Content Marketing Made Simple

Tight Marketing Budget? Why Spending On Content Is A Smart Move

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With limited funds to spend on marketing, many businesses are unsure as to how they should best use their budgets. Research proves that spending on content is a smart move, for a number of reasons.

First off, you won’t be alone! A survey conducted by Forrester Research shows that U.S. advertisers will spend $77 billion on interactive, digital content by 2016. With those kind of numbers, it’s clear that businesses are all trying to hop on the content bandwagon. If you don’t follow suit, you’ll be left behind. This isn’t a dying trend, people; it’s up and coming, and it appears we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far.

Strapped for Cash

But what happens to small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the kind of marketing budget needed to compete on this level? That’s when content becomes even more critical! It’s not only much, much cheaper than traditional marketing methods, it’s also cost-effective. Most importantly, it reaches the consumer. Whether your company is in the B2B or B2C space, your best bet for reaching your customers is online. And to play online, you must have content, otherwise don’t waste your time and money.

Building Trust

Spending on content is a great way to build trust and credibility in your company and products, with statistics showing that:

• 61% of users believed companies that provided online content such as advice, blogs, reviews and other information free of charge were more trustworthy than those that didn’t. This made them more likely to buy from those companies, which immediately qualified them as prospective customers.
• 78% of users do online research before buying, and are more likely to spend their money if they can read objective, non-marketing information such as a blog post.
• 90% of consumers surveyed stated that they found content to be very useful

With this kind of evidence, it makes sense that if you have limited funds to spend on marketing, the one place you should be spending them is on content.

Capturing Search Traffic

In these days of search engine domination, 80% of new website traffic typically comes via Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other major aggregators. And unless the user is actually searching on your company name, you’re unlikely to come up in organic search without publishing fresh content on a regular basis.

This is the primary reason why spending on content is a smart move:  the search engines index and rank those sites that they consider to be most “deserving” of attention, based on the originality, quality and keyword optimization of their content. It’s not enough to publish a website and hope it brings you business. In order to be found, your site needs constant updates to satisfy the ravenous search engines.

Without content, you make it really difficult for customers to find you, which could push them in the direction of your competitors.

Quality Counts

If you’re using content to market your business and products, make sure it’s quality content. Pinching the pennies when it comes to copywriting services is likely to turn around and bite you where it hurts. No matter how tight your marketing budget is, use the very best content production services you can afford:

• Avoid the “penny a word” copywriters from non-English speaking countries hoping to earn a buck or two in hard currency.
• Skip the videos that are filmed and produced on a mobile phone, and photos taken with a “happy snappy,” point-and-shoot camera. 

Spend your marketing money wisely by buying quality content, and it’ll pay off in the long term.

Variety Offers Options

If you’re spending money on content, make sure it’s the right type of content. Jakob Nielsen, considered the world expert in Web usability, found that 79% of online readers “skim-read” text, and that users preferred to read copy that was broken up with subheads and bullet points.

And what about video? With YouTube officially now ranked the number 2 search engine on the Web, there’s a very strong argument for including video as a content options. Pinterest and Instagram have opened the door for the curation of visual content, and podcasts are popular with smart phone users.

With 81% of companies confirming that the use of content has given them a competitive edge, spending money on quality content simply has to be one of the smartest business moves you can make.