The Importance of Content in Marketing ^Featured

Marketing is an amalgam of efforts from targeted advertising to email blasts, but the most underrated – and incredibly effective tool is Content. Unfortunately, this is often overlooked by marketing teams.

When you can’t put an exact dollar sign on it, it’s tough to communicate to your team just how important content is to your overall marketing strategy. There’s no real measure of ROI. You can’t see a fast short-term return. Content is part of the long game. And it’s worth the investment.

Content generates leads for your overall marketing plan. Unique, compelling content (something Google is looking for in ranking these days) is what persuades a website visitor to submit their email for a free eBook or sign up for newsletter. If the content doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, they won’t sign up. The content needs to be fresh and interesting. Your team can view the longer term results of this in website analytics and use this data to shape future content.

How many people ultimately made a purchase after reading the newsletter or downloaded content? Track how many customers indicate that the content affected their decision to purchase. Marketing and sales people can note how often the content is referenced. If the content is educational in nature, it can be used during a sale to support the process.

The benefits you can’t track include mentions by others. You never know when something from your content will pop up in someone’s conversation or presentation as an example. This is free advertising stemming from your articles, blog posts, guest blog posts, eBooks, newsletters, and other content.

With Google using unique content as part of your search results ranking, you will be miles ahead of the competition. There are many companies who outsource writing to non-native English speakers with poor language skills to produce cheap, keyword-stuffed content. Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past and poorly communicated content simply mars the reputation of your company.

Here is an example I happened upon very recently. Somehow I ended up on a website promoting their skills as copywriters. The web page was full of mistakes couched in statistics and flashing letters and web graphics that were, no doubt, stolen. I sent them a note that perhaps they should check their spelling and grammar on their site if that’s what they are selling. Their response was curt and rude… and their selling point was that they were cheap.

The do-it-yourself sites with “thousands of pages” of free content are not a deal. The free content is all the same. Every site made there has the same pages. None will rank well or convert sales.

You get what you pay for. If you can’t pay for it yourself, hire a professional to write rich, unique, interesting, relevant copy for you. Present the facts to your team. In the long term, adding great quality content to your marketing strategy will add to your ROI and establish your reputation. Go ahead and check out your competition and their content. Good? Bad? The same? Talk to your team about setting yourself apart from the pack. Hire a great writer.