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 and you may never really be sure whether you got the best possible return on investment for your ad spend. A Rakuten survey indicates that most marketers know they have 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, good-humored ad, but it risks 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. This 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.
Blog posts and press releases can also remain published on a website for as long as the website stays up. A video can theoretically remain on YouTube forever. Here’s an example: A six-year-old interview with Explore Mars co-founder Chris Cadberry.
Of course, that can be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on evolving conditions. Somebody once asked me to take a video from my old YouTube channel down a few years after I published it because the information in it was outdated. That’s perfectly valid. Sometimes your business priorities or the overall business environment change. Historical interest is often the only reason to keep it up.
Content marketing can be a challenge. A recent survey listed budget as a top concern for marketers. Other top concerns included the ability to create top-notch content and access to the tools they needed to create quality content, place that content on the correct platform, and measure performance.
Content marketing can be a cost-effective marketing strategy when done correctly. You pay for it once, and it stays up forever. People can search for an easy gluten-free pie crust recipe or what to do if a relative dies without a will for many years after a post on that topic has been published.
Why pay for content marketing?
First, your competitors are probably already doing it. Marketing departments are expected to spend $107 billion on content marketing in 2026. That’s up from the $82 billion spent on content marketing in 2024. 45% of marketers surveyed say they intend to increase their marketing budgets.
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. One thing that’s new: Voice searches and an increase in long-tail keyword searches that ask a question rather than short phrases that people manually type into a search engine. Businesses that position themselves as the ones who can answer their questions before they have decided to buy 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. It’s one of several perfectly legitimate reasons many fiction magazines like Analog or Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 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 goes toward writing the content and placing it on a reputable website. Just scoping out the article and blog writers on Fiverr, the “vetted pros” and “top rated” writers aren’t cheap, though they can help you get the results you want. (Or, you can just check out my services.)
The benefits can barely be discounted. Backlinks from reputable websites are still valuable for SEO. Businesses that can consistently place their content and related links on high-value websites can get 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.)
Content marketing just plain works. It improves your SEO, establishes your expertise, can stay online forever, 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 potential customers for a few seconds before they forget you exist. That makes content marketing one of the best marketing decisions you can make.
