Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content via channels such as social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, apps, press releases, print publications, and more. The goal is to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness, sales, engagement, and loyalty.

How to attract customers with content marketing

Content marketing is an online marketing strategy to attract and engage customers. Underlying that strategy is the belief that readers who take an interest in the content being posted will feel closer to the company—and to the product or service it’s trying to market. By regularly publishing content, your company can become a trusted source of information. That means that when it’s time for customers to make a buying decision they’ll think of you first for that specific product or service. Content marketing is generally not overly promotional: it focuses on informing or entertaining the audience rather than advertising to them. In the world of online marketing, the goal is to help potential customers find your company. You want to build a strong relationship that leads to sales. Compelling content that can find its audience can be one of the most cost-effective strategies to achieve this goal and attract sales leads.

Types of Content Marketing

There are many types of content marketing that you may choose to incorporate into your strategy — here are some of the most common:

1. Online Content Marketing

Online content marketing refers to any material you publish online, but more specifically, it refers to your web pages. A strong online content marketing strategy will help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and get you in front of the right people at the right time.

4. Blog Content Marketing

Blogs are a powerful type of inbound content and allow for a lot of creativity in terms of their purpose and topic. With a blog, you can do things like promote other internal and external content and blog articles with links, add social share buttons, and incorporate product information.

2. Social Media Content Marketing

With over 4.5 billion global social media users, it’s easy to understand why so many businesses invest in social media marketing. There are many platforms (such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat) to work with, and several ways you can create and share content on each of them (such as photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, stories).

5. Podcast Content Marketing

More than 60 million people listen to podcasts across the Spotify and Apple Podcasts platforms. For this reason, many businesses and media outlets have begun creating and sharing their own podcasts. Podcasts allow for a lot of creativity as they can be about any topic of choice. Additionally, you decide other factors related to the podcast such as cadence of episodes, who’s on the podcast, where you advertise the podcast, and how long episodes are.

3. Infographic Content Marketing

Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand, graphic format. With a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear images, infographics are a great way to effectively communicate your content. They work well if you’re trying to simplify an educational or complex topic so all audience members can understand it.

6. Video Content Marketing

According to Wyzowl research, 73% of consumers say they prefer to learn about a brand’s product or service through video. Additionally, video marketing can boost conversions, improve ROI, and help you build relationships with audience members. You may choose to share your video content on social media platforms, landing pages, or on a co-marketer’s website.

What type of content will you be able to produce consistently?

Even if you know that all of your competitors are producing video content, don’t try to create video content unless you know you can consistently publish high-quality video content. The key to winning with content marketing is consistency, so selecting a form of content you enjoy is important. Now that you know what content you’ll produce, you can map out the top, middle, and bottom-of-funnel content. It’s also worth noting that you don’t necessarily need a different form of content for each funnel stage. For example, you can create TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content with just blog posts. The reason it’s important to map out your marketing funnel at this stage is to ensure you have a clear call to action at each step to move the visitor forward in the buyer journey. Content marketing and SEO Content marketing makes it easy for good prospects to find your business. However, you can boost your efforts with search engine optimization (SEO). Here are a few important best practices: Keywords are the foundation of your SEO effort. These all-important words and phrases are the terms a prospect types into a search engine when they’re looking for a company, product, or service. When you include the right keywords in your content, you’ll attract more traffic.

The best keywords are:

• Plain-language: language your audience uses to describe their pain points and needs

• Relevant: keywords that match the expertise, products, and services you provide

• Specific: a combination of your focus, industry expertise, prospect pain points, and other relevant details SEO has evolved so that search success depends in part on how well your content does what it says it’ll do.

Search engines review content copy, assess its relevance, and determine whether it delivers on what the headline promises. Because of the importance search engines place on copy, using keywords throughout your content is important. Use the following guidelines:

• Focus on 1 to 2 keywords. Avoid “keyword stuffing” by writing about what matters to your prospects with a focus on just a few keyword phrases.

• Use keywords in the title. Make what the article is about clear and explicit.

• Use keywords throughout. Find a way of naturally incorporating your keywords into your content.

• Stay on topic. Good-quality content that provides advice related to a headline will perform best.