Content marketing is everywhere and it has been for years. When a term is thrown around so frequently it can be hard to zero in on the deeper meaning, and even harder to determine how to apply it to your own small business. But content marketing is a reality and a necessity for business owner.

In today’s competitive online market, start-to-finish customer satisfaction is key to attracting and retaining clients. To achieve this, you will need to build your credibility, capture and keep your audience’s attention even after a sale closes, and increase conversion rates from SEO traffic. Content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling.  And it’s become an effective strategy for building brand awareness. Use it to attract, nurture and retain customers. A solid content marketing strategy factors in all of those goals and makes your company stronger in all of the key areas of inbound marketing.

Build Credibility through Consistent Messaging

Content marketing encourages you to create all of your content with the same goals in mind. This will make your brand, message, and user experience consistent across all versions of your content, which will in turn build your credibility with your readers. The content goals you choose should be unique to your company, and may range from wanting to educate your audience to wanting to entertain them.

Setting this kind of specific goal for your content ties into the respectful, encouraging nature of inbound marketing by fostering interest in the service or specific information your company offers, rather than just a brand name. Memorable, consistent, high-quality content that always delivers on its primary goal is more memorable to your audience than just a company name or slogan. Prioritizing customer needs and consistently meeting them with relevant information also promotes customer loyalty, because modern consumers appreciate brand authenticity.

Stimulate Consumer Interest with Credible Content

Showing your company’s expertise, rather than telling, subtly emphasizes the advantage of choosing inbound marketing over outbound. Outbound marketing can come across as pushy, whereas inbound marketing soft sells through great content marketing. You can adapt the tone of your content according to what you want your audience to take from it. If you present your content well and in the appropriate mediafor your target audience, you will reach and satisfy your ideal consumers while subtly encouraging them to consider making a purchase.

In order to retain that interest, and to create new leads, your content needs to evolve and regularly offer new information.Your marketing strategy can take this into account with various ideas like scheduling guest posts from other industry experts. Effective use of SEO is an important part of your marketing strategy, but it won’t automatically translate into leads. If the content you’re providing isn’t of a high enough standard to keep the readers engaged, SEO isn’t going to help you make those conversions.

Content marketing attracts qualified leads by providing information your audience will find useful and delivering it in a relevant, concise way. Ensuring a high standard of content that is highly relevant to the keywords will build credibility and increase traffic and conversion over time. Research from Nielsen even links strong content marketing with increased positive brand recall, which is far more likely to result in lead conversion than marketing tactics with less substance or more aggressive approaches that receive negative reactions from potential clients.

Content marketing is a long-term strategy because it identifies and provides for your audience’s ongoing need for new, equally useful content. If converted to sales, clients who began as qualified leads will be likely to continue the business relationship you’ve established because what you can offer doesn’t end after a sale. Because of your effective, long-term content marketing strategy, your content is always evolving and you always have something new and useful to offer. This will give your clients new information to engage with and share with other potential leads in their social networks.