Why Content Marketing is essential for your brand

Content marketing is essential for your business. 

In particular, for businesses that operate in more complex fields, developing and creating content marketing material needs to become part of you go-to-market operations. There are several reasons why content marketing is essential for your business. Firstly, consumer behaviour is changing and customers are looking to find and review content to educate themselves. Secondly, the volume of content customers are exposed to is increasing and so to ensure you remain relevant and can achieve "cut through" you need to lift the volume of content you are producing.  Thirdly, producing great content builds trust and reinforces your brand and what you stand for.  

Customers are looking to find and review content to educate themselves 

47% of customers read between 3-5 pieces of content before connecting with a professional. People want to read good content that helps them solve their problems and answer their questions.

Why?
People want to become educated to better understand their needs and requirements.  Also, getting educated and accessing content is easier than ever for people to locate and source. Great content is just a Google away. So much so, that we're trained ourselves these days that if we have a question, then we turn to Google, ask or type our question and read and review what results are returned.
 

The volume of content that is available to customers is increasing daily and is easily accessible. 


Data is growing faster than ever before. 90% of the world's data was created in the past 2 years. The sheer volume of content that is available to customers is staggering. So it can feel overwhelming to start producing content marketing and committing to following that path to market. 

So what can you do?

As the volume of content customers are exposed to is increasing rapidly, to ensure you remain relevant and can achieve "cut through" you need to lift the volume of content you are producing. If you're not producing content consistently and at an increasing scale then your ability to reach and connect with customers is significantly reduced. 

Producing great content builds customer trust and your brand


Building trust in a digital environment between customers and professionals can be tricky. One key way to build trust is by providing educational content that is customer-centric. Customers won't connect with you nor will they seek to do business with you if they don't trust you. So a key way to differentiate yourself from others and position yourself as a trusted partner is through producing educational content. In addition, the type and nature of content you create reflects and creates your brand. So the type of content, the nature and style of it all reflect your brand. In addition, if you are not producing content, then that reflects your brand too!

So what can you do?
1: Start thinking about what content your customers would find useful. Take note of the questions customers ask you as a great source of inspiration.
2: Enable your experts to share their insights and give them the support they need to deliver content consistently. 
3: Allocate budget, time and expertise to enable your team to focus on delivering great content. 
4: Start - start small, but start! Start with the development of one piece of content and review the process as you go.