Why Is Content Marketing Important For Business Development?

How do we know if something is important? Well, usually it's because we're motivated to do it. Or we aren't, but we know we have to do it anyway!

When you're marketing, what's the most important thing you do? And is it having a positive effect? If you aren't marketing, why aren't you? What's more important? For example, the longer you go without food, the more important it becomes. Think about this, if you don't produce content you won't educate your customers and generate as many tasty leads.

How would it make you feel if you were helping your customers? If you were providing value? If you were the most talked about company in your industry?

If you take content creation seriously, those dreams could become a reality.

Are you feeling motivated? Great! Here are 13 reasons content marketing is important.

1. Build A Community Of Loyal Followers

You need to deliver your message in an appealing way. This is the reason why B2B content marketing is important when improving brand awareness. You need to provide value before your customers invest their time and money in your products or services.

If you post educational content that helps people, you'll attract a following. If you post content talking about how your product is amazing and don't mention the customer once, they'll find someone that wants to talk about them.

Content is your ticket to a loyal customer base. In addition, if you ensure you deliver new and engaging content at regular intervals, your customers will keep coming back for more.

2. Start Selling The Inbound Way

While you can have content marketing without inbound, the two make a fearsome combination. Once you drop the mindset of chasing your prospects for their custom, you can deliver the inbound method with content marketing.

Content has a place in every stage of the buyer's journey, whether a prospect is just finding out they have a problem you can solve, or they've been with you for five years. When you know how to deliver it, you're winning!

3. Make Your Business An Authority

We have a simple fact to share. Quality, relevant content shared with your customers on a regular basis can help you promote yourself as an authority in the field.

Being a business authority is essential for strengthening your market position and attracting the attention of new customers. The more you write and share, the easier it will be for you to convince your buyer personas that you're an authority on the business subject you're promoting.

4. Share Your Stuff!

Why is a content marketing strategy important for your business? Content marketing doesn't have to stand on its own, always include a social media strategy to extend how many people see your content. If the content is valuable, you can get the invaluable interactions from your customers and targeted audience.

Understand your customer’s needs and expectations. There’s no better way to collect information, initiate discussions, ensure loyal follow-up, and provoke creative brainstorming than with the introduction and help of relevant content.

5. Top Quality Content Always Gets An SEO Reward

Top SEO ranking is one more reason why content marketing is important for your business. You create the content with the primary aim to promote your brand and reach new customers. For that to happen, you want for Google to recognise and award your efforts with a respectable ranking.

Content marketing is a great way to hit two targets with one shot. All you have to do is to make sure you’re delivering relevant content on a regular basis. This way, quality content marketing can have a double positive impact.

First, you reach new customers and an optimal SEO position with your relevant content. Then the content brings you more customers thanks to the top SEO ranking. This is a real win-win, isn’t it?

6. Increase Your Organic Traffic

Creating content can increase your organic traffic, we know because we've done it! However, there are practices you have to follow for this to happen.

• Create captivating content - It's no use creating content that's useless, nobody will read it! There are plenty of things you need to get right, from topic selection to the article title. Spelling and grammar errors are a big no! Would you think a resource was credible if the writer couldn't spell?


• Create linkable content - If your content is quality, people will want to cite it in their content. If you get backlinks from reputable sites, Google will favour it more, and you'll have more chance of appearing at the top of a search engine results page. You can also start a link building campaign and target people you think would be interested in reading it.

7. Content Marketing Is Your Best Business Ambassador

Content adds value to your business. Nowadays customers always expect and demand more. They want to be informed, thrilled and entertained with your content.

The next time you ask yourself why B2B content marketing is important, don’t think about yourself, think about your customers. If you press the right buttons, your efforts will be rewarded with the value they bring to your business.

You don't have to arrange big room conferences or tell everyone how great you are, let your content speak for you.

8. Overcome Traditional Concepts & Limitations

Modern customers don’t respond well to aggressive advertising techniques. You need a solution that can help you reach more people regardless of location and time.

That's why content is important in marketing. Traditional marketing techniques are more intrusive, like billboards or leaflets shoved through your door. But you can switch off and ignore them. You have to go out and find content quite often, unless the marketer uses a buyer persona to target you.

9. Leverage Content In Every Department

Content isn't exclusive to marketing; every business department can use it. And let's face it, who doesn't want more resources to do their job better?

Here are some examples of how you can leverage content in different departments:

• Sales - If you're on a sales call with no material, you're doing it wrong. If you produce content, you can complete around 60% of the buying journey before that call. Then when you pick up that phone, you need to have accessible content that answers any questions your buyer may have.

  For example, if your buyer has downloaded a website redesign guide, you could talk to them about a budget and send them your budget planner resource.



• Customer service - Can your content help your customer service team? You can create product guides for customers or consider producing video tutorials. If you can think of creative ways to keep your customer service team stocked with resources, your customers are going to be happier because you're solving their problems.


• Product - You don't have to plonk your product on a page with a snappy description and a price tag. Get creative. Create a video showing how you assemble it, suck the buyer into the journey. You could create a blog explaining all the snags and successes you've experienced in a certain area of the business. It shows transparency and builds trust with the buyer.
  
  
• Human resources - How can you engage your employees with content? You could release a monthly newsletter with employee success stories, achievements outside of work or anything positive that's happening at the company.

10. It's Cost Effective

Content marketing is a cheaper alternative if you're tired of expensive, ineffective traditional advertising. While you'll have to pay someone to create that content for you, you'll generate more leads with targeted content.

Because you're targeting the content at a specific buyer, the leads will be of higher quality. Google is very particular about who takes the top organic spot in its search results. It can take 6+ months for content to rank, so paid advertising isn't irrelevant.

If you need some quick wins, go with paid. You should persevere with your content marketing efforts as it's cheaper in the long run. An article you wrote five years ago could still generate business today.

11. Seize The Opportunity To Be Different!

Let those creative juices flow! Creating content gives you the opportunity to spread your message creatively. Make wacky videos, create mindblowing infographics, try to stand out from the crowd.

Of course, we always have to look at our competition. But don't follow them unless you want to appear inauthentic. Everyone loves an original idea, so what's yours?

Don't have one? Use your best resource, your team! I can guarantee at least one of them will have an idea. They're 'in the field' learning every day.

Check out how Risual injected some humour into their company video, showing off their fun and relaxed culture.

12. Grow Your Team

If your content marketing efforts are successful, you'll be able to grow your team and increase input. If you've been using stock images in your blogs, but they're successful, you could hire a designer to spruce them up. If you want to improve your backlink profile, you could bring in an SEO executive. As you start to see results and get more business enquiries, you'll need to manage that flow.

13. Tell A Story

Every blog should tell a story; and so should every strategy. Post in a logical order. If you're writing about SEO for one week and web design the next, consider revising. Think of your strategy like a book with a beginning, middle and end.

Firstly, you focus on catching your reader and keeping them hooked. Secondly, you thicken the plot and offload the meat of the story. And thirdly, you end the story on a cliffhanger leaving your reader wanting more!

Don't 'Do Business', Build Relationships!

Content can do a lot for creating rewarding customer relationships. In addition, you can avoid using more costly and less effective traditional 'hard sell' options. Content marketing can help you promote your brand and strengthen your authority on business subjects you care about.

If you can ensure you deliver relevant content on a regular basis, your SEO position will improve, and you can share your business messages through social media channels.

Content marketing is one of the most dominant digital marketing trends. More businesses will embrace the benefits content marketing can offer to help them achieve their goals. Therefore, instead of asking why is content marketing important? You should ask yourself, why am I not using it already?

Editor's note: This post has been revamped and updated for 2018. At Red-Fern, we love keeping our content fresh, it ensures our articles are up-to-date, relevant and accurate!