What is Content Marketing (and Do I Really Need It)?

According to a study by GE Capital Retail Bank, when considering a purchase more than 80% of consumers use online research as the first step in the buying process. And if the purchase is a big one, they’ll spend an average of 79 days in the research phase gathering information and comparing options before making a decision. 79 days!

The goal of a good content marketing strategy is to make sure that your company is the one providing the information your customers are looking for.

What is Content Marketing?

What exactly is content marketing though, and why do businesses need it?

The Content Marketing Institute defines it as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action” 

In other words, it’s a ways to position yourself as the authoritative, expert voice in your field by producing high-value content that educates and engages your customers, answers their questions, and solves their problems. Over time, this will build consumer trust, inspire brand loyalty, and ultimately lead to increased revenue.

Trust is the key word here. While several factors influence purchasing decisions, studies prove that trust is at the top of the list of priorities for buyers when deciding who to do business with. And with consumer trust at its lowest point since 2016, companies that hope to survive into the future are going to have to put significant effort towards reversing this trend.

Building Trust with Content

The obsessive focus on SEO in recent years has led to the production of massive amounts of low-value, keyword-stuffed content written for search engine bots rather than actual humans. As a result, we have an abundance of unoriginal, rehashed content floating around alongside increasing amounts of intentionally misleading, incomplete, or totally inaccurate information.

We’re drowning in a swamp of information that gets deeper by the minute, and people are tired of having to sift through it all to find something of real value.

Even Google is fed up. In 2022, in an effort to increase the quality of its search results, Google changed its algorithm to favor content that focuses on EEAT — expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. Sound familiar?

There’s a huge opportunity here for those willing to put in the work to get below surface level and produce the kind of high-value material that clearly stands out against the garbage and gains their audience’s trust. The question now is, with the digital world changing so rapidly, is content marketing going to continue to be effective, or will something else come along to take its place?.

Content Marketing is Changing (But Not Really)

Content marketing has been around for centuries. One of the earliest known examples of a successful content marketing campaign dates back to 1732 with the publication of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac.

The Almanac promoted Franklin’s printing business by offering an entertaining and useful collection of information including weather forecasts, poetry, recipes and advice geared towards common people who wouldn’t normally spend money on books. It became a bestseller in the American colonies, with up to 10,000 copies printed each year.

Another early example is Johnson & Johnson’s Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment, a guide published in 1888 for performing sterile surgery procedures that also included a catalog of their supporting products. In just a few months it had been sent out to 85,000 pharmacists, doctors and surgeons across the U.S. A few years later, it had been translated into 3 languages with 4.5 million copies distributed worldwide.

These campaigns worked because they focused on providing information that a specific audience found valuable. In doing so, both Franklin and Johnson & Johnson were able to successfully position themselves as a trustworthy voice in their field.

This aspect of content marketing hasn’t changed much, and remains just as effective today as it was then. What is changing though, and at an incomprehensible rate, is the digital landscape where content lives. For content marketing to maintain its effectiveness, businesses will have to adapt their approach. With Google’s current shift towards no-click searches, the increasing push for more video-based content, and the rapid evolution of AI tools, companies will have to continuously evaluate and update their strategies while paying close attention to what their customers actually need and want.

Yes, this is a lot of work. Is it worth it?

Absolutely.

Why it Still Works

Content Marketing is effective across time and cultures because it’s built on principles rooted in fundamental and unchanging aspects of human psychology and behavior.

As Purna Virji points out in her book High Impact Content Marketing, there are certain “key levers” that have always motivated human behavior. “Think levers such as curiosity, fear, or the need for connection–much of what drives us hasn’t changed since the time cave people roamed the Earth” (Virji 2023).

Good content creators speak to these aspects of human nature by acknowledging people’s doubts, answering their questions, addressing and solving their problems, and doing so in a way that shows you understand and care about their needs. Do this with intention and authenticity and you’ll gain a loyal customer base that will be more than happy to spread the word about the value your company offers.

Customers are People First

For anyone running a business, sales are typically the end goal. They have to be if you want to stay in business. But truly successful companies also have a deeper goal of genuinely connecting with the people they seek to serve with their products or services, and it’s this goal that should be a driving factor in your content marketing plan.

Beyond just bringing in more customers, content marketing serves as a way to invite people into a more intimate relationship than traditional advertising is capable of. Knowing your audience and their most common pain points, an essential part of any content marketing strategy, allows you to offer something of high value and establishes an immediate connection with your audience. They will then be much more likely to become customers, because they will most likely choose to do business with the company that makes them feel seen and heard.

This is what content marketing expert Purna Virji means when she says “People tend to choose brands that choose them.” So when you look at the content you’re putting out, ask yourself: Are you choosing your customers? And if you were them, would you choose you?