What is a content strategy and why you need one now

Your customers will hang out on your site longer. When you have strong content on your website, there are plenty of reasons that the people who come to it will want to stay around. Entertaining, informative, and valuable content will keep customers coming back — and make them more likely to buy from you.

You’ll rank higher in search results. Anyone who has read this blog more than once knows that I am a firm believer in the power of SEO. This comes into play when you have quality, optimized content on your website because it leads to better search result rankings. The closer you are to the coveted 1st page of Google results, the more likely you are to get organic traffic. It’s simple and hard all at once. 

Your domain authority will increase (and so will your conversions). Improving your domain authority is another great way to improve your search engine results and thus your organic leads. Improving this score tells search engines that your website is one that is authoritative and trustworthy. It happens when you have quality, consistent, optimized content on your site. The more people that see your website in search results, the more they go to your website and convert.

You can cross-market and attract more social attention. Well over 80% of businesses that have a content strategy include social media posting. It is one of the best ways to communicate directly with your audience, especially if you are consistent and attract high engagement numbers. Engagement comes when you consistently create entertaining and informative content on platforms where your audience hangs out.

Your brand reputation will improve. It’s a lot like high school. Reputation matters. Now, in business, we call it thought leadership. As teens, we called it popularity. In either case, people are attracted to those who they feel are experts in an area/niche that they find interesting. If your business develops a reputation for quality information and expertise, people will be attracted to it and buy from it.

You’ll create lasting relationships with customers. You don’t want just customers, you want loyal raving fans. One of the points of content marketing is to create lasting relationships with people that will eventually convert from prospects to customers and buyers. This happens when you offer value to those who come to your content, without selling. Relationship marketing is a long-term game, but results in loyal customers and repeat buyers. 

You’ll decrease overall marketing costs. Let’s face it, marketing can be expensive and even frustrating for some businesses. Costs for paid advertising is just one of the many areas where money can be spent. With content marketing, however, you can save money as you don’t need to spend to create the benefits of this approach (this of course is unless you need a content marketing agency to write the content for you – which is advised for most businesses), at least not on ads. Consistently posting high-quality content drives people to your website and business, without paying for costly ads.

You will generate more and better leads. One of the reasons that companies engage in marketing is to attract leads. The best at this are businesses that understand that it isn’t the volume of leads that matters as much as the quality of the leads generated. You want to talk to your ideal customer – the person who can’t wait to learn what you offer and to buy it. Using content, you can direct your message to the people that need to hear it most.

You’ll gain trust and authority in your niche. To be seen as an authority and a thought leader in your niche, you need to share valuable information consistently. This information has to establish not only that you understand the what of your work, but also the why and how of what it can do for your customer. Share this with them, and they will return again and again to buy from you.

You’ll create long-term sustainability for your business. If you are like most business owners, the truth is that you are in business to build something that you care about and that you want that to last. To make that happen you’ll need customers that buy from you more than once. Content helps this effort by leading people to your website and business, giving them the information about you they need to buy from you, establishing you as a thought leader, and helping customers see the story of your brand.