Over the course of 2020, Tree Ring has been blogging about the year’s top marketing trends and we’ve covered a lot of ground. Our last blog this year is on another trend: content marketing – but it hardly seems fair to call it a trend, since it’s a practice as old as marketing itself (check out this example from 1672).
What is Content Marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute defines it this way: “content marketing is educational but is not about the products the company sells. The vendor offers such good information that you become loyal to the brand.” This information can take lots of different forms, as shown by this helpful graphic from TheeDigital.com:
What’s the Benefit of Content Marketing?
Again, from TheeDigital.com:
“Content marketing is a two-fold benefit in which:
- You’re increasing your search engine ranking with high-quality content and strategic keyword usage to gain more traffic from a qualified audience.
- You’re providing valuable information that allows you to stand out as an authority while building trust, generating engagement, and gaining loyal customers.”
And if you need stats to convince you, check out these from Content Marketing Institute: “Small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than small businesses that do not blog,” or “Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.” Talk about ROI!
How to Successfully Use Content Marketing for Your Business
Start creating content that people want! TheeDigital.com explains it this way: “The key to being successful with your content marketing comes from a few different factors. Primarily these are knowing and leveraging the keywords you want to rank for, providing content for every stage of your sales funnel from new visitors to loyal customers, and building engagement to create brand ambassadors who are sharing your content.”
Don’t have the time? Luckily, you can hire the content marketing experts at Tree Ring Digital to do the work for you!