Top-8 Benefits of Content Marketing for Local Businesses
Content Marketing has been around for some time and most publishers are familiar with the concept- in fact, many local publishers derive a significant portion of their revenue from custom publishing i.e. producing publications for local organizations or businesses. The print-variety of content marketing is a $20B+ industry in the US – that’s right, 20 billion!
With the growth of the web content marketing has exploded enabling every business to become a content producer, most often via a blog. Unfortunately, too few businesses embrace content marketing and thus fail to reap much in the way of benefits though, the sheer fact that blogging improves search engine rankings should be enough to get their attention.
Here are the top-8 benefits of content marketing (statistics below are provided by the Custom Content Council unless otherwise noted).
- 77% of people understand that an organization’s goal for custom content is to sell them something, but are OK with it as long as it provides value
- 61% of people are more likely to buy from a company that delivers custom content
- Social media is a form of entertainment, thus interesting content is a top-3 reason why people follow an organization on social media
- Facebook users are more likely to recommend a brand they follow
- Content marketing drives web traffic
- Content marketing drives leads
- Content marketing lets you tell your story and avoid being commoditized i.e. charge a premium
- Google is focused on delivering valuable content in a personalized way – content improves search results!
In a later blog post and video, we’ll share our recommended content strategy for local businesses that are looking to create custom content that people will actually read quickly and easily.
However, content strategy aside, local businesses are starting to embrace “off-site” content marketing and more are getting into it every day… off-site marketing is loosely defined and creating content that appears on someone else’s website, magazine or other types of publication.
It’s important that the content first and foremost be informative, entertaining and relevant to readers and just so happen to be written by or about a business with a commercial interest in the subject.
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