The Most Important Investment you’re not Making – and How it is Slowly Killing your Brand

Why you need to invest in content for your business – and how you can be in trouble if you don’t.

If you or your business operate within the online arena in even the slightest capacity (and chances are that you do, since you’re reading this article), there is one aspect of your business in which you can never invest enough time and money: content.

You may think that owing to the forces of digital marketing and paid advertisement, getting your brand name out there has become a minimum-effort job. 

Any why not, right? Sure, your website can rank well on Google if you optimize it properly (we all love SEO, don’t we?)

But what you’re overlooking is one very basic but core issue: what happens when a potential customer stumbles across your website and reads drab, badly written, and poorly executed content. 

More often than not, your website is the first impression customers get of your entire business. Therefore, it is crucial to understand that the content that you put in front of their eyes is sensible, at the very least, and highly engaging, informative, and convincing at its best.

Businesses that try to get by without quality content on their social media platforms are more likely to fall behind in the race. 

But, with that said, in no way should content production (or a lack of it) be perceived as an “issue” – it is, in fact, a concept that is simple and easy to understand and a strategy that is just as easy to implement.

What happens if you don’t invest in content?

More expense for lower returns

For any brand or business that has a digital presence, there is a fundamental, two-pronged purpose of operating in the online space: to generate leads for conversion and to leverage a prospective customer to place their trust in your business and the services you offer. 

If you pick up any research conducted on content marketing versus paid advertisements, the resulting statistics are sufficient to understand the viability and efficiency of investing in content rather than throwing money into a one-and-done ad that is posted, used, and reused several times.   

In a study, Kapost analyses data that confirms two vital plus points of content marketing over paid traffic, in terms of the costs and benefits:  

1. The ROI (return on investment) of content is much higher than what you get with paid outbound marketing – to be exact, it garners 3x the amount of lead generation as that with paid advertising.
2. Content production and marketing will save you more than 50% in costs – approximately 62% less than your outbound advertising expense would be.

So, when you don’t invest in content and still aim to get your brand voice heard far and wide, you end up spending much more in return for much less. 

Continuous, long-term expense instead of organic results that pay for themselves

When you put money into a paid ad campaign, you might as well brace yourself: you’ll be bearing costs for long after you launch the campaign. And that too with less than a 100% guarantee of getting any substantial conversions. 

On the other hand, if you write and maintain a blog for your personal brand or business, it is bound to garner the attention of the target audience if you use the proper approach. 

There’s no real hard and fast formula that’s guaranteed to help get leads solely with content, except for one thing: consistency. 

Use these tips to make sure that you stay on top of the content game:

1. Think of a skill and turn it into a passion

It is said that to be successful, you need to follow your passion. So where does that leave us folks who can’t put a finger on what it is we’re “destined” to do?

In retrospect, it makes more sense to follow something at which you’re inherently good. It doesn’t have to be your passion – if you’re skilled at it, you can polish it to perfection and then excel in the field. 

Don’t fall prey to the glorified concept of finding a “calling” that “feels just right”. Your calling is anything that adds to your life positively, and providing your services or reaching out to your audience through content is something that has a lasting impact and is also highly gratifying.

2. Make it relatable

People relate to ideas that hold the promise and potential of helping them in one way or another.

According to research in marketing, it is not an unknown concept for people to naturally gravitate towards ideas and solutions that resonate with them on a personal level.

Inc.com also gives a lot of weightage to relatable content, describing it to be a handy business tip for any kind of brand. 

3. Promote yourself as a brand

Regardless of whether you’re marketing your product, your business, your idea, or your brand, it will ALWAYS pay off to personalize it around your own self. 

People always trust the face behind the brand. Serial entrepreneur and chairman of VaynerX, Gary Vaynerchuck, strongly advocates self-branding:

“Your personal brand is your reputation. And your reputation in perpetuity is the foundation of your career… People don’t understand this. Playing the long game and building your reputation always plays out.”

You do all of the above, and you’re much more likely to slingshot your way to successful branding. And since the internet is nothing short of an incubator waiting to get onto the next big thing and launch it into the sphere of virality, it is today easier than ever to hit the mark with the right kind of content and have it take off.