13 Reasons Why Content is Important for Digital Marketing & Business Development?

As we know Digital Marketing consists of various aspects like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Email Marketing, Pay Per Click, Website, Google Adwords, Content marketing, etc. These aspects play an important role in its own way in Digital Marketing.
Here I am going to present the importance of content marketing in digital marketing as it is the most popular buzzword in marketing today. 

Let me start with the definition of content – it can be described as any kind of textual, graphic, video, or interactive element on a website that gives value to a website.  According to me a website without content is just like an empty book with a label…. which makes no sense. Thus, it is important to fill your site with information about your business, industry, employees, and more which will in return give you a chance to earn or engage a new customer. It helps build trust and connect with your target audience and the base upon which you promote your business online. In short, content is the most important part of your site when you want to start digital marketing. 

Now here is what content marketing includes which makes it so important for digital marketing. 

  • Content educates your audience. 

A customer decides whether a product or service is right for them based upon the knowledge he has about it. Before he/ she makes a choice, they need to fully understand the options available to them.

This means you need to have content on your website that can give a clear view to your audience about the product or services that you offer, which helps educate the audience on what you can provide. Your content should be able to answer your audience’s questions that many of your potential customers have. An informed client is that much closer to becoming a paying customer. Content typically takes the form of blog posts, product pages, your home page, and your company’s ‘about’ pages. It may also include tutorials, reviews, and other content. 

To create a good educational content focus on the questions or concerns your customers may have. Think in the perspective of a customer i.e. consider what problems they might be trying to solve and how your products or services relieve those issues. Good content an be considered as the focus on the solutions you provide, and how you can make their lives easier which will ultimately lead to the engagement of customers to the website. 

  • Content ranks in google.

As Google is the worlds’ biggest search engine you can bet that someone in your area is using Google to research your company. To reach those potential customers you need to create content and post it to your website. 

How to go about this? Get started with the keywords. Look for the keywords your target audience is searching for. Once you have a set of keywords; you can create content around those keywords and optimize it for search engines. Update the content to your website. Once done submit your new pages to Google individually which will help Google bot find them more quickly and easily to index your pages and show them in search results. Now, you need to wait. 

One can constantly work on new content to rank in Google every day. The more you post, the more you get a chance to attract visitors to your site – and every one of them is a new potential customer. But remember, this is just the beginning. 

  • Content fuels SEO

Optimization of the content according to search engines helps you to appear in relevant searches that can attract new leads to your website. In order to fuel your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, you need to have unique and strong content. SEO focuses on keyword placement, backlinks, and website visitors, and your content enables you to create web pages that fuel each of these components.  No content means no keywords, no page for your visitors to read, and no information for other websites to link to. It’s not that difficult to reach the top of the search engine results lists if you are creating awesome pieces of content.

It is said that content creation and SEO should always go hand in hand. Be into building content that provides clear value to your audience. A successful SEO strategy can be defined if your target audience is engaging heavily with the content you created. 

  • Content drives social media strategies

One of the best ways to connect with your target audience is Social Media. It is the direct way you can build a genuine relationship with your customer which gives you a direct pathway to have conversations, get feedback, and push new leads to your website. This is done with the help of strong content. 

Your social media strategy should leverage content that provides a high amount of value to your target audience. If you need to see the participation of your customer than, your content should be informative one rather than just posting links to your content.

Facebook and Twitter are the two big catches for social media. But you can also make use of LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat. Now, see how these social media channels can help promote your business. 

Facebook – You can give a link to connect that you post with a brief summary of what it’s about. This is enough to earn interaction and new followers to spread the word about your business.

Twitter – This works like Facebook. Anyone can find your post with a link if they follow you or look up the keywords you’ve used in your tweet.

LinkedIn – It enables you to post the entire blogs, if you’d like. Link to your content will earn you hundreds of new connections, many of whom will be decision-makers at key businesses in your area. 

Pinterest – Specialised for visual kind of marketing. 

Tumblr – Tumblr is a great place to promote your business, to connect with hyper-specific niches that may even be their own subcultures online.

Instagram – It only uses images and videos but can bring hundreds or thousands of users to your website and gives you tons of filters to use to make your photos look their best. 

Snapchat – Snapchat is based on showing photos or videos for only a few seconds at a time to engage users who like quick, bite-sized content. 

So, this is how content earns traffic on social media and is the next big advantage. 

  • Content earns conversions 

Conversion is nothing but the action every time one of your visitors takes towards becoming a customer which helps your business grow. Getting your content posted is the first part but once it’s posted, how do you use it to get as many new customers as possible?

Once you are done with the posting of the content what you need to do is optimise your content pages for conversions. Improve your site with one element at a time certainly known as A/B testing. 

Here are some of the stats that speak the importance of content marketing when it comes to improving website conversions:

  • Content marketing provides conversion rates about 6 times higher than other digital marketing aspects. 
  • 61% of online consumers decided to make a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog or reviews. 
  • According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality. 
  • According to 72% of businesses surveyed, video content helps provide a great ROI and significantly increase conversions, 
  • Inbound marketers can double the average site conversion rate (from 6 to 12%), in part due to their content marketing efforts. 

Content builds backlinks

An important part of bringing new traffic to your site is links or backlinks. A backlink is an incoming link from another website referred to a particular website. A backlink of another article to your website can encourage the customer to click through and learn more about you. Backlinks are present only where your content contains ideas, opinions, or information that is worth sharing. 

Backlinks contribute to your SEO strategy. They show search engines that you create content worth recommending. Number of backlinks = the more authority a search engine will assume your page holds. To hold a backlink, you need to make sure that your content is lengthy and unique. Create the magic in your content that everyone can engage for. Make each piece of content worth reading. Your information should stand out to be a recommendable one. 

  • Content helps support nearly every digital marketing strategy

To its core consistent, quality content helps support every other part of your digital marketing strategy. Most businesses make use of one or more digital marketing tools like email marketing, social media, PPC ads, for which there are many different tactics you can apply to attract and engage your ideal audience. 

Now, here is what you need to know. These strategies have something in common. Guess what??? 

It’s the Content.

Your business needs to gear up with engaging, high-quality content as part of any tactic that you employ in your digital marketing campaigns. 

For example, let’s say you are planning to go ahead with the email marketing strategy of digital marketing for lead nurturing. The email campaign you are planning for needs to have content that is engaging and encourages readers to take the next step. You can use pieces of content from a blog or whitepaper that gives them the information they need to move them through the funnel. 

This is how content marketing integrates into all other areas of your digital marketing strategy and is the beating heart of it having the potential to deliver success. 

With all the benefits described above, it can be concluded that content is the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. Content marketing helps you boost visibility and help you build stronger relationships with your leads and customers.  You can be on your own way to create valuable content that helps boost conversions and improve customer retention.

It’s time to get started with content marketing and realise on your own the importance it has for digital marketing.