Inbound marketing vs. Content Marketing When most people hear the term “content marketing” they tend to immediately picture a ton of articles being distributed across the internet for the purposes of promotion. In all reality, content marketing is much more than just articles being distributed. Inbound marketing involves several tactics including search engine optimization, viral marketing, and social media marketing to name a few. In essence, there are three main reasons and advantages to content marketing that we shall discuss below:
Increased sales – Content marketing is a great way for businesses to increase sales since it can allow you to advertise your products and services in a cost-effective manner without any out-of-pocket advertising. Therefore, businesses that invest in content marketing are always able to generate a profit because the more content they create, the more backlinks they will receive. The greater number of backlinks a website receives, the more popular it becomes and the higher its rankings on search engines. Therefore, with the proper research, creativity, and knowledge, content marketing can help a business achieve much greater success than they ever thought possible.
Creative marketing strategy – One of the primary advantages of content marketing is that it allows businesses to effectively create a marketing strategy through creating useful content. This form of marketing is different from traditional marketing in the sense that it does not fall into predetermined formats or layouts. Instead, effective content marketing is created through engaging and informative articles that are interesting and informative to the reader. A great thing about this form of marketing is that it allows a business to choose topics that are meaningful to their target audience, creating a higher chance of creating an emotional connection and creating long-term customer loyalty through engaging, informative content.
Higher conversion rates – The bottom line is that content creation provides an opportunity to create long-term relationships with a specific audience. These relationships are usually established through the use of personalization, engagement, and credibility. Personalization is the process of including personal details, information, and interests of the target audience. Engagement is an interactive process where you take the reader into your own world and show them that they are not the only ones involved in this particular story. Credibility is all about creating a level of trust and confidence in the reader, and this can be done through engaging content and providing verifiable information. Content creation gives a business an opportunity to engage their audience, generate leads, and create loyal customers.
Branding – Content marketing can also be used to effectively brand a website. By creating creative content, a business can create a “brick and mortar” experience that visitors to the site will want to return to. This is done by providing a personality behind each product or service listed on the website. For example, a website selling sports equipment would not make a great blog post unless there was a little bit of information regarding the brand of sports equipment available. However, a creative blog post on fishing rods would be a good fit for a website selling fishing poles.
Research – Content marketing is also useful in research. A blog post can be written to engage a specific group of people in a conversation. This can be done through providing statistics, quotes, or general information. For example, if a company is looking to market a new line of clothing targeted at women fishermen, a blog post with an interview with the owner of the brand could be very beneficial. The interviewed business owner may provide insight into how their product or service can help the fishing angler.