If you’re running a company, what do your content marketing efforts look like? If you read that question and asked, “What?” or answered, “I don’t know,” then good news! We have just identified one concrete area that will make your business better.

In 2020, content marketing has become a central pillar of successful digital marketing. If you’re not utilizing it, you’re hurting yourself. We cannot stress enough: this medium is here to stay, and it’s your friend.

So, how does good content marketing benefit you?

People Like It

Simply put: Internet users enjoy having a means to better understand brands. Per Lyfe Marketing, 68% of people spend time reading about brands that interest them, and 80% of people actively appreciate learning about a company through said company’s own content. When you publish regular, quality content, people pay attention.

Examples of Different Content Marketing (Image Source: G2)

Having a good approach to do so both emotionally connects people to your brand and educates them on why you’re right for them.

It’s A Free Salesperson

Search engines are — and this is the scientific term for it — super mega ginormous. Along with that, they are ingrained into our day-to-day lives. People use search engines many, many times a day.

While this might be (read: definitely is) an outdated simile, search engines are like malls in the 80s: if you have a brick-and-mortar location, adding a store inside a mall where there’s already high traffic increases your visibility and meets customers where they already are. Similarly, creating your own content that appears in a visible space increases the awareness (and deeper connections) people have to your brand, business, and/or products.

It’s A Foundation

A good digital presence relies on content marketing. Say you have a new website, are a new company, etc. — per Google, your significance is pretty low. This is because no one’s seeing, visiting, or interacting with you because they simply don’t know you exist.

Example of Curated Instagram Content

Unfortunately, a new site or any online entity just cannot do much in search engines; fortunately, content gives you more distribution and subsequent visibility through social channels. If you publish consistently, you’ll generate consistent, growing visibility that leads to more people aware and engaged with you outside of the content itself. And optimally coordinating your content and social media ensures this growth of visibility is at its most efficient.

It Can Have Unexpected Upticks For Search Trends

Search trends vary and events or new ideas can drastically affect these. These are pretty much impossible to predict but, for whatever reason in whatever industry, there’s always a chance of a sudden surge in relevant searches that leads people to your content. Cultural and social change doesn’t happen in a bubble; neither do you or your business.

The fact is, you can’t predict when, why, or how these changes happen — and, frankly, it’s futile to try. But you can know that the more quality, relevant content you produce, the more likely you are to receive increased visibility that reflects the times. Often, just tangentially-related events can lead people to you — be sure you are ready for those opportunities before they arise.

It Elevates Reputation And Relationship With The Customer

One could argue that this belongs under the “free salesperson” category above. We’ve given it its own category, though, since it has an additional angle.

The basis for this angle: your content needs to be genuinely really good. This means no gibberish click-bait, misleading titles, low-quality empty words… Pretty much, don’t take shortcuts.

Just like with any other media, people don’t want to read bad content. Publishing crap under your name might fool some people into clicking on it and give you a minor short-term boost in visibility, but it will also give you a bad reputation that hurts in the long run. On the other hand, publishing high quality content will not only result in higher short-term traffic, it will also build customer trust and make them more predisposed to favor you in the future.

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In the end, the way you go about content marketing is all up to you — there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy, but pretty much every company can benefit from it. Just like with all aspects of ensuring a brand’s success, creativity and a clear vision can lead you to a content strategy that benefits everything.