helpful if you are a D2C brand.
   Create interest by showing that you are offering a viable solution to their present needs. Convince that you are the right fit in their consideration stage. Provide them a final nudge- a compelling reason to buy. You can lure with discounts.
4. Your authority increases and makes your audience stick longer
   Good content serves you as a long term investment. It has the ability to impact your users positively and compel them to come back for more. Creating and distributing useful content will help you establish as a trusted place to get information in the niche.
   Plus your audience is inclined to trust you as they view you as an expert of the industry. Ultimately, when your content shows up at the right place and at the right time with the right audience, it’ll improve your brand’s reputation.
   The more quality content customers see, the more likely they will have a positive association with your company.
5. Fuels other marketing channels
   It’s almost impossible to utilize modern channels like social without content. Infact many newsletters exist with the idea of sharing blog posts, infographics, templates, and videos, etc. A glimpse of a newsletter from canva
   

6. Bonus: proves cheaper in the long run
   Content marketing is the most cost-effective way to spread awareness and acquire targeted traffic and customers. A hubspot study shows that content marketing gets 3x more leads than paid search advertising and also found that the cost per lead was 62% less. Why content marketing beats paid ads almost every time.

Inspiring content marketing examples

1. Grammarly- weekly writing update : A newsletter from of content
   Grammarly sends you weekly/monthly updates based upon your writing history. They send badges that you earn and with these update newsletters they talk about their new features, subscription plans, etc.

2. Slack: case studies : B2B content marketing example
   Case studies are a useful form of content marketing where you can showcase your skills and work. Moreover it acts as an authority for you. Make it more interesting rather than plain information like slack- taking a storytelling approach to sharing their case studies to show how customers have been impacted by their product

3. Canva- Design challenge campaign : creative content marketing example
   Canva is a well known graphic design tool which makes content creation easy for businesses, influencers, and content creators. It launched a design contest in 2022 in turn for exciting gifts. It is an amazing way to cultivate user generated content

3. Apple- Shot on iPhone : social media content marketing example
   It encourages users to share their very best photographs, using the phone’s macro function. The campaign was simple yet powerful. It encouraged users to experiment with their new iPhones resulting in close to 60,000 posts on Instagram alone.