What is the Importance of Content?

Content marketing is one of the oldest and still most commonly used forms of advertising for businesses to connect with customers and get the word out about their products. Even as technology has changed, the importance of content in digital marketing has stayed just as relevant as it was when door-to-door salesmen shared content with customers one on one, or printed pamphlets explaining how to use new products.

In many ways, the importance of content creation in marketing has increased in our evermore connected world. The number of people who can see a piece of content online and the speed they get access to it keeps increasing, so the benefits of content creation aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

What Is the Role of Content to an Audience?

The times when most people will run across content in their daily lives is either when they have a specific problem and they go searching for a solution to it, or when someone else likes something so much they share it with others.

With that in mind, here are some of the main reasons why content is important to the people who see it:

• To solve a specific problem
• To educate about an area of interest
• To share with others

What Is the Importance of Content Creation for a Business?

The importance of content writing to a business is that it allows them to reach more customers and gives them the potential to sell more products. There are a variety of ways content does this for a business, but most fit into four broad categories:

• Building brand awareness - people know you exist
• Increasing visibility with SEO
• Saving money on marketing
• Showing authority in your field - people know you’re good
• Establishing audience trust
• Raising traction on social media
• Improving customer connections - people care you’re good
• Creating loyal brand fans
• Generating more and better leads
• Increasing leads and conversions - people buy your stuff
• Acting as fuel for other marketing techniques
• Providing a strong call to action for your brand

We at DemandJump know that marketers often have to prove their worth, so we make it easy to quantify these benefits through our platform. To illustrate how content can accomplish each of these things, we’ll go through some specific content creation examples.

Retail Business Example: Sew What

Let’s say you’re running a fabric store, called Sew What, selling everything people would need for sewing projects. Your content could take the form of a sewing pattern you write and share. How does this created content benefit your business? Let’s break it down along the four categories from above.

• Building brand awareness

• • The page of your website where you publish this pattern will show up on search engines for someone searching for sewing patterns.
  • The excitement over your pattern means it can be shared organically, saving money on paid advertising.

• Showing authority in your field

• • Someone who sews that uses your pattern will associate your brand name with your quality pattern.
  • A sewing pattern is imminently shareable on social media.

• Improving customer connections

• Sewers who love your pattern will start to seek you out and tell their sewing friends about you.
• A sewer who enjoyed your pattern is more likely to seek out your fabric store when they next need materials for a project.
• Increasing leads and conversions
• Your branding on the pattern can drive traffic to your website and other offerings.
• Links from this pattern can direct interested sewers straight to a place to buy your fabric.

SaaS Business Example: Second Life Books

It may seem obvious that businesses selling physical products can use content in this way, but does that same apply to tech and software as a service (SaaS) companies? Let’s look at another example, this time for a company that provides an online platform allowing libraries to easily list their out of circulation books for sale online, called Second Life Books.

Second Life Books could create a piece of content about ways libraries can increase community engagement. Although this content isn’t specifically related to the software they are trying to sell, it is going to provide value to their target audience - library directors and decision makers. So how does this content fit in with the benefits we’ve been talking about?

• Building brand awareness

• • Library higher-ups searching for ways to improve what they offer will see your brand.
  • Organic sharing of your tips for improving a library’s connection to the people they serve will reduce the need for paid ads.

• Showing authority in your field

• • Letting libraries know you understand and care about their mission shows you are a trusted source of information.
  • Tips and tricks are easy and popular to like and share on social media.

• Improving customer connections

• • Library leaders who get value from your article will look to you in the future.
  • Library directors talking to others in the field are more likely to recommend you.

• Increasing leads and conversions

• Your branding on the article and traffic to your site and social media make all your other marketing efforts go farther.
• Letting libraries know that they have another option for reselling unneeded books as one of their tools to generate revenue gives them a strong call to action.

DemandJump: We Know Content

Good quality content that truly provides things people are looking for is undeniably important. But knowing exactly what that content is and how to make it show up on searches so people can find it can be incredibly challenging.

That’s why we created DemandJump. We show you exactly what your target audience is searching for, and help you create a detailed plan for how to write the content that matters. We make it easy to see how you rank against your competitors when someone searches for something related to your content, and watch your rankings improve as you use our pillar strategy to achieve impressive results!