The importance of content in 2020 by SARAL GUPTA

The importance of content in 2020

 by SARAL GUPTA

importance of content in 2020

Whilst a strong digital marketing strategy is made up of a variety of components, content is arguably the most important part, and it affects almost every aspect of your marketing strategy. Consistent, quality content helps to support every part of your digital marketing strategy. From your website to social media, to email marketing and PPC advertisements, all of these things need great content to be successful.

In 2020, content marketing is absolutely essential for any business, and is no longer just an extra tactic but a fundamental necessity, as consumers now expect businesses to be providing them with high-quality content. Content helps you to become more visible online, both through your website on search engines and on social media. The content you create is a way to set yourself apart from competitors and create your own brand identity. It is also a way to help you to connect with your audience, and behind every successful business is a wealth of relevant, engaging, and interesting content that connects with its target audience. Great content can help a business establish itself as a leader in its industry and helps to generate more leads and drive conversions.

content on mobiel

Although it takes time, it is an incredibly cost-effective way to market your business and can lead to a great return on investment. Statistics show that content marketing gets three times more leads than paid advertisements, and 55% of marketers agree their biggest marketing priority is creating content for blogs. Just think about it yourself; aren’t you much more likely to buy from a business that provides you with numerous useful solutions to your problems, rather than one you’ve never even heard of?

Customers now expect high-quality, consistent content from businesses. It’s an incredibly competitive market out there, and consumers are well and truly spoilt for choice. To prevent falling behind the competition, you should consider focusing your attention on the content you produce.

Still not convinced? Here are some of the key areas where content can really make a difference to your business.

Content allows you to interact with your customers and learn more about them

Businesses can no longer rely on ‘traditional’ marketing strategies, which include, printed media, newspaper advertisements, flyers, billboards, telemarketing, and TV ads. These forms of marketing aren’t personalised enough and don’t allow for interaction between a business and its customers, which is a huge disadvantage especially if you are trying to target the younger generations. Content marketing allows you to interact and connect with customers.

By creating content that is relevant and useful to people, businesses can encourage people to comment on it, download it, or share it with others. This gives businesses the chance to talk to people through comments or see what kinds of people are enjoying the things they produce, so they can further tailor their marketing to generate more traffic and convert more leads.

social media marketing

Content marketing directly relates to social media marketing, because you can post and share the content you create on your social media channels. Nowadays, social media is a powerful vehicle for advertising your business and interacting with consumers. It provides you with additional platforms to communicate with customers, where you can hold discussions and reply instantly via comments and direct messages.

By constantly creating great content that people engage with and find useful, you can nurture your relationship with current customers at the same time as attracting new ones. Loyal customers may even be able to provide you with user-generated content which you can repost on your page to show potential customers how much you value your relationship with customers.

Content marketing is the key to understanding customers. It provides a vast amount of data that you can analyse as people move along the customer journey. Look at engagement rates on social media posts, the blog posts with the most visits, or comments, the views on videos or number of listeners on podcasts, what eBooks or PDFs people download, and what things people reshare across their networks. This is all incredibly powerful information for businesses. By looking at what content is most successful, you can learn more about your consumers and will be able to better market yourselves to them.

Content can help increase your brand awareness

brand awareness 

Content marketing is the most effective way to build brand awareness at a very low cost. Great content can help to drive more traffic to your website or social media to increase your brand awareness. By creating interesting and engaging content regularly you can help ensure your business remains top of mind when people are looking for something in your field.

Optimised content can help with your SEO

Optimised content is incredibly important for search engine optimisation. SEO helps to improve your business’s visibility online. If you want your website to rank organically in search engine results pages, you need to produce quality, SEO optimised content. Content creation is the most effective SEO technique. Research has found that businesses who post consistent blog content have, on average, around 434% more pages indexed by search engines than those that don’t publish any at all.

Creating optimised content using relevant keywords and phrases can help you to attract new leads to your website, for free. Nowadays, search engines are the go-to resource for anyone looking for anything from the answer to a question to a new product or business who can help with their problem. Just think how often you hear, or say, the term ‘just Google it’ when someone asks a question or needs to find something? By using SEO optimised content on your website, you can help customers to easily find you when they are searching for things relevant to your business.

optimise seo

The more content on your site the longer people will be likely to stick around. This can also positively impact your search engine optimisation, as Google sees time spent on a site as an indicator that your site is providing valuable content. If you are creating great content that your target audience is engaging with, you’ll soon see yourself climbing up the rankings on search engine results pages, making yourself even more noticeable online. In 2020, content is still king, and search engines still love original and valuable content. Google’s algorithm changes every year, but one thing that never changes is that users are the most important thing to them, so they will continue to value quality content that users enjoy.

Content is a great way to showcase your knowledge in your field of expertise

The content you produce is also a way for you to demonstrate your expertise in your field whilst providing valuable knowledge to help educate your audience. The first step a potential customer takes when deciding whether to buy a product or use a service from you is to do research. People are much more likely to buy from or do business with someone who is experienced in that field and shows they have a lot of knowledge and skills in this area.

By providing educational and informative content to potential consumers you can showcase your knowledge and skills and establish yourself as an expert in that field. Good content helps to build trust with your potential customers, as they read your content, they start to develop an opinion of your business. If your content is useful, engaging, and educational they will develop a positive opinion of your brand. 

Educational content can be provided through blog posts, tutorials, product descriptions and service pages, your home page on your website, your ‘about’ page, even through videos, pictures, and social media posts. The more valuable content you provide, the easier it is to establish yourself as a leader in your field and build trust with your target audience.

Content is still king

Content is here to stay for a long time, and as competition increases between businesses, content is the thing that can set you apart from the crowd. Content creation should be at the core of your marketing strategy if you want to be successful and continue to grow. In fact, the content you produce could be the deciding factor between the success or failure of your business in 2020. 

If you’re not already, now is the time to start producing regular, quality content for your business.