Why Content Is King In Marketing

In January of 1996, Microsoft’s founder and then CEO wrote an essay titled “Content is King”, which became one of the most widely cited content marketing quotes.

In his essay, Gates argued that the most successful companies on the internet would be the ones that produce content. Like many of Gates’s predictions, he got this one right too.

Nearly 25 years later, since the “content is king” quote was made, it remains true.

Just think of the shift in media viewing and listening habits to companies like Spotify, Netflix, and others. The same is true for companies that employ well-executed content marketing strategies.

Why content is king in digital marketing?

The best way to connect with customers online is through highly relevant and engaging content that helps consumers to solve problems they have or helps them to learn something new. 

Content marketing, when done right, focuses on helping the consumer and is not a pushy marketing play. The payoff comes later through increased brand awareness and positioning your brand as a thought leader within your industry. And that is why content is king.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is all about developing and distributing quality, engaging, and relevant content to your target audience.

It is not about trying to write content that makes the customer want to buy from you straight away. Instead, it is producing content that is helpful and informative to them and helps to solve problems they have or answer questions that they have.

Content marketing can take many forms, including blog articles, eBooks, podcasts, white papers, videos, email newsletters, case studies, well researched articles, infographics, and more. 

An example of an effective content marketing strategy is Nanocraft CBD, which sells CBD oils. They produce a range of content that helps to answer consumers’ questions on the best oils to use for their specific needs, CBD based recipes, and more. 

They are not trying to get the customer to buy from them then and there; they are positioning themselves as a credible and reliable source of news and information with the CBD oil industry. 

If the customer does decide to make a purchase, then they are far more likely to choose your company over competitors. The same is true for when consumers recommend brands to friends and family. 

This whole process plays out because content is king!

Content is king, and here’s why

Content marketing has many benefits and solves the problems that traditional advertising has, including:

Increases brand awareness 

Good content that helps customers answer questions that they have will show up high in search results – this will help build awareness of your brand within your industry.

Become a thought leader

When you produce unique content that is informative and engaging, customers will come to see you as a thought leader within the industry, and you will improve the reputation of your brand. 

Your business will also be more likely to be contacted by journalists when they need to interview someone from an industry they are covering. This means free PR.

Lower marketing costs

Content marketing can mean a significant investment upfront, but the long-term results can compound and produce an increase in qualified leads and customers for years to come.

Rank higher in search engines

Every piece of high-quality content that you create and publish gets indexed by top search engines. 

This helps to increase how highly you rank for keywords and results in more website traffic. It also increases your domain authority as the content you produce increases how much your website is deemed to be higher in expertise, authority, relevance, and trust – for example, you will build up more inbound links.

Increased site traffic

The ultimate goal of content marketing is to increase your website traffic, specifically to gain highly qualified leads. 

Content is king because the only way to do this without having to pay for traffic is to have the best content.

Higher conversions

When you create highly engaging and relevant content, your audience will come to trust your brand much more, and you will be front of mind when they want to make a purchase in your market. Thus good quality content increases conversions.

Build customer loyalty

Good content helps your company to form close relationships with your customers by building up more trust with them. 

Content writing helps to share stories and information that adds a human touch to your brand, and this helps to increase customer loyalty over time.

Become a content destination

The more content that is on your website, the more it will become a destination for industry-related information. 

You can effectively turn your website into a media site, but instead of earning money through advertising, you earn a return by increasing your sales.

The bottom line

Content is king, and that means content marketing is the future of digital marketing.

Content should be an integral part of any smart digital marketing strategy. It helps to increase brand awareness, positions your brand as a thought leader within your industry, ranks you higher in search results, and this ultimately means higher sales.

It might have been 25 years since Bill Gates said content is king – but it is even more true today than it was then. 

Every brand, regardless of how big it is, can employ content marketing as part of its overall marketing plan. If you are not employing it, then you can be sure that your competitors are.