Content Marketing: What It Is and Why You Need It!

Content marketing might be a term you’ve heard tossed about lately, but still might not know precisely what it means for your small business. Simply put, content marketing is the practice of creating, collecting, and making available fresh content for one's readers. This may appear in many forms, including blog posts, articles, whitepapers, short reports, videos, podcasts, ebooks, social media and more. We live in an age that treasures information, and the more you can provide your readers with the more authority you will have in their eyes, which can often bring about better rankings, more traffic, links, and sales.

Content marketing is getting ever more popular!

According to BusinessBolts.com, 74 percent of companies plan to do more content marketing in 2013. Just 4 percent are choosing not to. These businesses have found several of content marketing’s distinct advantages, a few of which are cost-effectiveness, nearly instant results, and near full control over the process. An article or blog post can be written, for example, and next posted not only on your own site, but additionally mentioned in your social networks, repurposed into a video or audio (or both!) and otherwise disseminated  across the internet. This can easily multiply your reach significantly, and your entire content marketing campaign can bear fruit very quickly.

A real-world illustration of how content marketing can rock your sales

The New York Times recently profiled a Northern Virginia company, River Pools and Spas, that had watched as their sales tanked due to the housing recession of 2008. Orders shrank from six per month ($50,000 a pop) to less than two. What had been a $250,000 yearly spend on radio, TV and pay per click advertising, was now impossible. Instead, owner Marcus Sheridan set out on an ambitious content marketing campaign consisting of blog posts and videos, and within a short time had not only recovered but surpassed pre-recession levels. In fact, Sheridan attributes nearly $2 million in sales to a SINGLE article he wrote on how much a fiberglass pool should cost!

Content marketing can and should be a major piece of your online marketing strategy for 2013. The good news is that it’s all within your control! However, we all know only too well that content marketing takes time and effort.  That is why we have added content marketing to our portfolio of services.  To request a free content marketing strategy session, give us a call at 707.853-0702 or request your session from our website.

Much Success!