People who are interested in what your business has to offer want to see content that is valuable to them. The content needs to be delivered in a way that feels natural and organic, rather than being disruptive. The goal of content marketing is to attract, engage with, and delight your target markets. Content marketing helps businesses do this by providing engaging and valuable content that speaks to the needs of their target audience.
Focusing on content marketing can help you to increase conversions, improve brand awareness, boost revenue, establish yourself as an industry leader, and more.
If you want to create content that your audience will enjoy, it is a good idea to reassess your current strategy and come up with new ways to create and share that content. This guide will provide you with an overview of content marketing, the different types of content marketing, examples of content marketing, and how to develop a strategy.
So, what defines content marketing anyway?
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on creating and distributing content in order to attract and retain customers. Content marketing can be used in a variety of ways, such as through social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, apps, press releases, and print publications. The goal is to engage with your target audience to increase brand awareness, sales, and loyalty.
Why is content marketing important?
- Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
- Boost conversions
- Build relationships between your customers and business that result in increased loyalty
- Show your audience how your products and services solve their challenges
- Create a sense of community around your brand
A good content strategy should include a mix of different content types to serve different purposes.
1. Blogs
blog content is a great method to develop your brand name and increase traffic to your website. Your blog strategy should be focused on the keywords and topics your target audience is interested in. This will keep you focused and ensure that your content is engaging and relevant. Long-form content is a great way to deal with problems, answer questions, and show that you are an expert in your field.
Blog posts that are optimized for quality can help improve your website’s ranking in search engines. This means that it will remain relevant and useful for a longer period of time than other types of content. The content you publish today can continue to attract traffic and generate leads for years to come. Social media posts can get buried in newsfeeds after a few hours, which is different from this.
Blogging also allows you to show off your brand personality. Blogging provides an opportunity to share your brand’s unique personality if it is innovative, intelligent, or funny.
2. Case studies and success stories
If you want to create content that will help convert web visitors into leads or customers, case studies and success stories are a great place to start. They are an effective way to generate leads at the bottom of the conversion funnel. The following text provides prospects with social proof and makes their purchase decision easier. When prospects read about similar customers who have had positive experiences with your organization, it provides them with social proof and makes their purchase decision easier.
They feel like you have experience with this, so they expect similar results.
They are especially useful for products and services that are expensive and of high value. This type of content is designed to help you get the most out of your marketing efforts and minimize the risk of a big investment. To the right are examples from Terakeet’s customer success page.
3. Testimonials and online customer reviews
Social proof is a different form of content marketing that relies on customer reviews and testimonials. Objections from potential customers can be overcome with the help of case studies, which also reduces the customers’ feeling of risk. Third-party online reviews on sites like Google, Angi, or Trustpilot can also help improve your SEO.
Google takes into account the number of positive reviews when determining how trustworthy a brand is and how high its website should be ranked in search results.
Some simple ways to increase the number of reviews and testimonials you get include:
- Directly ask existing customers
- Create an automated follow-up request that is sent to customers after they purchase from you
- Incentivize customers with a discount or other reward for sharing their opinion
- Add a review/testimonials widget to your website home page and other key pages so that visitors can quickly leave feedback without ever leaving your site
Showcase customer testimonials and reviews on your home page and other areas of your website where they make sense. A good tip is to put testimonials and reviews in places where they would make the most sense in relation to the content on a given page.
4. White papers and ebooks
If you want to be seen as a thought leader in your industry, generate leads, and be seen as an expert, white papers and ebooks are a great way to go about it. Articles are typically longer and more technical than blog posts. This provides an opportunity to in-depth explore a particular topic and share more granular information than what would typically be possible in a blog post.
If you want to create white papers or ebooks, make sure you have in-depth knowledge or a unique perspective on the subject matter. When creating white papers and ebooks, it is important to share high-quality content that lives up to the value that your audience expects in exchange for their time investment in downloading your content.
This type of content marketing strategy is most effective when used to target consumers who are further along in the purchase funnel. During this stage, it is important to provide prospects with more information about the problem they are facing, the solution you offer, and why you are a better choice than a competitor.
5. Market reports
News reports on market trends are a great way to get media attention and make your brand seem like an expert in your field. This content marketing is geared towards people who need access to a lot of market data to make strategic decisions.
The focus of a report can be on many different things such as market share, spending, trends, technology, or consumer behavior.
They are powerful because they can get high-value media mentions, backlinks, and leads.
6. Videos
Video content is an effective form of marketing because it allows you to connect with your target audience in a visual, engaging way. For example:
- Short explainer videos that are 60 seconds or less serve as a quick, simple way to quickly educate prospects on a topic
- How-to videos help customers understand how to solve a very specific problem
- Demo videos can help customers quickly see the capabilities of your product
- Interviews enable your customers to see the human side of your business. And Customer interviews get them to see what they themselves could achieve.
- Long-form videos can tell a story in a way that connects emotionally with the audience
- Quick social media clips attract attention and drive engagement
7. Infographics
If you want to effectively communicate a large amount of information to your audience, consider using an infographic. They are great for sharing business statistics, industry data, maps, timelines, and more on social media platforms. Instead of being the main source of information, they can support other written content.
Infographics are a type of graphic that is used to represent information or data in a visually engaging way. They are often used in social media marketing efforts because they are interesting and tend to get shared widely.
If you have an infographic on your website, you can create a bit of HTML code that lets other people embed it on their site. Every time someone embeds an image from your website on their own website, the HTML can be coded so that a backlink to your website is automatically included in the image’s description. The more people share your infographic, the more backlinks you’ll get, which will help improve your website’s SEO.
8. Podcasts
Podcasting is a form of content marketing that is growing in popularity and effectiveness. The biggest advantage of this is that you can offer a lot of high-quality information without having to spend a lot of time or effort. It allows you to connect with your audience on a personal level. Building relationships with potential customers is important, and one way to do that is by connecting with them on a more personal level.
Podcasts can be listened to on the go, which is a major benefit. Podcasts can be easily enjoyed during activities where reading may not be possible, like during a commute to work, or while working out.
If you interview guests on your podcast, you can use your podcast as a lead generation engine. 1) You can use representatives from the companies you want to do business with to generate podcast content. 2) You can use representatives from the companies you want to do business with to build relationships with new leads.
Since its early days, Drift has been podcasting to discuss conversational marketing – a topic central to its brand. Over time, they created nine separate podcasts to serve new audience segments. This helped them tap into new markets and continue to grow their business. This strategy helped the company to achieve a billion-dollar valuation and create a large group of passionate fans.
9. Webinars
Webinars can help you educate your customers on a variety of topics, such as how to use your product, expert insights on a specific topic, and how to overcoming a particular problem. Most webinars are on the longer side (30+ minutes) to allow for a strong educational element.
You can use your webinar to interview actual prospects, similar to how podcasts are used. This will help your webinars to perform two duties instead of one. By generating unique content, you will be able to establish a new lead while building a rapport.
Webimars also allow for live Q&A between the presenter and the viewers. The presenter can answer questions from viewers in real-time, which creates a more personal connection than if the presenter could not answer questions.
Content Marketing Strategy
Your content marketing strategy should be approached in the same way as your content marketing plan. There are a few key steps you should take in order to create an effective strategy.
1. Set SMART goals.
Part one of your content marketing strategy is to set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based. Your marketing and company goals should be specific to your business. Complementing these goals with more specific goals will help you to achieve success.
Here are some SMART goal examples:
- Improve brand awareness
- Boost revenue
- Increase conversions
- Improve brand loyalty
- Increase customer engagement
- Build rapport and trust among prospects and customers
- Attract strategic partners
2. Determine your KPIs.
After you have created your SMART goals, you need to set KPIs to measure your progress. KPIs are numbers that tell you how close you are to your goal.
| smart goal | related kpi |
| Brand awareness | Site traffic, social media followers, subscription sign-ups, mentions (by customers and partners) |
| Revenue | Daily sales, site traffic |
| Conversions | Conversion rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, associated shipping rate trends, competitive price trends |
| Brand loyalty | Returning customers, promoters, product reviews, referrals |
| Customer engagement | Likes, shares, follows, mentions, backlinks |
| Rapport and trust | Returning customers, promoters, followers, mentions |
| Strategic partners | New partnerships, mentions, backlinks |
3. Decide on the type of content.
Next, choose the type of content you’ll create. You should start by thinking about your target audience and buyer personas when you want to do this.
Answer the following questions about your target audience to help you narrow down the right types of content for them:
- What do they need from you?
- What challenges are they looking to overcome?
- Why do they need your product or service?
- How can you help them succeed?
- Where do they spend their time?
First, identify what types of content you want to create. Then, look back at the various types of content we reviewed earlier to decide which types of content you’ll create.
4. Choose your content channels.
Your specific content channels are the different ways you’ll distribute your content. Where will you share your content? Where will it live and be shared from?
The appropriate channel to work with will be evident for some of the content types. The channel you use will depend on the type of content you’re creating. For example, if you’re creating Facebook content, your channel will be the social platform itself.
5. Set a budget.
Now, set your budget. Content must be created with an audience and channel in mind.
Then, ask yourself the following questions to determine your budget:
- Do you need to purchase any software or technology to create the content (such as graphic design software like Adobe Photoshop, a subscription to Canva, a camera to take high-quality photos and videos)?
- Do you need to hire any content marketers or designers (such as artists, writers, editors, designers)?
- Do you need to pay for ad space?
- Do you need access to specific tools or resources to enhance or measure your specific type of content?
Track how your actions impact your budget so you know whether you need to spend more or less money than you originally thought.
6. Create and distribute the content.
The content you create should be easy for your audience to consume, so they are more likely to convert. In order to maintain a consistent output of content that you can share with your potential and current customers, you should use a social media calendar or an editorial content calendar.
This will help you to keep track of all the content being created by your team, as well as allowing you to schedule it in advance.
An editorial calendar can help you schedule and optimize your marketing content to boost conversions.
7. Analyze and measure results.
It is important to analyze and measure the results of your content marketing so that you can make any necessary changes to improve your strategy and reach more people.
Look at your SMART goals and KPIs to see if your content marketing strategy was successful. Did you achieve your goals and KPIs? Did you come close to reaching your goal, or were you off in your estimation?
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