Does content marketing work?

Content marketing is very different than advertising. But does content marketing work? Experts say yes.

“There is no doubt about it – content marketing works. It works to attract an audience, to build trust and to make sales,” says marketer Charlie Page.

Other marketers are quick to agree.

“In content marketing no advertisements may be necessary to attract and engage prospects — your content itself should do a lot of the ‘heavy lifting,’ says Scott Frangos on the website Webdirexion. “The relevance of your content ‘pulls’ people to it, instead of being “pushed” there by ads.”

Greg Satell is a US based business consultant who writes on Forbes.com that delivery and style matter.

“The best way to create a superior experience is to stop thinking about promoting and start thinking in terms of delivering a meaningful value exchange,” says Satell. “Every brand has something to offer the world and if you present what you have to offer in a compelling way, consumers won’t mind that you’re promoting your brand at the same tim.,”

Experts say it’s about driving the content as much as it is generating the content.

“It’s vital the content gets to the people,” says Tyler Ragghianti, a project manager at PR NewsChannel, the press release newswire and content syndicator. “The content must be written with search engine optimization in mind to target audiences otherwise it could get lost in the shuffle.”

Ragghianti says companies around the world rely on PR NewsChannel’s vast syndication network to circulate their content. The marketing content, he says, appears in the major search engines and on more than 100 syndicator websites and is easily shared on social media.

This article you are reading now is an example of content marketing distributed via PR NewsChannel.

“There is a big misconception that content marketing doesn’t drive sales. But if it didn’t work well, none of my companies would exist,” says Neil Patel, on the website Quicksprout.com.

According to “B2C Content Marketing 2015: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America,” a joint study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs which surveyed more than 5,000 not for profit and for profit marketers, content marketing is growing more popular.

Among the takeaways of the content marketing study:

 45% of B2C marketers have a dedicated content marketing group in their organization.

 69% are creating more content now than they did one year ago.

 The use of blogs dropped from 72% last year to 67% this year; the biggest increase in tactic usage has been for branded content tools (from 37% to 47%).

 B2C marketers are using, on average, 7 social media platforms this year, compared with 6 last year.

 71% of B2C marketers use print or other offline promotion, making it the paid method they use most frequently to promote/distribute content, yet only 46% of them say it’s effective; the method they find most effective is search engine marketing (57%).

More B2C marketers are challenged with finding trained content marketing professionals this year (32%)
than they were last year (10%).

“Will content marketing replace traditional advertising? No,” adds content marketing expert Frangos. “But I think it will turn priorities for both on their head, with content marketing taking a lead position and traditional advertising in a collateral role.

“Using content marketing, your opportunity is to engage more prospects directly with your own business story… Advertising may back this effort up via smart placement of Pay Per Click ads, and display ads in the right places at the right time.”