One of today’s most recognized methods for growing brand awareness and attracting new customers is content marketing. But what exactly is content marketing? At The Jakes Group, we define it as: a marketing strategy focused on creating, publishing and distributing valuable and relevant content with the purpose of building brand authority and providing prospects information to assist in making informed purchase decisions.
As consumers have accepted the availability of online information and adopted mechanisms to filter and use that information over the past decade, it’s clear that authentic, useful content has become internet “gold” — as have the brands who provide that information. In short, content marketing provides an extremely rewarding means to demonstrate knowledge and expertise and build trust with potential influencers and prospective customers.
A great number of stats support the idea that content marketing can be a very successful tool when marketing to consumers. We’ve included just a few here that we find compelling:
- Two-thirds of consumers (67%) said content marketing is “useful and valuable,” especially when it’s high quality and thoughtful. (Marketing Tech News)
- Websites that have a blog attract 55% more traffic. (Quick Sprout)
- Websites with blog content have 434% more search engine-indexed pages than those that don’t publish. (TechClient)
- 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog. (Content Marketing Institute)
- 87% of marketers say video marketing has helped them increase website traffic. (Wyzowl)
- Four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read a post about it. (SearchEngineJournal)
- 47% of consumers trust video ads more than static ads when making a purchase decision. (MarketingSherpa)
We believe content marketing is a great strategy for clients to include in their marketing mix. Including this strategy not only allows increase awareness of the brand, but also fuels brand authority and expertise.
According to Deloitte Consumer Review, when today’s consumers are considering a purchase, they prefer to “pull” information, rather than have businesses “push” it to them. Developing content that focuses on informing and educating consumers rather than just selling to them assists them in moving freely through the shopping journey, while creating trust and increasing loyalty.
Our current support services for content marketing vary by client. They include helping brands with comprehensive strategy and program development and deployment, topic and posting strategies, video production, “ghost writing” blogs, and content channel management. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your content marketing needs and how we can support your efforts in this area. Let’s have a conversation today.