"Content is king." — Bill Gates.
Content marketing is a crucial strategy focused on creating and sharing valuable content for target audiences with the goal of final conversion.
First, let's discuss why content marketing is crucial for your supply chain business.
Content marketing helps solve your customer's potential query and hence helps in building brand loyalty. It also helps show your subject matter expertise.
Google rewards business websites that publish quality content.
Content marketing helps influence conversions. Great content can help boost conversions by 61% (Content Marketing Institute).
Content marketing is essential to help users understand the purchasing roadmap: should they make a purchase, or is further research required? The CTAs in content pieces allow users to be better informed and closer to a buying decision.
Content marketing is essential for almost every other digital activity. A website visitor through a PPC or a LinkedIn ad would be more engaged and inclined to purchase if the website provides in-depth information about solving their problem.
Now that we know why content marketing is essential for any business, let's understand why content marketing is so crucial for supply chain & logistics businesses.
Often, logistics professionals feel they don't need a digital marketing strategy as they have a small audience. Supply chain owners must be active in every digital activity possible to reach their hyper-targeted audience. There is no better way to reach out to your niche audience than using content for marketing.
Below are five reasons supply chain and logistics businesses need to invest in content marketing:
1. Target niche audiences
Like any other business, supply chain & logistics owners have their customer base to whom they should communicate effectively to prove their authority. Sharing industry insights and product-related information attracts new customers and helps build brand authenticity and connections with your customers.
Targeting your audience through content marketing also means that you would be focused on users at different levels of the marketing funnel- awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention. Thus, your content marketing strategy should define your audience to varying stages of their requirements.
2. Storytelling for empathy
Many people know about your brand and product. How did you build the product? What about the knowledge that you gained during the process? What about your employees who made your dream a reality?
People love hearing success stories. Especially when using your product/service, they love to tell others why they chose one brand over the other. Sharing these stories as content is a great way to develop empathy and connect with your clients at a deeper level.
3. Influence decision
Customers no longer rely on sales representatives alone to make their final decision. And when it comes to a B2B business such as logistics and supply chain, there are many more decision makers that a single salesperson can influence. This is where content marketing plays a significant role.
Creating content that discusses the product overall, the services your business provides and how it differs from your competitors, would help buyers make a calculated decision.
4. Competitive edge
If you are still deciding whether content marketing is crucial to your business, consider looking at your competitors. Most companies have adopted digital and content marketing strategies to their advantage and have a dedicated team to look into these aspects.
The business generated through these activities may be small at first, but they are ahead of the game of their competitors.
Consider this an essential factor and start considering the digital aspects of your business.
5. Effectiveness
Remember how businesses relied on brochures and pamphlets to promote their products and services? They still do, but having a website with a solid content strategy has proven more effective than a pamphlet that touches on a few points about your business.
Consider this scenario: A person is looking for a product on Google, and they happen to land on your website where you have covered their queries related to the product. Now it is up to the person to make the decision.
Using content marketing, you can convince someone why they should invest in your product or service.
As per data on LinkedIn, 51% of B2B buyers rely on content to make purchasing decisions than they did last year.
Conclusion
Content marketing is the backbone of every marketing activity, and it is not a recent phenomenon. It spans back years in the form of print media. The platform has changed while the concept remains the same - connect with new and existing users.
Stay tuned for our other blogs, where we cover different aspects of content marketing you should focus on for your supply chain business.
Still have questions? We'll craft a content marketing plan and content calendar now!