Everywhere you look these days, you see articles and discussions about content marketing.  I read at least three communications industry articles about 2014 trends that singled out content marketing as the most important trend for 2014.

Content marketing services are one of the fastest growing services offered by public relations and marketing communications firms. Here’s why:

  • Excellent content draws people to your website much better than sales promotion or advertising. People get very annoyed by promotional emails and online ads that interrupt them.
  • It’s a way to greatly enhance the credibility of your company. By demonstrating your expertise rather than just proclaiming it, you’ll build trust in your company and thought leadership in your industry.
  • By using all-in-one online marketing software such as Hubspot you can turn site visitors who are the most interested in your content into leads. Hubspot is a leading provider of inbound marketing software. Lead generation and lead nurturing is one of the key benefits of content marketing.
  • If you target your content correctly to fill the needs and interests of the kind of customers you want, you’ll generate the right leads.  The more good leads you have, the more discriminating you can be in taking on customers or clients that you know in your heart will be unprofitable because they’ll either want more from you than what they’re willing to pay, or want to beat down your prices just for the fun of it (or both). You’ll feel secure enough about your new business pipeline that you’ll turn down leads that you sense will be hard to work with.
  • If you have the right customers and fill their needs, your hard work will pay off with their loyalty. They’ll be less likely to shop around for alternatives to what you offer.

Now a word about two terms that are confusing to most people because their definitions sometimes sound alike; many people equate them. Content marketing includes all kinds of channels: online, print, broadcast, etc. Marketing consultant Heidi Cohen has what I consider to be a good definition of content marketing on her popular blog, “Actionable Marketing Guide“: “As a core element of inbound marketing, content marketing fuels social media, supports search optimization, and drives lead generation and sales.” Content marketing isn’t new – but its use as part of an online marketing cycle, inbound marketing, is only a few years old.

Note that Heidi says content marketing is a core element of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing goes beyond content marketing (although it only deals with online content and online marketing tools). Inbound marketing is a four-step process that starts by using blogging, social media and key words to attract strangers to a website. The next step is to appeal to those site visitors by offering them free content, which they can obtain by clicking on a “Call to Action” button and then filling out the form on the landing page that brings them to. Once they do that, they become leads – prospective customers. The next step is to use lead nurturing tools such as targeted email marketing to turn the leads into actual customers. The final step is to turn the customers into delighted supporters of your company so they will be evangelists in bringing others to your site who will start the cycle all over again.  Content marketing is a core part of inbound marketing, as you can see, but inbound marketing offers tools to distribute the content and to measure the results of all of these marketing pieces working together – social media, search engine optimization, blogging and offers of non-promotional, educational content such as ebooks, white papers, videos and webinars.

The bottom line is that good content marketing services are the core of inbound marketing, and they are an investment that pays off. Sometimes the payoff is quick and sometimes it takes a little more time. If you don’t yet have a content marketing strategy, chances are you’ll conclude pretty soon that it’s an absolute necessity.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with a PR, marketing or social media campaign, contact Scott Public Relations.

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