5 Real Reasons Why Good Content can Boost your Business

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Intro

You’ve dedicated a year or more to figuring out everything from business plans to project plans to corporate colors to finally unveiling your product. You’re feeling on top of the world, and you should, since launching a business isn’t an easy cup of tea.

Now you have nothing left to be done except to launch your brand to the world and your intended customers.

How do you let the world know that you’ve arrived?

Enters, Content.

Simply put, this is the most effective weapon in your marketing arsenal which can make or break your brand.

Let me back this up with the top five reasons why this bad boy is worthy of all the hype.

1. It Increases Your Brand Awareness

When you produce well-crafted content that attracts attention from target readers, they’ll share it with others who may be interested in your brand and its offering.

And when those people share it too, and then they share it even further? Well… It snowballs from there, gathering momentum and becoming an avalanche of clientele for you.

This is brand awareness.

The “Share a Coke” campaign of 2011 by the famous advertising company Ogilvy, is the best example for how you can create a pan-international movement. Coke conceived, developed, executed and shared content that delivered the message of Coca-Cola being a part of their personality.

It started off in Australia with the most popular 150 names being printed on the famous red colored label. It was aimed to create a personal bond with the customers and resonate with their identity.

It was a runaway success.

Making sales of more than 250 million in Australia which had a population of 23 million at the time, it went on to be adopted in 70 countries with their own twists to it. This can be summarized by a simple equation

Great Content = Traffic + Revenue

Sites like Facebook, Instagram and even your own company blog are the main content repositories where your potential customers are going to start feeling a resonance with your brand identity.

And this leads us to our next point, that is…

2. Content Generates Leads

From the earlier equation, it’s clear that all the interest and awareness of your start-up is going to bring in your first possible hot leads.

As any start-up worth its salt will attest to, some of these are going to transform into ‘early adopters’ of your offerings — your first customers who choose to trust and build on the above-mentioned synergy they felt through your brand awareness tactic.

Your content should offer something unique and valuable to the reader apart from your service/product — something that they can’t get anywhere else or something different and attractive from current market offerings.

This leads to eventual organic growth for your start-up and you’re on your way, taking your first baby steps into the global market.

Writing compelling copy engages the reader and convinces them to take action and can help you generate more leads. If the content is well-written and offers solutions to your target audience’s problems, then they become your next best form of marketing — word-of-mouth publicity.

A study by HubSpot showed that companies that write at least 150 blog posts per year receive 5x more leads than their non-blogging counterparts leading to a 434% increase in indexed pages and a 97% increase in indexed links.

3. It Builds Trust

It’s not enough to simply churn out a bunch of blog posts or articles, just for the sake of content. Your content must be well-written, accurate, and helpful if you want people to trust what you have to say.

When people connect with you, they want to know that you’re a credible source of information.

If your content is poorly written or inaccurate, potential customers will leave your site in search of a more trustworthy source. Good writing will help instill confidence in your brand and build trust with your audience.

Oneplus, the mobile company, launched globally in 2014 with the tagline “Flagship Killer”; which was a rebellion against the big-name flagship mobiles of the time.

Delivering a product certainly true and worthy of the title, the marketing hype and related campaigns wrested market share right from the get-go with their customer-centric content.

I can personally attest to this, as I was one of the early adopter of their ‘Oneplus 1' phone!

The rest is history as they say, Oneplus went on to rise from an enthusiast phone brand to having mass market appeal with product categories at all money ranges.

4. Content Writing Drives Traffic to Your Website

A well-written content adorns your website like the jewelry that wraps an Indian bride head to toe, grabbing ogles from the men and envious looks from the women.

Since the advent of website indexing by Google in the 90s, web developers have had their jobs cut out. Expert content, quality backlinks, and SEO optimization are just some of the various facets of engaging and retaining your visitors.

By writing well-written content that covers your niche exhaustively, you will stand out from the crowd.

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Try not to dump a lot of information here and there on your website, and throw a Hail Mary up to the air, praying for client retention. Make sure to offer value and other good information or services through your content, that will make your visitor engage with you.

A good landing page, keyword-optimized write-ups, and concise infographics can all go a long way in generating footfalls for your website, thereby ensuring you and your product/service stay relevant in a world where ‘attention span’ is an ultra-precious commodity.

5. Content writing is an open line of communication between you and the world

One of the best displays of content coming to a brand’s rescue was the “worm infestation” that happened with the Cadbury brand of chocolates in India, in 2003.

Long story short, after a consumer found worms in the company’s products the company faced massive social outlash and was at a tipping point with sales declining 30% during Diwali, which usually brought in a 15% hike.

Emotions were running high since kids were the primary consumers and such a discovery prompted people to raise a hue and cry, outraged at how a food brand could be so callous.

In came “Project Vishwas”, a multi-pronged marketing campaign that also included content write-ups in newspapers, forums, and other publications addressing head-on the issue and owning up to their mistakes.

Cadbury talked “with” their customers and not “to” them, through the campaign.

They not only rectified every aspect of their production line but also brought in Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood Supremo to speak about the brand making it known that the issue was a lapse, and not a breach of trust that the Indians had with Cadbury.

Six months after this issue, which would have probably destroyed any other company, Cadbury’s sales resumed to their pre-worm levels.

Your content will speak volumes for your brand if properly executed. Your brand story, identity, and principles are all manifested and displayed in action through your content and directly engage with the customers.

In short, as we become more and more driven toward a consumerist society, there is a greater need for not just fluff content fillers, but socially relevant and well-articulated content that drives traction for your product/service.

As a business, the onus for delivering value through your content should be practiced by you, and not just preached.

An absolute testimony to this is the famous 1996 seminal article by Bill Gates titled “Content is King”, observing how content was going to revolutionize the web. He stated,

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”

He is indeed a visionary, and the proof is in the pudding. Look where we are today with contents of all kinds proliferating and becoming integral to businesses, both big and small.

Ladies and Gentlemen, be like Bill Gates.