@krystle Yes, right from the beginning of the design, paying to boost your content has been built into the system. It's an intentional design to entice businesses to use Steem as a marketing and press release type platform.
It doesn't mean that the material will necessarily make it to the top-hits page, I mean #trending, but especially when groups are implemented, it can push such posts up to the tops of group trending filter pages.
And furthermore, the benefit for everyone is that, if a business buys and vests steem to promote its marketing, the entire steemosphere gets a boost to available rewards!