Are you look­ing for some­thing to breathe life back into your SEO and mar­ket­ing cam­paigns? Con­tent mar­ket­ing might be the answer. Before you kick­start your new strat­e­gy, make sure you know what’s involved. Here are the ben­e­fits (and draw­backs!) of con­tent marketing.

Con­tent mar­ket­ing can mean a broad range of things for dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es. Its many facets entail sev­er­al meth­ods and tech­niques, of which you can pick and choose. In this way, con­tent mar­ket­ing is cus­tomis­able, so you can have a strat­e­gy that suits your brand, bud­get, and time scale.

Although there are many attrac­tive ben­e­fits to con­tent mar­ket­ing, it comes with its draw­backs too. If you were to launch a far-reach­ing con­tent cam­paign that pro­duced mass­es of con­tent, you’d prob­a­bly have to out­source some of the work since it would be very time-con­sum­ing to do it all yourself.

Even so, some are adamant that a con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is what made their busi­ness suc­cess­ful. Accord­ing to Drift, con­tent mar­ket­ing costs 62% less than oth­er mar­ket­ing options whilst deliv­er­ing 3x more leads.

In order for your strat­e­gy to deliv­er the amaz­ing results you want, it’ll need to be con­sis­tent. It might even require full-time invest­ment to be high­ly effective.

Accord­ing to Ter­a­keet, bil­lion-dol­lar brands were los­ing their share of the organ­ic mar­ket to pub­lish­ers who were cre­at­ing long-form high-qual­i­ty con­tent. So, there is a case to be made that qual­i­ty is more valu­able than fund­ing when it comes to con­tent mar­ket­ing campaigns.

In this arti­cle, we’ll run you through the ben­e­fits you can expect to see from con­tent mar­ket­ing and the draw­backs to pre­pare for.

Firstly, what is content marketing? And, what’s involved in a content marketing strategy?

A con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paign shares mate­r­i­al online that does­n’t explic­it­ly pro­mote a brand but aims to encour­age inter­est in a com­pa­ny. Also, many busi­ness­es utilise con­tent mar­ket­ing as part of their SEO effort, which aims to build author­i­ty on search engines and gath­er more impres­sions, con­ver­sions, and sales through dig­i­tal content.

A con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy involves con­sis­tent­ly pro­duc­ing rel­e­vant and valu­able con­tent to attract a spe­cif­ic audi­ence. The con­tent may include:

• Blog posts and articles
• Social media posts
• Videos
• Pod­casts
• Emails
• Tools and templates
• Inter­views
• Live Q&As
• Look­books
• Info­graph­ics
• Webi­na­rs

Content and marketing are linked

Mar­ket­ing will always include con­tent to some extent. For example:

SEO: web­sites are reward­ed by search engines if they pro­duce high-qual­i­ty con­tent consistently.

Inbound mar­ket­ing: con­tent is cru­cial in attract­ing inbound leads and traffic.

Social media: post­ing engag­ing social media posts requires high-qual­i­ty and well-thought-out content.

PR: busi­ness­es that address issues (that their read­ers care about) in their con­tent have suc­cess­ful PR strategies.

Pay per click: good con­tent is cru­cial if your PPC is going to work, as users need to be com­pelled by some­thing to “click”.

Benefits of content marketing

Organic search improvements

Con­tent cre­ation is con­sid­ered the foun­da­tion of organ­ic search and dri­ving more traf­fic to your web­site. How­ev­er, this strat­e­gy might be hin­dered if you haven’t addressed your site’s tech­ni­cal SEO issues.

Once you’ve worked on your cam­paign for a while and pro­duced a large back­log of con­tent, you’ll start to see sig­nif­i­cant results.

By build­ing a suf­fi­cient cat­a­logue of indus­try-rel­e­vant and well-researched key­words across your site, you’ll start to rank well for more com­pet­i­tive key­words, as well as long-tail vari­ants. If you action this cor­rect­ly, you will yield long-term and com­pound­ing return on invest­ment. This process will also result in your web­site grow­ing in author­i­ty for its niche.

E.A.T – what Google wants to see in websites

E.A.T stands for exper­tise, author­i­ty, and trust. These are the three pil­lars that your site must emu­late for Google to reward you in the SERPs.

Shopi­fy is a great mod­el for the E.A.T approach as it pro­duces straight­for­ward con­tent that begin­ners want to con­sume. Their con­tent is writ­ten by experts and solves users’ pain points.

By tak­ing this approach and pro­duc­ing begin­ner-friend­ly con­tent, you build a web­site that is author­i­ta­tive, trust­wor­thy, and that has exper­tise – exact­ly what Google is look­ing for. As a result, your SEO will ben­e­fit massively.

High-qual­i­ty con­tent can result in numer­ous back­links from high-author­i­ty web­sites, boost­ing your site’s trust­wor­thi­ness even further.

For e‑commerce sites want­i­ng to explore con­tent mar­ket­ing, their strat­e­gy will go far beyond trans­ac­tion­al pages. Blog posts full of data and help­ful advice can build trust and authority.

Hav­ing no sales on a page might seem counter-intu­itive for some, but sales aren’t the imme­di­ate goal here. A trust­ed and author­i­ta­tive site will gain more traf­fic in the long run, appear high­er in the SERPs, and ulti­mate­ly gain a more exten­sive cus­tomer base.

Brand personality

When you think of a brand, you might just think of its colour scheme and logo. But a brand’s voice is a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic. A brand can get its voice out there in many ways, but espe­cial­ly through its content.

Whether it’s through advice, tips, rec­om­men­da­tions, tuto­ri­als, or “top ten” guides, the act of pro­duc­ing con­tent is ripe with pos­si­bil­i­ties to con­vey your brand’s personality.

Con­tent mar­ket­ing allows you to encour­age a stronger brand affin­i­ty. Through con­tent, you can answer your users’ ques­tions and pro­vide addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion they did­n’t realise they need­ed. If this high-qual­i­ty con­tent is paired with your brand’s unique per­son­al­i­ty, your users are high­ly like­ly to emo­tion­al­ly invest in your company.

Once some­one’s emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed, they become a chan­nel through which your brand can be com­mu­ni­cat­ed. Although some­one may find your con­tent via Google’s SERPs, they might also be sent a link from a friend or find you through an indus­try resource. In this way, your brand per­son­al­i­ty builds leads, which then build aware­ness. As this process repeats, aware­ness of your brand con­tin­ues to grow.

Once you’ve built up brand aware­ness, got your brand’s per­son­al­i­ty into the web-o-sphere, and pro­duced a sub­stan­tial back­log of con­tent, you’ll have cre­at­ed an author­i­ta­tive plat­form to work from.

Google will val­ue this large, trust­ed, and unique plat­form and reward you.

Better quality leads

When your con­tent is full of rel­e­vant key­words, it will be found by peo­ple who are look­ing for it. Plus, if your key­word research is aligned with searcher intent, you’ll have a high­er chance of secur­ing leads.

Site vis­i­tors who have searched specif­i­cal­ly for what your con­tent dis­cuss­es will have a high­er chance of con­vert­ing as they have big­ger inten­tions to engage with you. Thus, your con­tent acts as a mag­net that attracts the exact audi­ence you are targeting.

As long as your key­word research is rel­e­vant and your con­tent match­es your user intent research, you’ll attract bet­ter qual­i­ty leads who are more like­ly to make pur­chas­es from you.

Close sales funnel gaps and improve conversion rate

Think of the stages of the con­ver­sion fun­nel: aware­ness, con­sid­er­a­tion, and decision.

Both con­tent mar­ket­ing and SEO can tar­get each one of these stages. Wher­ev­er your users are in their sales fun­nel jour­ney, you’ll be able to encour­age them with con­tent marketing.

You might already have an email mar­ket­ing cam­paign that aims to encour­age users through their sales fun­nel jour­ney. How­ev­er, util­is­ing a fur­ther-reach­ing con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy will enhance this goal via more channels.

Con­tent can be used to attract leads in the first place, reach out dur­ing their con­sid­er­a­tion phase, and influ­ence their deci­sion to make a purchase.

Thus, con­tent mar­ket­ing can be extreme­ly help­ful in improv­ing your site’s con­ver­sion rate. Through con­tent, you can:

• Remind users about new or improved products
• Rein­vig­o­rate your brand
• Include each and every cus­tomer in a community
• Tell a sto­ry that peo­ple want to engage with
• Address ques­tions and concerns
• Sell your products
• Share incen­tives
• Cre­ate calls to action
• Fos­ter a sense of trust amongst users

Accessible by a broader audience

You know how some peo­ple are visu­al learn­ers, and some pre­fer to skim bul­let points?

Well, it’s because every­one has unique learn­ing requirements.

Some peo­ple would pre­fer to watch a video whilst oth­ers would want to read.

When you invest in a var­ied con­tent mar­ket­ing scheme, you can cater to all these dif­fer­ent cus­tomers. Here are some of these dif­fer­ent for­mats you can utilise:

• Blog posts and articles
• Videos
• Pod­casts
• Social media posts
• Emails
• Tools and templates
• Inter­views
• Live Q&As
• Look­books
• Info­graph­ics
• Webi­na­rs

Fur­ther­more, con­tent mar­ket­ing efforts will reach those peo­ple who choose to avoid ads and oth­er tra­di­tion­al forms of adver­tis­ing. Some will be using an advert-block­ing exten­sion but will be able to see your blogs, videos, and social media posts.

Increased PR results and engagement on social media

Before your con­tent con­verts users into pay­ing cus­tomers, it will turn them into brand advo­cates. This hap­pens when some­one lands on a piece of your con­tent and thinks it’s been help­ful, enter­tain­ing, clever, or touching.

Once you’ve got a brand advo­cate, they’ll like­ly fol­low you on your social media plat­forms and pos­si­bly share your con­tent with their friends. In this way, your brand advo­cates are lend­ing their voice to you.

Brand advo­cates aren’t cre­at­ed with­out con­tent. If you’re not pro­duc­ing blog posts, videos, or social media con­tent, users will nev­er be able to share your creations.

It’s not just indi­vid­u­als who can be brand advo­cates; high author­i­ty pub­li­ca­tions and blogs can get a hold of you too. These sig­nif­i­cant fig­ures are keen to share high-qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion with their own audi­ences, and if your con­tent has infor­ma­tion they’re look­ing for – they’ll be shar­ing it.

This act of shar­ing and back­link­ing can have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on where your site appears in the SERPs. It might even be the dif­fer­ence between being on page one or page ten of Google.

Drawbacks of content marketing

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, all strate­gies come with draw­backs. Before you embark on your jour­ney with con­tent mar­ket­ing, you need to make sure you can han­dle what comes with it. Here are some things to be aware of:

Your results won’t be immediate.

Experts say that the results from con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paigns can take up to six to nine to appear. How­ev­er, the length of time you’ll have to wait will, of course, depend on the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of your con­tent out­put. You might have to have a good look at your bud­get and allow for this “wait­ing time” before you see an ROI.

Google is constantly changing its algorithm.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, all web­sites are in the hands of Google’s algo­rithm. Since it’s con­stant­ly chang­ing, your site’s SEO goal­posts will change too.

There­fore, you must always try to be agile, com­pet­i­tive, and relevant.

You might have to outsource the workload.

Many writ­ers, edi­tors, con­tent man­agers, SEO strate­gists, and social media mar­keters will know more than you about con­tent mar­ket­ing. If your cam­paign is tak­ing up too much of your valu­able time, you might have to bite the bul­let and reach out to free­lancers or agen­cies for help. For­tu­nate­ly, since they’re the experts, you’ll get high-qual­i­ty services.

Content marketing requires a lot of steps

(E.g., plan­ning, key­word research, writ­ing, edit­ing, proof­read­ing, SEO checks, sched­ul­ing, pub­lish­ing, social media man­age­ment, and email marketing).

There sure is a lot to think about when it comes to a con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Unless you have some experts to help with the work­load, this might mean you remain in the “plan­ning” stage for a while. It will also mean that at some stage, you’ll want to out­source the work to the experts, which comes at a cost.

You must have the creativity to come up with new ideas regularly.

To stay engag­ing and keep up an ongo­ing con­tent cam­paign, you’ll have to be cre­ative. If this does­n’t come nat­u­ral­ly to you, you’ll want to hire some­one with a cre­ative streak. Make sure you do your research and look at what oth­ers are doing to stay inspired. Some­times it’s just a case of fol­low­ing cur­rent trends and adapt­ing them to your brand.

Brand reputation, loyalty, and awareness are difficult metrics to measure.

A large part of con­tent mar­ket­ing is get­ting your brand out there, reach­ing a wider audi­ence, gath­er­ing brand advo­cates, and encour­ag­ing loy­al­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these met­rics are some­what fick­le to mea­sure. How­ev­er, since these all result in sales and engage­ment, there are still oth­er KPIs you can use to help you see how your busi­ness is growing.

Content marketing can be expensive.

Hir­ing an agency will be more cost-effec­tive than an in-house team; how­ev­er, it could still cost between $2000 and $10,000 a month.

You probably can’t do it by yourself.

As we’ve list­ed above, there are many aspects of con­tent mar­ket­ing that you might not have expe­ri­ence with. And even if you do, there is so much to cov­er with­in a con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paign that you might not have the time to do it all your­self. Out­sourc­ing tal­ent will come with a price tag, so make sure you have the appro­pri­ate bud­get for this.

Final Thoughts

Any­one work­ing on their SEO strat­e­gy has con­sid­ered con­tent mar­ket­ing. And why would­n’t they? Many web­sites have been high­ly suc­cess­ful with their con­tent. A well-planned con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy can bring a wide range of pos­i­tive results to many aspects of a business.

How­ev­er, if you’re still in the brain­storm­ing stage of your strat­e­gy, make sure you do your research. Con­tent mar­ket­ing can be heavy on resources, time, and mon­ey. Plus, you’ll have to wait a while to see results. You’ll need to know if results are some­thing you can afford to wait for.

With all these ben­e­fits that con­tent mar­ket­ing offers, your com­pa­ny could become the brand that audi­ences come to when they need infor­ma­tion that you spe­cialise in and the brand that peo­ple can’t wait to share with others.