"The bottom line is that content marketing is a great way of generating inbound traffic and making money online. The success of your online marketing depends on timely and effective implementation of online marketing plan. You also to use the right channels, engage your audience, and evaluate the effectiveness of your activities periodically. With all things in place, there is no reason why your content marketing should fail."

This come from this excellent blog post on How Content Marketing Delivers Customers.

Ultimately, that's what copy writing should be about - generating customers for your business. It's no use spending all your cash on loads of words if it doesn't improve your top line profits. Or, as this post points out, brand visibility.

There is loads to digest in the article and we suggest you check it out if you are unsure about the benefits of having loads of great content on your website and elsewhere.

Just to recap here are some of the benefits:

Improve search ranking 

Increase brand visibility

Generate sales by inbound marketing

Boost brand prestige

Generate buzz on social media via sharing of articles

Of course, these are just a few of the major benefits - find out more about our content marketing consultancy service.

When you look at the value of the ecommerce market in the UK, it becomes obvious that companies need to tune into the benefits of content writing services.

According to IMRG, the UK online retail market in 2013 is estimated to be worth £87 billion. Within that mobile commerce is growing at a rate of 300% a year (see previous article on importance of mobile content).

Gurd goes on to note that with social media in the picture as well, web content has multiple uses. "It's not just a one-channel entity," he says.

However, he cautioned businesses about pinning all their hopes on content marketing, explaining that "content is not by itself the saviour". 

"For content marketing to work, the inputs need to be good," he said. Indeed one thing we can see happening already is that with so many companies taking a stab at content marketing, there are a lot of poor efforts.

"Content has to serve a purpose and provide a value to the end-user. I personally think there is too much content being produced at the expense of a focus on quality," adds Gurd.

Instead of just "throwing up" blogs, articles and buying guides on to a website, there should be a "coherent" content marketing strategy.

Internet advertising attracted the biggest increase, with a positive net 5.6 per cent of marketing executives saying they had upped their online marketing spending over the final quarter of 2012.

Meanwhile, 2013 could also be the year that online marketing loses its preface and becomes simply 'marketing'.

In its 'Trends for the B2C CMO to watch in 2013' report, global researchers Forrester claimed that digital channels are mounting assaults on even the most established traditional media.

It cites the example of YouTube's rise against the advertising bastion of television.

The report argues that ‘digital marketing’ will simply become known as 'marketing' as the various barriers are broken down and the sector becomes more mainstream.

Forrester expects the online sector to be worth around 20 per cent of the total marketing industry, valued globally at £31 billion.

What does it mean for businesses?

Companies will need to think about integrating channels and coming up with a content strategy that applies across various outlets, from websites and blogs, to social media, press and television.

Forrester CMO Corinne Munchbach, told Marketing Week: "Consumers switch from in-store to online, to mobile – sometimes all at once.

"Having separate budgets for each is counterintuitive to what customers are actually experiencing. Logical brands will be able to join this together in a functional way to deliver the experiences customers expect from them."

Find out more about how content writing services and content marketing consulting can help your business.

According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report, 86% of companies are investing in content, regardless of size or industry.

The data comes from B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America, which is the first annual survey from the CMI about content marketing in the B2C space. 

B2C organizations use an average of 12 tactics, the study shows. Most popular among these are social media excluding blogs (84%), articles on a company's website (84%), eNewsletters (78%), and blogs (77%). 

The results are not too dissimilar to those of B2B marketers. In a previous report from the CMI, 87% of B2B marketers are using social media to distribute content, as compared to the rate of 74% that was reported last year.

However, in the B2C sphere, marketers are using mobile content, mobile apps, print magazines, and print newsletters a lot more.

"It's exciting to be able to benchmark B2C and B2B content marketing efforts and quantify differences by marketing type," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI.

"One interesting difference is how each group uses social media. For B2C marketers, Facebook is the most popular platform by far, with 90% of respondents indicating they use this for content distribution. This differs from B2B, in which LinkedIn is the most popular platform, with 83% of respondents using this (compared to 51% of B2C marketers)."

B2B marketers are spending a third of their marketing budgets on content marketing, up from a quarter in 2011. Similarly, B2C marketers are investing heavily in content marketing this year, allocating 28% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Additionally, 55% of B2C marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months.

"Another similarity between B2C and B2C marketers is that both groups lack confidence that they are executing content marketing effectively," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. "But B2C marketers cite lack of budget as their biggest challenge (23%), whereas B2B marketers are most challenged with producing enough content (29%)."

Content marketing is increasingly being seen as crucial to digital success, whether it's being measured in Facebook likes or dollars.

Here's a six-stage plan to maximise your content marketing strategy, courtesy of PR Newswire, a press release distribution service.

Monitor and Listen

"Before creating a single piece of content, listen. Learn what interests your audiences, how your brand currently resonates with them, what your competitors are saying and what conversations are happening in your industry," say the authors of the report.

Listen well and you may be able to come up with content that achieves your business objectives and is useful for your audience without being too salesy. If you're listening to your customers and responding to what they want, and your content follows suit, they will like your content.

A survey of business executives, The Content Preferences Survey from DemandGen Reports, found that 75% of respondents want content writers and creators to "curb the sales messaging".

Create and Optimise

Think about your audience's preferred content type and format. It is possible to align these with your marketing objectives in one of three ways:

Thought leadership: infographics, articles, blog posts and short white papers offered directly to interested audiences. Basically anything that goes to show the depth and breadth of an organisation.

Acquisition: white papers, video demos,eBooks or webinars. These ought to be gated so that you can collect leads.

Nurture/cross-sell: this is content used to bring a lead from marketing through sales. Content types include original articles, infographics, blog posts, guide books, comparison grids, demos and more. Calls to action – to request more information or view a demo – are essential in these content types.

One straightforward option is through news feeds. "Staying on top of the latest news also provides opportunities for you to actively participate in the breaking news cycle by adding your own relevant commentary to the resulting discussion – even incorporating the keywords noted in the news coverage within your messages and landing pages," says PR Newswire.

News feeds are one of the oldest and most tried-and-tested forms of content marketing. Regularly updating your site with topical features and analysis, and the right keywords, will always drive traffic.

Identify and Target

"There are big influencers and small influencers, and you need the right mix of both to generate a viral effect around your content," says the study. It's all about creating conversations, shares and social media buzz. Think about who you want to reach first with your content – targeted content at core influencers – bloggers for instance – can get the ball rolling a lot faster than taking a scattergun approach.

Engage and Interact

"Content can only make an impact in the social sphere if it is easily found, triggered for audience interaction and readily shareable," according to the report. Remember that once you get content out there, you will need to respond and react. Social media posts will attract comments – how do you plan to respond if they are anything but positive, for example.

Distribute and Reach

Think about how you plan to get your content in front of as many people as possible. If your website is generating thousands of page views every day, people will pick up on it regardless. If you're a smaller player in the market, think about how your content will be read.

Measure and Report

Metrics, as we've said before, are crucial to content marketing success. Decide before how you plan to measure activity – page views, sales or social media followers, for example.