The Importance Of Content Marketing [Infographic]

Content marketing has taken the world by storm to become one of the leading online marketing forms of advertising. Content marketing is considered one of the most important marketing strategies of 2015 by a large margin according to smart insights readers and is a hot topic among most marketing firms and companies.
As to why content marketing is so important is a mystery for many companies that not realize what causes it to be so effective. This infographic helps break down why it is important and what general things you can do to create an effective content marketing campaign.
 

 

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing can generally be described as the use of visual or textual content to generate new customers, leads, and brand loyalty. Often times a blog, a youtube channel, infographics, or white papers are the type of content marketing you will typically see from a brand or business.

Why is it important?

ROI:

Content marketing is proven to achieve more cost effective leads than paid search leads by 31%.
Content marketing was voted the most commercially important marketing strategy by smart insights.
Inbound marketers that focus on blog content creation and content distribution amplification achieve the highest ROI of all inbound marketers.
Inbound leads are proven to achieve an 8 times higher close rate than outbound leads

Where do I start?

Planning:

Not only is a content marketing planning a trend but it is also an absolute necessity. Without a plan you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Marketers with a plan that is documented are far more successful than ones without.
Only 44% of B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy.
60% of marketers with a documented plan consider themselves successful.
32% of marketers who verbally plan consider themselves successful.

What Should I Do For Content Marketing?

Blogging:
Blogging has the strongest impact on content marketing ROI.
“Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI” – State of inbound 2014 by Hubspot
White papers / eBooks:
White papers can help with SEO, referral traffic, generate email subscribers, and improve brand awareness.
Infographics:
½ of the brain is dedicated to physical function. 65% of the population are visual learners. Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic an average of 12% more than those who don’t.
Simply put, Infographics work.
Videos:
Video is cited as the best ROI producing content marketing tactic of 51% of professional marketers.
Pod Casts:
Pod casts have been growing steadily year over year as an effective form of content marketing since 2008 and show no signs of slowing down.
Articles:
Articles are one of the most commonly used form of content marketing for B2B marketers.
Social Media:
Everyday more and more business are joining all forms of social media to promote their brand and to attract customers. Social media is the fastest way to promote new content efforts and is an essential component of content marketing’s effectiveness.
There are approximately 2 billion social users making it the largest channel to spread your content marketing efforts!
Paid Content Distribution:
Paid content distribution is one of the many ways businesses are attempting to distribute their content to as many people as possible.
Marketing Automation Tools:
More and more companies are turning to marketing automation tools to distribute and improve their content marketing effectiveness.
The marketing automation has over 200 solutions available with growth above 50% for three years in a row in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Embrace Content:

Companies who embrace content marketing will achieve higher search engine rankings.
SEO, social media, and content marketing now go hand-in-hand; better, more frequent content will attract links, shares, and other brand-building signals that will boost rankings.