Why is Content Marketing Important?

Content marketing produces the most memorable experiences we have online. We like, retweet and share videos and articles that capture our hearts and minds.

Why is content marketing important? It captivates people in ways that traditional advertising can’t.

Companies know it works. Content keeps up glued to our desktop and phones; we arm ourselves with it to buy things. We engage with it to lift our spirits or learn something new.

Creating and promoting content is the strategy your small business needs to gain the edge over your competitors, both big and small.

Consumers Love Content Marketing

What do you do before buying anything?

You research it online. You compare different products and services. You stack bits of data against each other. You listen to the expert voices of the industry.

As consumers, we want to feel confident and informed when making purchases. Buyer’s remorse stings. Discovering faults with expensive items is infuriating. Our hearts sink when we find out later that the store down the road was selling the same item for a cheaper price.

Content marketing delivers the information that makes us smarter buyers. It prevents us from sending money down the drain.

Content marketing is more about teaching than selling. But content is instrumental in the selling process. How?

Content Marketing Helps You Sell (Without Actually Selling)

Let’s face it: No one wants us to sell to them. No one likes to feel manipulated or pressured into buying anything.

And no one truly cares about hearing how great our products and services are–not at first, anyway.

Content marketing works because it helps you sell without shoving an advertisement or sales pitch in the consumer’s face. It turns into credibility among consumers in your industry.

When you have credibility, people will return to you over and over to consume your content, and new people will follow along with them. Some of those people will eventually become devoted customers.

Value drives sales, and content marketing provides that value in ways that consumers don’t consider disingenuous.

Home Depot maintains a content library full of DIY project ideas. These articles not only list off all the necessary tools and material for projects like building wooden ladders and installing a bathroom vanity, but they also teach readers the exact steps for successfully seeing these projects to completion.

Readers now know what they need to complete a project and how to do it after reading these blogs. All they’re lacking now are the actual materials, and Home Depot is the perfect source to buy from.

Integrity in your marketing builds a sought-after currency: trust.

Consumers Trust Content Marketing

When we shop online, the only voice we want to listen to is the one we can trust.

We’ve talked before about using content to build trust with your audience. You can create attention-grabbing, traffic-generating content just by writing answering their questions.

When drafting ideas for content, ask yourself these questions:

• What does your audience want to learn?
• What do they like the most?
• What content does your audience share?
• What type of voice do they best respond to?

A well-researched and well-written blog post is more persuasive than a generic advertisement. Content marketing helps your business build credibility and establish authority online.

As a consumer, wouldn’t you rather buy from the company that seems to know their industry inside and out, that cares about the dilemmas you face and provides answers? So would your customers.

Your Competitors Definitely Understand That Content Marketing Is Important

Don’t think for a second that the other companies in your space aren’t trying their hand at content marketing.

Content populates websites, emails, and social media platforms. Content enables businesses to be found on Google.

Your competitors are likely creating and pushing any or all of these types of content:

• Articles
• eBooks
• Infographics
• Videos
• Quizzes
• Webinars

The point is that every piece a competitor creates is one less piece that you’re not creating. That means one less chance to engage with and win over potential customers.

Every piece of content is a chance to amplify your voice and demonstrate your expertise. Your competitors know this.

If you want to compete with them on their level, you have to create this content as well.

The success rate of their content is another matter. This leads us to our next point.

Content Marketing Levels the Playing Field With Your Competitors

Search engines like Google don’t care if you have 1 employee or 10,000 employees. The biggest brands in your industry don’t get to bully anyone out of the competition in search results.

What Google and consumers care about is if your content is helpful, not how big and important you think you are.

Bigger businesses might have more money to spend on advertising, but if you’re creating the content that people want to read, you have the advantage. A company that teaches consumers more about their area of interest will get way more eyes and ears than a company yelling about how important they are.

Good content is good content, regardless of the company that publishes it.

Your competitors are already publishing and promoting content, which presents the challenge of doing it better than they are. Here’s the good news: They’re probably not doing it well.

A joint study by Moz and Buzzsumo found that while lots of companies are publishing lots of content, most of that content produces unremarkable results.

This content was low-performing because of these problems:

• A lack of external links
• Few social shares
• Poor-quality content
• Word counts totaling at less than 1,000 words

We stated at the beginning of this article that companies know content marketing works. But many companies don’t know how to make it work.

A content library filled with thousands of articles, videos and quizzes are worthless if no one is engaging with its pieces.

Your competitors might have a head start on you in the content production race, but how much of their content is actually good?

The gap between production and quality is where your opportunity lies. Analyze the content of your competitors and think about how you could do it differently.

• Do the articles and videos they publish impress you?
• Do they tell you anything you don’t already know or enlighten your audience on something you wish you could have told them sooner?
• Does their content thoroughly answer all of the questions the audience has?
• How does their content look on your mobile phone?
• Can you scan their blogs easily and still understand the information?
• Do their videos inspire people to take action after watching?

You might both have the same message, the same audience, and even the same products. But how you convey the information is what matters.

Even companies with huge marketing budgets struggle with creating quality content. Deep pockets don’t count for much if they’re funding fluff that doesn’t move the needle.

Don’t just publish content for the sake of publishing. Create the content you know people want and format it in a way that they will engage with it.