Why Is Content Marketing Effective?

July 7, 2022 (Updated: May 4, 2023)

black woman and white woman staring at a silver laptop at the end of a table reading why content marketing is effective

You’ve likely heard the old Bill Gates saying, “content is king.” He wouldn’t have said that, and people wouldn’t still be quoting it about 20 years later, if there wasn’t some truth to it. But where did this idea come from? Why is content marketing effective? Today, we’re diving into this topic with information like:

9 Reasons To Use Content in Your Marketing Strategy
How Can You Make Content Marketing Fit Your Business Model?

9 Reasons To Use Content in Your Marketing Strategy

Though it didn’t have a name until the 1990s, content marketing has been around for much longer. What is it about this type of marketing that’s made it a popular and effective tactic for so long? Here are some reasons content marketing strengthens your strategy:

1. Grab More Site Traffic

Are you unintentionally self-sabotaging your company website? Why do you think most people visit your brand online? To contact your company? Are they looking for your address? Do they want to make a purchase? If you think these are the only reasons people come to your website, and that’s the only information you share, you’re missing out on a huge potential segment of your target audience.

Very few people who encounter your brand online, especially for the first time, are ready to make a purchase or a conversion. The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a potential customer or client must see a brand message at least seven times before they’re ready to take the leap and complete an action. But this doesn’t mean they want to see the same slogan or tagline seven times in a row and then they’ll be ready to give you their money.

Have a mix of both obvious and subtle messages to convince your audience that your solution is the right one for them. You can do this through content marketing. The more content you create, the more you can share on all your channels. As people find this content and click on it, they come back to your website and encounter your messages. The more time they spend on your website, the more they click around. This primes them to convert and become paying customers.

2. Get Around the Ad Blockers

Did you know that 27% of internet users in America, and 42.7% of them around the world use a tool or browser extension to block advertisements? And why wouldn’t they? Picture this: you’re reading an article and you’re about to scroll to the next paragraph when a big advertisement pops up and takes over your screen. As a reader, that would get annoying, wouldn’t it? Maybe that’s why services like AdBlock have over 65 million users.

This isn’t great news for marketers, though. Especially ones who rely on pop-ups and other forms of online advertising to promote brand awareness and secure conversions. But do you know what type of marketing doesn’t get stuck in an ad-blocking program? Content marketing.

Think of digital marketing as a party. Ads are the people on the dance floor who want to be seen or the annoying people who keep asking you if you’re having a good time. They’re the things you think about before you leave the house and consider if you really want to go. But outstanding pieces of content are the new people you can meet at the party or old friends you haven’t seen in a while. They’re not in your face begging for attention. They’re waiting on the sidelines for you to show up, find them, and start a conversation.

3. Get the Most from Your Resources

Content marketing, along with other types of digital marketing, is actually less expensive than traditional marketing. A one-person business could technically do content marketing alone and for free, depending on the time and resources it had. We wouldn’t recommend that, but it is possible.

It’s a better business practice to build content marketing into your budget. Hire the right team and use paid tools and website space to appear more credible. But this example shows that you don’t have to have a huge marketing budget or tons of resources to get the job done. You can do content marketing with what you have available.

Almost all traditional marketing and advertising methods, like print ads or television commercials, require a bigger budget and more resources. While these types of marketing tactics can help the right businesses, a balance of traditional and content marketing exposes your brand to a wider audience without breaking the bank.

4. Become More Personal

Content marketing lets you get more personal with your audience than you can with traditional marketing. Practices like audience segmentation for your direct marketing and remarketing throughout content pieces allow you to show the right messaging to the right group. You can encourage them to explore more of what you offer and eventually become paying customers. According to a 2020 Salesforce study, 66% of customers and clients expect brands to understand their needs and anticipate the things they want. The automation practices and flexibility of content marketing allow this to happen.

Consider drip marketing email campaigns and how they use audience segmentation to send the right message to people based on their behavior and place in the sales funnel. It’s like the “choose your own adventure” books you may have read as a kid. The lead completes one action, like signing up for an eBook download. The next email they receive depends on whether they click the download link within the email. Every action they make determines what happens and what email they get next.

You can’t do this type of highly personalized marketing with traditional campaigns. And without a wealth of content to keep the drips going, they would end after one or two messages. That’s why understanding how content volume fits into your strategy is also key.

5. Attract a B2B Audience

While any company can use content marketing, it’s particularly effective and preferred by business-to-business (B2B) marketers. B2B companies use content marketing to reach a larger audience. With many options like eBooks, white papers, and articles, there’s a way to expose every decision-maker for a brand to the benefits and value of your company in a way that resonates with them.

Each piece works together to create a solid foundation for why your company is the best B2B solution in your niche. Then it builds on the foundation of what you do to how you make your solutions work for that specific company.

6. Reach Your Audience Where They Spend Time

Content is more than just blog posts and emails. These days, you can write, film, speak, and even draw content if it suits your audience’s needs. And with so many types of content, there are equally as many places to share it. With traditional and even basic digital marketing, you’re more locked in to what you can produce and where you can share it. For example, if you make audio commercials in traditional advertising, you can likely only share those on the radio or with some streaming services.

But with content marketing, you’re not locked into anything. Content works in the digital space and out in the real world. If your target audience listens to the radio, great! Keep making those audio ads. But if they also watch videos on their cell phones, or like to read email newsletters during a break in the workday, you can create those, too.

Remember to keep your messaging consistent across these channels and platforms. When you do, you’re strengthening your brand identity and appearing everywhere your audience frequents, both in the real world and online.

7. Touch on a Variety of Topics

Just like content isn’t limited to one channel, it’s also not limited to one topic. There are a variety of subjects to cover from multiple angles in every industry. Some topics are more valuable for your brand to cover than others. You want to be in the same conversations as your competitors so that your content appears alongside theirs on search engine results pages (SERPs). You also want to cover topics your audience cares about and ones they find interesting and valuable.

There are tools to help you discover the right focus topics for your content, like CopyPress‘ content analysis tool. This tool generates a report that compares your content to that of your top three competitors. It also gives you a list of keywords that signal content gaps in the material you produce. These gaps show information you should be covering in your content but haven’t yet. Register for your free report today to start targeting your audience with the exact content they crave.

“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

8. Nurture Leads Through the Marketing and Sales Funnel

Not every person who encounters a brand is immediately ready to start a partnership with or make a purchase from it. Sometimes people are just looking to get an answer to a question or learn something new. But that doesn’t mean that someday they won’t need a product or service you provide. When you do content marketing the right way, their simple question from six months ago could lead them right to your checkout page.

How? One of the main purposes of content marketing is brand awareness. The more content a company creates and shares, the more its name circulates in the right industry and audience circles. This gives your audience more opportunities to encounter your brand, for any reason. When you create high-quality content that’s both engaging and helpful, you also build trust with that audience. If what you tell them is factually accurate, or the how-to tutorial you provide works, they’re going to put more faith in your brand. They’ll seek out your content when they’re looking for something else because they trust it.

That trust helps nurture people through the sales funnel. When they know what your company does and have faith you’ll do it well, they remember that when it’s time to make money moves. Let’s look at an example of how this could work in the real world:

Example

Marco just opened his first cake decorating business. He needs to know how to start content creation to get more brand awareness. He does a quick internet search and finds a CopyPress knowledge base article on the topic that tells him exactly what he needs to know. After he gets the tips he needs, Marco moves on.

A few weeks go by, and Marco is slowly starting to get new customers. His blog is becoming pretty popular in the local bakery market, but now he wants to know how to make it even more appealing to his target audience, not just other bakers. Marco goes back to Google and finds another article from CopyPress. He clicks on it since the last one was so helpful. Again, he gets what he needs and moves on.

Months later, Marco’s business is really becoming successful. His blog took off and his orders are stacking up. But he’s just a one-man operation. He wants to keep the blog going and meet audience demand with his content, but how? That’s when Marco remembers the CopyPress articles he read. He returns to our site to see what services we offer and finds that we create blog posts at scale. That’s exactly what he needs. Because he already trusts the CopyPress brand, he fills out the contact form to inquire further about our services.

While every client pipeline might not follow this exact formula, this is a good representation of how quality, consistent content marketing helps guide a lead through the funnel to an eventual conversion.

9. Focus on Goals Beyond Content Creation

Content marketing reaches far beyond the research, writing, and publication of articles or videos. Content marketers don’t engage in busy work. Every piece they create has a purpose and ties to a larger department or company goal. Working in content marketing makes your brand think about things like “how does this strategy benefit our business?” or “in what ways can this help increase sales?”

The process forces you to think about the intent behind every piece and how it’s going to take someone from a chance internet search and guide them to becoming a paying customer, like in the example above. When your marketing strategies tie back to goals, they’re more effective, easier to track, and more likely to show results.

How Can You Make Content Marketing Fit Your Business Model?

Content marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. Every business differs, and every brand is unique. Part of what makes content marketing so effective is its ability to bend and flex to your company standards and your audience. You don’t need a large team to do content marketing. That’s why content agencies like CopyPress exist, to do the work for you.

But if you have a marketing team or even a content team of your own, that doesn’t mean working with an agency isn’t the right choice for your brand. Content marketing agencies work as an extension of your in-house team. The partnership between the two solidifies your strategy and allows for an even broader pool of ideas. These kinds of partnerships also help with scalability. As your content becomes more popular and is in higher demand with your audience, you’ll need to scale up quickly. At other times, you may need to scale down.

How can you do that most effectively? Not by going through the hiring process and expanding your internal team. Work with a content agency that already has the skill and talent to get you where you need to be in your content marketing plan even faster.

CopyPress Is Your Simple Content Marketing Solution

At CopyPress, we understand every facet that makes content marketing unique from other types of marketing, and for every brand. Whether you need top-quality product descriptions or international content to expand your company’s reach, we do it all. No matter your industry or your audience, we deliver high-quality content to showcase your brand and your value every time. Ready to get started with your next great content partnership? Schedule a free strategy call with our team now.

Christy Walters

CopyPress writer