Why Content Marketing is Essential Right Now (Even if You Have a Smaller Budget)

When you’re reading dubious-sounding financial headlines, or aren’t sure how AI is going to affect your products and planning, your first instinct might be to pull back (way back!) on your marketing spend. Or, at the very least, keep your budget flat to last year. 

I know how you feel, because as a business owner, I’ve had those exact same thoughts. How can you develop and invest in a bold marketing strategy when so much is in flux? 

This past year, however, my Masthead co-founder, Julie, and I decided to go against that initial reaction and actually increased our marketing spend significantly. We believe this is the perfect time to invest in your brand foundation – your people, products, and especially content marketing.

Right now, you have an ideal opportunity to go against convention and make your messaging stand out. Here’s why it’s an unexpected—and very smart—move to double down on content marketing during times of economic turbulence and technological transition. 

1. Your competition is pumping the brakes.

By reducing how much content they’re producing, your nearest competitors are signaling to both their customers and search engines that they’re much less current—and far less relevant—than you are. 

By leaning into your content (developing net new articles, optimizing others for AI Search, posting thought leadership pieces, and putting up new multimedia assets), you’re telling Google and Bing that you’re worth serving up in the coveted (and lucrative) first organic positions text for important key search terms. 

Producing timely, highly relevant content also tells your customers that you’re continuing to listen and stay in sync with their current needs. If you lean in while others lean out, you’ll get the added benefit of capturing attention—and ideally, market share—while your competitors sit on their hands.

2. Uncertainty means people are doing more research before they buy—not less.

In this inflation-driven, economically uncertain climate, people are being much more careful before they make buying decisions. Now more than ever, they’re going on their phones, tablets, and laptops to look for information before risking a purchase. Some are spending several minutes, hours—or even days—researching products and services before they buy (major purchasing decisions, of course, take longer). 

This pre-purchase research time is the ideal period for your brand to meet your customer with well-crafted content that effectively answers their questions and guides them through your brand environment. 

3. Search has completely transformed.

By now you’ve probably seen that Google has changed its search engine results pages in a major way—integrated AI answers into its search results (aka, zero click searches). Before the rollout, the SEO tool Semrush estimated that a quarter of searches were zero click, and that number will rise dramatically in the coming weeks.

The long-form evergreen content that brought your brand big traffic (and revenue) just a year ago may become barely discoverable in this new era of search. To get ahead of the changes—and land highly competitive spots within the AI search box—you’re going to need to invest in a new content optimization strategy. If you devote your budget to one thing this year…this should be it.

4. Audience behavior is changing.

Younger audiences are increasingly bypassing traditional search engines (at least initially) to discover and research brands through social, retail (Amazon, Target, etc), online forums (Reddit, etc), and chat groups (WhatsApp, etc). To be a central part of the conversation, and to connect with your current and future customer base, you’ll need to expand across these environments. This is the year we’re recommending investing in your cross-platform search strategy—not just creating content to fill these channels. It’s an investment well worth making now (even if you can’t fully execute it until 2025).

5. You’ll get stronger ROI today—and into more bullish times.

Unlike advertising (whose growth is slowing globally) and paid search (whose impact lasts only as long as your money does), content marketing is an investment that can pay off within months—and continue to produce results for years on end.

A study by the Content Marketing Institute found that content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62 percent less​. Content marketing builds a foundation that grows over time, meaning the content you create today can continue to drive traffic, leads, and sales long after it’s published. This makes it a more sustainable and cost-effective strategy compared to other forms of marketing that require continuous spending to maintain visibility.

6. You’ll build brand trust and loyalty.

Trust in institutions tends to decline during tougher economic times, according to Advertising Week. They why brand building is even more important right now. By continuing to invest in your content marketing, you’re positioning yourself as an essential and highly trustworthy source of information and support. This not only helps nurture existing relationships but also attracts new customers who are seeking a dependable brand in a sea of uncertainty.

7. It’s an incredible time to try new things.

When times are tougher financially, companies often tighten their belts, and both marketing—and innovation—can take a backseat. However, this is a truly unique moment we’re all living in: Even as so many companies are stalling planning, hiring, and budgets, content and productivity technology has taken a massive leap forward. 

In the next few months, before the year ends, you can really turn the heat up on your content marketing efforts by experimenting with new AI tools designed to help you plan, organize and execute your content a lot more efficiently. By investing a little in the tech, and the time it takes to master them, you can actually expand how much you’re able to produce and optimize as a marketing team. Even a small investment can pay off in spades, especially as things begin to heat up again.