Information of value accelerates awareness, leads, and sales.
I've used inbound/content marketing for years in conjunction with outbound, traditional, and digital marketing.
Technology companies were one of the first to see the benefits of sharing information of value and continue to do so today because:
The more information of value you share, the more you build awareness of the problems companies are facing and how your product or service solves the problems.
By sharing information of value and answering people's questions before they even ask them, you gain trust and establishing yourself, and your firm, as a trusted advisor on the topic.
Answering questions provides a service. You are making people who are researching the topic lives easier, saving them time, and enhancing their knowledge.
The more information of value you share the more you establish yourself, and your firm as a thought-leader and problem-solver.
Sharing information via blog posts and social media drives more traffic to your website.
Driving more traffic to your website generates more leads if your website offers something of value for which a prospect is willing to give you a "real" name and email address. You don't need to ask for more than that.
The more information of value you share, the more you establish a dialogue with those interested in the topic you are addressing. People like to do business with those they know, like and trust. Sharing information of value is a great way to start a dialogue.
Content marketing gives you the opportunity to nurture marketing qualified leads (MQLs), those who aren't yet ready to buy, into sales qualified leads (SQLs), those who are ready to engage with a salesperson.
The more information of value you publish on your website, the more your grassroots SEO improves. The more frequently you add information of value to your site, the more frequently the search engines will crawl it to see what you've added.
Ultimately, more awareness, more traffic, more leads and nurturing MQLs to SQLs will lead to fewer lost leads and more sales because you were willing to share information of value and provide solutions to problems.
Is your firm using content marketing to drive awareness, traffic, leads, and sales?