We all know that paid advertising produces results and drives traffic to your website. If it didn’t, why would we be paying for it, right? The truth is nearly over 200 million people use ad blockers on their desktop or laptop and over 615 million devices have ad blockers installed as well. This means that paid advertising just isn’t as effective as it used to be. So how do you, as a small business owner, combat the decline in paid advertising? Easy. Content marketing.
When you hear “content marketing”, the first things that pop into your mind are probably “blogs” or “articles”, right? Well, content marketing is so much more than that. Content marketing should be a long-term strategy to help build a strong relationship with your audience and provide information that’s relevant to them. While paid advertising is designed to get something from the audience, content marketing is about providing value to your customer in order to build trust and establish yourself as an expert.
We know the time and effort it takes to write quality content probably isn’t something you’re focused on right now, but here are 5 reasons why you should consider making time:
1. Greater return on a small investment
Content marketing typically costs about 62% less than traditional and outbound marketing tactics. In addition to a lower cost, it usually generates 3 times the number of leads. This only works if you are utilizing your content in multiple areas of your digital marketing campaign. If you’re spending the time writing this content, you’ll want to ensure that you’re using this content in your social media campaign, email marketing campaign, and other areas when possible.
2. The Ability to Promote Yourself Without Selling Yourself
While most customers follow you on social media or subscribe to your email campaign because they really do want to hear from you, they don’t want to hear about your promotions 24/7. You might get a great reaction the first or second time, but the third time will definitely fall flat. Content marketing gives you the ability to talk about why you’re the best of the best without offering a sale or promotion. The best way to do this isn’t to talk about why you or your company is the greatest thing since sliced bread. You should focus on what’s going on in your industry and how that relates to you and your consumer. This will show that you are up-to-date and in-the-know about what’s going on, further building trust with your consumer.
3. Increase Your Organic Search Visibility
You might feel discouraged knowing that some of the big names in the game are producing content on a regular basis, but don’t let that stop you from writing. Even though big brands are taking their fair share of the market, it’s possible for a small business to take a piece of the pie too. What matters is quality content that’s relevant to your industry. When it comes to ranking organically, Google will always be in favor of quality over quantity.
4. Solidify Your Brand as a Resource
There’s an authority in every industry, right? So why can’t it be you or your company? If I asked you who is the industry expert in your field, you’d probably be able to tell me their name right away. Chances are, the person or brand you name is cranking out content that you love and consume on a regular basis. The more your customers come to you for resources and information, the more likely they are to come back to you when it’s time to make a purchase.
5. Keep Your Website Fresh
Let’s be real, when’s the last time you updated your website? I’m going to guess it’s been a while. The search engine God that is Google loves fresh content. When crawling your website, they’re looking for things like when your website was first created, how often content is updated, and other metrics like traffic or engagement. When you’re regularly adding or updating content to your website, you’re letting Google know that you’re relevant and that goes a long way when the algorithm is trying to figure out where to rank your website.
At the end of the day, we know you don’t have time to write content for your website on a regular basis. You’re busy running your business and meeting the demands of your customer. That’s why we’re here to help. To learn more about our Content Marketing services, give us a call at 321-255-0900.
