What’s stopping you?
That’s a key question to ask when it comes to making the leap and taking a new, fresh approach to your marketing. Because it’s time to face facts: the same-old same-old just isn’t working any more.
Not convinced?
Last month we looked at five stats that showed the incredible value of content marketing to your company. This month… well, we’re back at it, looking at five more numbers that demonstrate what many marketers already know – content marketing is now an indispensable part of any marketing mix.
1. Content marketing gets 3x the leads of paid search: For many years paid search was heralded as the shining star of online marketing – a cost-effective approach that gets results. There is certainly some truth to that. However, while paid search has its place in a modern marketing strategy, it’s fair to say it’s no longer at the top – particularly when it comes to cost-effectiveness. According to a study carried out by Kapost in conjunction with Eloqua, when pitted against each other, content marketing returns three-times more leads than paid search, per dollar spent. What’s more, a library of shareable content can soon start to build its own momentum, unlike paid search alone which needs ongoing investment to get results. There’s a new king in town and its content.
2. Small businesses with blogs see 126% more lead growth: Most businesses with an online presence have a blog – and with good reason. Blogs are a great way to connect with your target audience and share the latest news, tips and goings-on within your business. They are also a fantastic way to boost your on-page SEO – the more content you have on your site that contains key search terms, the higher you are likely to appear in search results. But there’s yet another reason why your business needs a blog – they’re great at attracting visitors to your website. Almost 80% of internet users read blogs, and that’s not even the most impressive statistic on offer. According to Impact BND, small businesses that blog regularly see 126% more lead growth than those that don’t. Clearly the more visitors you bring to your site, the more leads you are likely to generate.
3. Branded content brings 72% higher ROI vs magazine adverts: Placing adverts in magazines was once a marketing staple. However, as the modern consumer becomes increasingly wary of being sold to, the effectiveness of such ads has seen a steady decline in recent years. Instead, modern consumers like to be engaged, and they want to take something of value from every engagement. That’s where branded content reigns supreme over traditional advertising. Branded content focuses on people and problems first, and products second. Your content should be offering solutions to the common challenges of your audience – leaving readers thinking, ‘if their content is this useful, imagine what their products or services can do’. This is an approach that has been proven to work time and time again – and has been known to produce ROI up to 72% higher than traditional magazine advertising.
4. 95% of B2B buyers are open to view content as trustworthy: Your content does much more than spread your message. It builds genuine trust between your business and your audience. Once you are talking to customers and prospects from a position of trust, you have achieved the primary goal of content marketing – to communicate the benefits of doing business with your brand in a non-salesy tone. Add this statistic to one reported last year by Marketing Week – that 69% of consumers distrust advertising – and you really start to see just how powerful content marketing can be at getting through to potential customers.
5. 62% of marketers outsource at least one part of their content marketing activity: Our final stat doesn’t concern lead generation or any form of direct return, so why does it make it onto our list? The answer is simple: time and bandwidth are the most common reason for marketers not to engage in content marketing. There’s no doubt that generating high quality content is a time-consuming job, but as this statistic from the Content Marketing Institute goes to show, many businesses are seeing success from content marketing by outsourcing some or all of their activity. If you genuinely don’t have the time or the talent pool to create consistently quality content, statistics like those mentioned above make a powerful business case for outsourcing content marketing.
SOURCES
https://silxdigital.com/dont-need-content-marketing-think-again/
http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/mediaeloqua/documents/Content+Marketing+Kapost+Eoqua+ebook.pdf
https://www.impactbnd.com/blogging-statistics-55-reasons-blogging-creates-55-more-traffic
https://neilpatel.com/blog/38-content-marketing-stats-that-every-marketer-needs-to-know/
https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/06/29/arrogance-brand-purpose-distrust-ads/
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2018_B2C_Research_Final.pdf
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/content-marketing-statistics/