Content Marketing is the Best Long-Term Marketing Strategy

By Darren Pace

Traditional marketing strategies like direct mail, and radio and television advertising, tend to be once-off techniques that are ideal for raising awareness over the short term. While such strategies remain highly effective under the right circumstances, they do little or nothing to advance a company’s long-term marketing goals. When it comes to marketing that continues to deliver benefits over the long haul, content marketing is where it’s at. By incorporating it into your overall marketing strategy, content marketing can help you achieve new heights of success–and its benefits build and compound over time.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Content marketing brings many exciting benefits to the table for businesses of all size. Some of the most notable advantages of engaging in this type of marketing include:

  • Improve Visibility and Traffic – The more content that you put out there, the more visible your website and brand become. Every piece of content that you produce increases the odds of achieving a competitive ranking on major search engines like Google. One piece of content can even be used to promote other pieces, helping you to spread your message farther and wider.
  • Enhance Overall Online Marketing Efforts – Effective content marketing serves as the foundation of an overarching online marketing strategy. The content that you produce can be used to boost many online marketing techniques. It can be shared on sites like Facebook and Twitter to invigorate social media marketing efforts, used to populate and enhance the effectiveness of websites and landing pages, used to enhance SEO by creating a lot more “real estate” for your brand online, and even used to develop and nurture relationships with key influencers and players.
  • Build and Increase Trust and Authority – When researching a company online, people are more likely to come away with a positive impression when they are able to find lots of relevant content. When online searches produce few results, a company looks shady. Well written, informative content helps you to establish authority on a given subject. In turn, your company comes to be viewed as a trusted source of information, and prospects are far likelier to become paying customers.
  • Boost Conversions – Through content you communicate directly with prospects. While effective content is never blatantly “salesy”, it guides the reader along by offering actionable suggestions for how they should proceed. Expecting prospects to take the next logical step without instruction is not realistic. There are simply too many options out there, so it’s crucial to steer them down the right path. Strong, strategically placed calls to action can be used within content to tell people what to do next. As a result, well-written content can directly boost conversions and, in turn, profits.
  • Establish an Additional Revenue Stream – Most companies that engage in content marketing give the content that they produce away for free. However, if you take the time to put serious effort into engaging pieces of content like white pages and ebooks, many people will be more than happy to pay for the privilege of owning it. In fact, you could even take several related articles or blogs, repurpose them into a single ebook and squeeze even more benefits out of them. The best part is that your investment is minimal, and the returns can be extraordinary.

Reasons to Start a Content Marketing Campaign Now

If you’re not already engaging in content marketing, the idea of adding it into the mix may seem pretty overwhelming. However, the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to enjoy the benefits highlighted above. A few additional reasons to get the ball rolling on your content marketing efforts today include:

  • Compounding Returns – Much like how interest compounds over time, the returns that are realized from exceptional content compound significantly over time too. As your content library grows, the benefits that are derived from it expand. Each additional piece of content builds upon the last, giving your brand more and more exposure. Over time, your content also attracts more and more readers, which means even more opportunities for social sharing and more.
  • Permanent Real Estate on the Internet – Once you’ve published a piece of content to your blog or website, it stays there until you decide to remove it. Think of it like staking out your own small pieces of cyberspace. Other than things like guest posts, which are published by others and are therefore under their control, the content that you produce will remain online to promote your business for a long time to come.
  • Evergreen Content Never Loses Value – Evergreen content, which remains fresh and relevant over time, should be a huge part of your overall content marketing strategy. The beautiful thing about this type of content is that it remains useful and valuable no matter how much time passes. Topical content is important too, but evergreen content truly forms the basis of the long-term benefits that you can enjoy from this approach.
  • We’ll Always Need Content – Nothing is worse than pouring tons of money and effort into a marketing technique only to see it become completely irrelevant shortly thereafter. Things like QR codes tend to be flashes in the pan, but content marketing is here to stay. The function and form that it takes may evolve over time, but people will always be hungry for more content. Therefore, you can invest in content marketing secure in the knowledge that all of your hard work will pay off again and again–and that content itself will always be in demand.

There’s no hope of realizing the long-term benefits of content marketing without actually engaging in it. The sooner you start, the sooner you will lay the groundwork for truly effective long-term marketing. Remember that early on, the content that you produce may not seem to be getting you anywhere. Be patient. Like most of the best things in life, persistence is needed. Once those benefits start rolling in however, they will continue to do so–and even intensify–far into the future.

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