3 Reasons to Invest In Your Content Now (And 3 Great Ways to Do It)

The ups and downs of the economy can leave a marketing department nervous. Even in the best situations, the threat of budget crunches can make it difficult to know where your money will have the greatest return. But in the marketing world, it's been shown that maintaining your market visibility consistently results in growth.

In today's ever-changing digital landscape, one thing remains constant: quality content leads to market visibility. And investing in content now is one of the best bets to safeguard the future of your brand and business.

Why Invest in Content Now?

History shows that companies restrict staffing and budgets when the economy cools, and marketing is a typical target of budget cuts. Still, this kind of approach may negatively impact a company's revenue stream.

Whether we examine the 1920-24 recession, the aftershocks of the 1991 recession, or the fallout from 2008, there are stories of brands that succeeded through economic uncertainty. Companies that took early action in a crisis while maintaining a long-term vision with their marketing experienced growth and market share despite economic downturns. 

Share of Voice Equates to Share of Market

Share of voice (SOV) is a huge part of market share. When the competition cuts marketing and their visibility fades, your investments in content immediately grow your SOV. People hear your brand's voice more often and distinctly than before. When it comes time to jump back into spending mode, your brand's voice will be the first one they hear. That means more market share, faster recovery, and more opportunities when the economy recovers.

The Relationship Between Share of Voice and Market Share

It's this simple: when other companies pull back on marketing budgets, it opens the door for those willing to continue investing in their future. And when the economy recovers (spoiler alert: it always recovers), your brand will be top of mind with those looking to make up lost time and ready to pull the trigger on your products or services. Your consistent efforts to engage and communicate with your target audience through thick and thin create brand awareness that your competitors will lose due to trimmed marketing budgets.

Long-Term Growth

SEO strategy is a crucial part of content marketing, yet it's a long-term strategy. Yes, there are short-term and valuable gains in search rankings and increased site traffic. However, brand-building and future-proofing your business is the real—albeit less tangible—benefit. 

Excellent content that educates and inspires your target audience will generate new traffic to your site year after year and develop genuine brand loyalty. That quality traffic translates to more qualified leads and on-site conversions.

In short, investing in content today ensures business growth for years.

Investing, Not Renting

Think of content like this: when you spend money on an ad campaign (social, display, or otherwise), you rent space. Ultimately, the owners of that space (the ad platforms) benefit the most from your expenditure. Advertising certainly has its place, but ad campaigns are only short-term solutions. Once you spend your ad budget, it's gone, with minimal residual benefit.

Paid advertising is useful, but only when campaigns are active. Content provides a compounding return on your investment.

Alternatively, developing helpful, meaningful, and relevant content that ranks well on search engines is like investing in your personal property. Branded content is something you own forever. As long as it's available on the web, it works for you 24/7, 7 days a week, fueling your sales funnel, building your brand, and growing your business.

What Kind of Content Is Worth the Investment?

The value of content is there, without a doubt. But where should you focus your energy? When you invest in content during difficult or slow economic times, we suggest focusing on these three areas:

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

There are two areas to optimize your site: technical SEO and on-page SEO. Technical SEO deals with behind-the-scenes stuff, including page load speed, indexing, sitemaps, etc. On-page SEO ensures the proper use of title tags, internal links, keyword research, and more.

Both areas are essential, but quality content is critical to on-page SEO improvements. With time and consistency, your branded content will creep to the top of search results, increasing qualified site traffic and fueling your lead-gen efforts.

Best of all, these optimization efforts are evergreen. They'll continue boosting your traffic and engaging your audience long after your initial investment because effective SEO works indefinitely and automatically. 

Content Marketing

Building a catalog of keyword-rich articles on your site is a great start to building authority in your market. But well-written content should extend well beyond a blog; it can fuel your PR efforts, advertising, social media channels, email marketing, and more. Put more simply: content breeds content.

Social Media

Leverage your library of website content to build up your social media presence. However, whether organic or paid, it's crucial that you tailor your social content for each platform, including its format, orientation, media type, and more. In other words, it should involve more than just pasting a link to your blog on Facebook. 

Also, consider posing questions, creating polls (where applicable), and thoughtfully replying to comments across your social channels. After all, it's called "social" for a reason, and leveraging the power of these platforms can foster a community of like-minded brand evangelists.

We're Here to Help

We don't mean this to sound like a sales pitch, but content strategy, creation, publication, and distribution (among other things) are what we do every day. And we firmly believe (because history shows) that investing in your content today will future-proof your brand and business.

So, if you need to clarify your brand message or aren't sure how to leverage it in your day-to-day marketing, we can help. Give us a call, schedule a free consultation, or contact us today to learn more.