Is Content Marketing Worth It?

The days of Don Draper and the Madison Avenue “Mad Men” are long gone. Companies are moving away from pouring money into traditional ads and toward content marketing. 

No longer do marketers have to be in the Big Apple to make things happen. In small offices in Utah and home offices in the Pacific Northwest, marketers are putting out engaging information via their laptops to millions of people worldwide. 

What is this new breed of marketing? According to Content Marketing institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience.” Content marketing is about creating meaningful content that consumers want to engage with.

Companies in Utah and elsewhere are now spending their time and capital developing blog posts and videos that are entertaining and educational. This new strategy makes marketing something that customers actually enjoy and want to engage with, rather than an annoyance that is interrupting their daytime soaps. 

That all seems fine and dandy, but does it work? Marketers are spending a lot of time, energy and resources to put out the goods, but how can they tell if their investment is actually paying off? 

There are many tools and services that marketers can use to see how effective their content is at converting readers into customers. Tools like Google Analytics can tell you exactly how many people are consuming content, how long they stay and whether they are from Utah or South America. 

The ever-growing social media industry is also providing great tools for marketers to measure content’s progress. Larger social media companies like Facebook and Twitter now have analytics systems of their own, allowing marketers to follow their content as it moves through the blogosphere. 

Not only that, customers from Utah and around the world can talk directly with their favorite brands. Starbucks is now expected to respond back to @SuzieQ167 when she says her latte was made incorrectly. This allows brands to get direct (and free) feedback from their target markets and customers. 

Tracking shares, likes and comments can tell you how engaging your content is. Engaging content then leads people back to your site, where they can land on your email list (another ROI tracking system), or better yet, interact with your shopping cart. 

Don Draper and his Marlboro Man-type campaigns are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Over 90 percent of businesses now produce content as a part of their marketing strategy. The ability for businesses to measure how well this new strategy is working is not only possible, but also likely to improve with time as analytics and tools continue to improve. 

Danny Coleman writes for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. He writes for many other clients as well. Follow on Twitter.