Open the Door to Inspiration
In a business, sales are exciting. Content just doesn’t have the same whiff of success and fun about it, does it? Yet content marketing continues to be THE cornerstone strategy for businesses aiming to build a strong online presence and engage with prospects effectively. Why? Because, over time, it works brilliantly to put your company in frame for new business. Unlike traditional advertising, content marketing focuses on creating and distributing interesting content consistently, to attract and retain a defined audience. If you’re not convinced, read on….
Increased Website Traffic
Quality content acts as a magnet for website traffic. By producing content that addresses the interests of your audience, you can attract visitors to your site. Search engines like Google favour websites that regularly update their content, so when you publish fresh content, it will re-index your site, giving it the opportunity to get higher rankings in search results. This, in turn, drives organic (unpaid) visitors to your website, reducing the need for paid advertising. See the stats. below for a manufacturing client – this shows where conversions e.g. brochure downloads, enquiry forms etc came from for this customer. You can see that organic search is the best performer; yet the spend on ads is about double the spend on content marketing. This has continued to be the case over 18 months or so (yet ads are also an important contributor). For this B2B client, these results make content seem very exciting!
Cost-Effective Marketing Strategy
With content marketing, you are playing the long game. Ads can be turned on and off at an instant, but costs are incurred as soon as ads are activated and that cost continues, to maintain the campaigns. While producing high-quality content requires an investment of time and resources at the outset, the long-term benefits can far outweigh the costs. Once published, great content will continue to attract and convert customers for months or even years, providing ongoing value.
Improved Customer Engagement
Content marketing isn’t just about text or new pages on the site of course. Interactive content, such as polls, quizzes, and live videos, not only encourages engagement with your target audience, these tools can also give you feedback on what prospects are thinking/worried about etc. There’s many media platforms too – blog posts, social media, video channels and more, but there’s no need to get bogged down in planning too much activity – to the point that its not achievable. Inspiration can help both plan and implement the best approach.
Grow Brand and Leadership Awareness
Content is a great way to boost in brand awareness. So is LinkedIn ads btw, but these are extremely expensive. By regularly publishing high-quality content that resonates with your target audience, you are building both visibility and trust in your brand. For B2B businesses this can also mean building awareness of the Leadership team, who are central to the brand. Here’s an example of a profile piece; on Declan Brosnan, Abrel.
Better Customer Retention
Working with content isn’t just about attracting new customers; it’s also about keeping existing ones. Regularly updated content makes customers aware that you are a progressive, dynamic business. Whether its news about new products or services, ISO developments, market stats., regulatory considerations etc, your clients want to know that they are dealing with a company that’s right on top of things. Informative content helps foster long-term loyalty and repeat business.
Enhanced Social Media Presence
Most B2B businesses don’t feel they have the resources to manage social media effectively. And content marketing and social media go hand in hand. Once you have high-quality content to hand, it can be used across the socials, optimising the investment and increasing brand awareness to a wider market. It’s not recommended to outsource the management of your social media completely but Agencies like Inspiration can produce the content you need for social media and can help with scheduling posts, in a balanced, sustainable way.
Measurable Results
If half of your marketing is working, but you don’t know which half (!), then you’ll love the fact that the effectiveness of content marketing is trackable. Analytics tools allow businesses to monitor key metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversion rates. In the example below, an industrial business, you can see that most of the website visits are coming from google searches – this can only happen if the content on the site is relevant and kept fresh.
Open Up to Inspiration
Maybe we’ve convinced you of the benefits of investing in content but you might feel you just don’t have the time or resources. We often hear also, that no supplier could possibly write about the intricacies of their company or market. Occasionally that’s true, but Inspiration currently writes about electronics and the burn-in sector, about books, about industrial packaging, about modular housing and more (even digital marketing!).
We can learn about your business, agree content topics, industry relevant sources and more. We create content calendars, produce the content for your site, and put it on your social media for the world to see. We can also produce ezines to further leverage your investment in content.
Call or contact us here.
PS – If you are an Enterprise Ireland client company or HPSU, funding may be available for your
digital strategy.
