Content marketing is a great way to build your brand online. With the right kind of content, you can build and optimize your brand on the Internet so that it brings more traffic to your website and more sales to your business. More importantly, it can improve the overall image of the business and results in more sales, referrals, and consequently, more website traffic. The cycle goes on and on.
But if content marketing is so effective for branding, how come a lot of small and medium-sized businesses are struggling in building their brand through content? What challenges do business owners like you face and what can you do to overcome them? Read how we can help >>>
It’s important to first understand the link between content marketing and brand markeing. By now, many marketers – probably your competition included – have already realized the power of content when it comes to boosting brands. According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Marketing Profs, the No. 1 reason why organizations use content marketing is to raise brand awareness. Some 79% of marketers surveyed said so.Other goals that scored high in the survey are customer acquisition (71%), customer retention / loyalty (65%), engagement (64%), and website traffic (62%). However, brand awareness is the only goal that nearly broke the 80% mark. Obviously, today’s businesses want to improve their branding online and are using content to make it happen. Read how we can help >>>
Content Improves Branding, Website Traffic & Sales
Now if brand marketing is the top priority for content marketers, how then do they measure success? Still according to the CMI and Marketing Profs research, majority of marketers cite web traffic as their main metric (66%). Others said they measure content marketing success by looking at social media sharing (52%), time spent on website (46%), and direct sales (44%), among others.Indeed, the right mix of content marketing that boosts your brand will result to more traffic, engagement, shares and sales.
The tricky part, with assigning your content marketing efforts to agencies, is knowing which content can be used for both brand optimization and traffic generation. What type of content is effective enough to yield both results? Indeed this is a nuisance. Should you ask the marketing agency to create typical SEO articles? Should you order press releases or product pages?To understand what is “engaging,” you need to know what type of format your audience wants. In this regard, two formats stand out: videos and articles. Research by Gfk found that business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. Marketers agree; some 72% of respondents in a Custom Content Council survey said branded content is more effective than magazine advertisements.In the case of video, Accenture found that 90% of consumers actually watch online video. Here’s more: according to data collected by Animoto, 96% of consumers said they found videos helpful in making purchase decisions. Some 71% went as far as saying watching corporate videos left them with a positive impression of the brand. When it comes to reach, engagement, and building the brand, the best content formats to use are videos and articles.
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