What Are the Benefits of Content Marketing?

According to the CMI, content marketing has four key benefits:

• Increased sales
• Cost savings
• Better customers who have more loyalty
• Content as a profit center

The first of these benefits, increased sales, is also one of the goals that you can set in universal analytics to measure how content marketing fulfills your target objectives.

Content marketers can use Google Analytics to measure the number of conversions generated by a campaign, although “conversions” might mean making a purchase for an ecommerce site or submitting a contact information form for a marketing or lead generation site.

The second benefit, cost savings, is popular in organizations that want you to do more with less. And if you want to deliver cost savings, read my column in Search Engine Journal, which was published on Feb. 19, 2020. It’s entitled, “Is a Super Bowl Ad the Equivalent of Lighting Money on Fire?”

If content marketers can demonstrate that their latest campaign lifted brand awareness, favorability, consideration, and purchase intent more cost‐effectively than running a 30‐second commercial during Super Bowl LVI (which cost as much as $6.5 million in 2022), then that should convince senior executives in the C‐suite to increase their content marketing budget.

The third benefit, better customers who have more loyalty, isn’t one that mass marketers will focus on because they ignore market segment differences and still believe, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

However, content marketers who’ve analyzed their market opportunities, selected their target segments, and tailored their marketing mix are much more likely to appreciate the benefit of having better customers who are more loyal.

The fourth benefit, content as a profit center, sounds like “pie in the sky.” But it’s the goal of brands like Red Bull, which is often described as a media company that sells energy drinks rather than a beverage seller that publishes content.

Many content creators and social media influencers are also focused on content as a profit center. For example, YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported 394,000 full‐time equivalent jobs and contributed $20.5 billion to the U.S. economy in 2022, according to “The State of the Creator Economy” by Oxford Economics.