You spun up a new business. You know that you know what you’re doing. Your products and services are top-notch. The problem? Everybody doubts you because they don’t know that you’re any better than your competitors if they even know you exist at all.
You could run an ad campaign. However, that only lasts until you run out of advertising budget. A Rakuten survey indicates that marketers are aware that they wasted money on ineffective marketing efforts at some point, though how much can depend on who you ask. Their metrics sometimes faked them out: Bad data can gobble up 21% of marketing budgets through wasted advertising efforts.
Your audience will scroll past your ad on social media or roll their eyes at yet another 30-second unskippable commercial on YouTube and then forget your business exists. You could try to come up with a clever and good-humored ad, but that runs the risk of coming off as cheesy or insulting to your audience if you’re not very careful. What can you do that you can simply pay for once and then it’ll be on the Internet practically forever?
It’s called content marketing. Blogs, social media posts, email marketing campaigns, press releases, infographics, podcasts, and videos fall under this banner. So do some forms of advertising that predate the Internet, such as infomercials on TV and informational flyers. The informational flyer from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio probably helped astronomy clubs and local hobby shops distribute more solar eclipse viewing glasses than any promotional effort they could have made on their own, for instance. Content marketing is what you do when you want to establish your expertise and get in front of an audience at the same time.
A video can theoretically remain on YouTube forever. Blog posts and press releases can also remain published on a website for as long as the website stays up. Here’s an example: A six-year-old interview with Explore Mars co-founder Chris Cadberry.
That makes it a good idea to produce “evergreen” content when possible. A 2019 op-ed on the importance of checking on old online accounts is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. People can search for or refer back to it whenever they think of it.
Why pay for content marketing, though?
First, your competitors are probably already doing it. Forbes projected that content marketing could be a $600 billion industry in 2024. 90% of marketers already include content in their marketing strategies and frequently spend more than 10% of their marketing budget on their content strategy. 74% of businesses surveyed reported that they increased leads from their content marketing strategy.
51% of Internet traffic still comes from search engines even with the rise of social media platforms and ChatGPT’s relatively new ability to search the Internet. Businesses that position themselves as the ones who can answer their questions regardless of whether they intend to buy right now or not are more likely to be remembered.
(Of course ChatGPT would come into the conversation, right? Here’s a free tip: You’re probably still better than ChatGPT at anything that requires true creativity because it won’t know what you know unless you tell it. It’s one of several perfectly legit reasons many fiction magazines like Analog or Asimov’s won’t accept AI-generated stories.)
It’s not necessarily cheap, especially for small businesses. Many content marketers can spend $550 to $2,000 per content piece. Much of that probably goes toward writing it ($80 for a 2,000-word article) and placing it on a reputable website.
The benefits can barely be discounted, however. Backlinks from reputable websites are still valuable for SEO. Businesses that can consistently place their content and related links on high-value websites can rank up to 45% better results for SEO.
43% of “business-to-consumer” content marketers also invest in ebooks and whitepapers. Whitepapers can be especially popular if something starts taking off in a big way. (Bitcoin!! Here’s the Bitcoin whitepaper if you want an example of what a good technical whitepaper looks like, by the way. If you can’t view it due to your geolocation, use a VPN. Ivacy, NordVPN, and PureVPN are decent VPN options if you don’t already use one.)
Bottom line? Content marketing works. It improves your SEO, establishes your expertise, and gets the attention of Internet users who might not be ready to buy yet but want a question answered. You don’t have to drain your marketing budget on ads that might annoy your customers before they forget you exist. That makes content marketing one of the best marketing decisions you can make.
