The use of content marketing has been increasing steadily over the past decade. And why shouldn’t it? After all, it is the most cost-effective method used by brands for building awareness.
If you consider the statistical data, in the year 2009 content marketing generated over $87.22 billion, which grew to more than $300 billion in the year 2019. Now, that’s some real growth over a decade’s period.
Content Marketing & Influencer Marketing – The Most Effective Mix
It is quite obvious to be confused about whether you should be choosing content marketing or influencer marketing for your business. Well, to begin with, it is important that you should understand, that both the marketing practices are pieces of the same puzzle. In fact, content marketing involves influencer marketing, indistinguishably.
Let’s understand how do these two differ and what are the benefits they can offer your business.
Content Marketing
It is a strategic marketing approach focused around creating and distributing valuable content in order to attract a specific group of the target audience. As contrary to the traditional sales pitches, content marketing enables you to improve your consumers’ knowledge by delivering informational content.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing also makes use of highly informational content to educate the target audience for your business. The only difference is that it makes use of influencers, or simply online bloggers to spread this content for your business. It is quite similar to the way conventional advertisements used to work. In place of hiring renowned personalities, you hire people with substantial influence over a small group of audience.
Since both the marketing tactics essentially spread the information regarding your brand online, it is essential to understand how these two can benefit your brand.
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Authority and Awareness
Online marketing can take many forms. Your brand can be promoted through reviews, public forums, and even social media mentions. Whether you choose content marketing or influencer marketing, the overall authority for your brand improves. This can be substantially measured through certain KPI figures including online traffic, impressions, and engagement that your website receives.
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Earning Trust From Customers
When someone recommends using a product or a service, you utterly believe and trust their recommendation. Or certainly, develop a positive level of curiosity to learn more about the same. This curiosity is what can be converted into trustworthiness for your brand. Especially, influencer marketing creates compelling influence around your brand. When the followers of these influencers come across such content, they are more likely to trust these mentions and consequently your brand.
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Increasing Brand Reach
Often businesses struggle to tap into some markets. This could be due to a lack of proper data or resources to capture the same. However, with the help of content-based influencer marketing, it becomes a lot easier to capture these markets. There are several pieces of evidence that suggest that people search for references or recommendations when making any purchase online. And as mentioned already, content marketing and influencer marketing are particularly inclined towards providing the same.
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Boosting Return On Investment
By educating your potential consumers regarding your products, and consequently your brand you can increase your return manifolds. According to a sourced study, businesses earn around $6.85 on every $1 spent on their influencer marketing. So, it can be safely said that investing in influencer marketing can surely boost ROI for your business. The only thing that you need to ensure is that you should be collaborating with marketers who hold sound authority within your niche. Moreover, you don’t necessarily need to work with hundreds of influencers. Making friends with a few dozen can do wonders if done correctly.
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Improving Customer Relationship
As important as it is to earn the trust of your customers, maintaining healthy relationships with them is also crucial. And creating content that responds to your customers’ queries is a good way to nurture the same. Moreover, when you engage with your customers, you actually enhance a sense of reliability within your customers. Thus improving the relationship between your brand and your customers. Furthermore, employing influencers for your content marketing strategies can make a beneficial difference in the credibility that your brand holds amongst your customers.
Content marketing is surely an effective method of promoting your brand and growing awareness. But, without a trustworthy voice, the content alone can still remain ineffective. Therefore, content marketing and influencer marketing need to go hand in hand. Since both of these practices are tremendously powerful in generating excellent results, and that too in the most cost-effective way possible, they simply cannot be executed individually.