The Value of Content Marketing Services in 2019 and Beyond

Content can be anything you use online to talk about your business—it is each page on your website, every update on your blog, any post on social media, and any graphic you may share.

In a world flooded with content, you may wonder how to make yours consistently accessible, relevant, and valuable to your audience.

The solution? Content marketing.

Through content marketing services, your business can strategically craft and disseminate what your customers need to know about the products and services that interest them. On top of that, a professional marketing strategy can help you achieve the following goals, which are more important than ever in 2019.

Bolstering online presence

A few years ago, it may have been enough to launch a website and social media accounts, then maintain these with the occasional update. Not anymore.

As Forbes magazine puts it, “content marketing is becoming marketing.” Awareness and impressions of your business now rely heavily on the content you share among target and current customers, as well as potential employees, partners, and other stakeholders. Your online presence should be front and center of your branding—a full-time responsibility for professional marketers, not a supplementary project for you.

Advancing customer relationships

Gone, too, are the days when it sufficed to see a customer make a purchase and hope they return based on that. Customer admiration and loyalty now also depend on quality content: pages on your website that support their concerns before and after a sale, social media posts that provide information relevant to their needs, and blogs that advise them with ideas or tips about your offerings.

This is part of what Forbes describes as a new approach to marketing that “prioritizes continuous engagement over transactional relationships,” necessitating your transition “from vendor to partner.” You don’t want to treat customers just as payers; you want to understand them as people with specific buying interests and needs, which in turn reflects how they can be partners in promoting your business.

Attracting organic traffic

Quality content effectively builds your website and social media into repositories of posts people can like, share, and discuss. As people share links to these posts, they can jumpstart a ripple effect that creates more visits to your pages.

As a result, this organic increase in visibility—as opposed to paid traffic—prompts search engines to take note of your content. It lets them know that your pages are credible, informative, and worthy of being placed more prominently online.

Reaping long-term benefits at reasonable cost

Businesses that employ content marketing services for the long term stand to benefit more from the strategy. According to Inc.com, it usually takes three to four months for results to begin trickling in. But the long game pays off: studies show that continued content marketing can generate 3.3 times more leads than paid search.

70% of marketers in North America also consider their campaigns more successful this past year than the one before. More notably, 50% expect their budgets to increase in 2019, suggesting that the same investment is one you can soundly undertake.

That said, the resources you devote and the benefits you reap depend on the scale of your goals. A competent content marketing agency can create content for you and craft it to best support your vision.