Are You Making Content Marketing a Priority in 2015?

With Thanksgiving behind us and the holidays upon us, many marketers have begun setting their sights on the opportunities of a New Year. If you haven’t put a 2015 marketing strategy in place already, then you still have time. One area in which your business might seriously consider making a top priority for 2015 is content marketing. If the past few years are any indication, then content marketing will take a top spot for businesses in 2015 as well.

Content marketing involves the process of creating and/or curating, then distributing content to a targeted and specific audience. Content marketing is usually combined with other marketing techniques (such as social media marketing) as part of an overall marketing plan for the purpose of lead generation and client acquisition.

Stats such as the following reveal the growing influence and positive effects of content marketing:

• 73% of B2B marketers are producing more content than they did a year ago. (CMI, 2014)
• The average organization spends 30% of their marketing budget on content. (CMI, 2014)
• The most effective B2B marketers spend 39% of their marketing budgets on content. (CMI, 2014)
• 50% of consumer time online is spent engaging with custom content. (HubSpot, 2013)
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. (Demand Metric)
• Brand awareness is a content marketing goal for 82% of organizations. (CMI, 2014)

Source: OneSpot

As you can see from these stats, the percentage of businesses adopting and experiencing success from their content marketing strategies has increased dramatically over the past couple of years. Are you convinced that content marketing will be big again in 2015 yet?

Making content marketing a priority in 2015 will help your business achieve positive results in the following ways:

Brand Awareness

A sound content marketing strategy (which includes the creation and curating of quality content) helps businesses gain exposure by allowing them the opportunity to introduce themselves and their solutions. Having a blog on your website is one of the best ways for raising brand awareness, as long as you keep Google’s ever-changing algorithms in mind when publishing blog posts.

Lead Generation

An important thing business owners and/or marketers should remember about lead generation is that building strong relationships with potential clients is a key factor of eventual client acquisition. Content marketing definitely helps businesses with both attracting potential clients and with relationship-building. The more your audience perceives your content as valuable and informative, the better they feel about connecting and engaging with your business. As well, your business should focus on the quality of the content you distribute, rather than just quantity, for more positive results.

Engagement

Business owners who focus on their audiences’ interests often experience positive results from their content marketing efforts. In an article for i-SCOOP, J-P De Clerck describes engaging, client-centric content marketing as the following:

An ‘engaging’ content (marketing) strategy is not about the content you think you need to have. It is about the content you need to have in order to engage the people you would love to engage by knowing what they want. It’s about enabling people to fulfil a task they have, whatever it may be at any given time.

Sales

Let’s be honest here – sales is a huge priority for every business owner. And by now, you probably understand how an effective marketing strategy contributes directly to successful sales. Digital marketing helps businesses reach and capture online leads, which makes having a content marketing strategy in place even more important. Keep in mind that your sales success through content marketing also depends on how you handle the factors I covered above (brand awareness, lead generation, and engagement).

Will content marketing be a priority in – or at least a part of – your 2015 marketing mix? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave your comments below.