What Is Content Marketing? What You Need To Know
The Glorious Company Team
Content marketing is considered a core strategy by over 80 percent of marketers. Blogs aren't just a means of providing updates about company news and activities. They've become an invaluable tool for driving organic traffic to websites, building trust with customers, and improving lead generation.
Without content, you're relying on ads and word-of-mouth alone to bring in customers; your online presence is limited to a website at best. Content marketing brings your strategy to the next level and can help you reach far more people, while also providing them with helpful and relevant information.
Under the umbrella of content marketing, you have:
Blog posts or articles
Case studies
Ebooks
Social media posts
Email marketing campaigns
Webpages (homepages, landing pages, service pages)
Videos
Podcasts
White papers
It’s any content that serves to inform, educate, and engage your target audience.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is ideating a content strategy based on producing written and visual information designed to bring in more leads to your website and business.
Content marketing is a type of inbound marketing, which means that you're creating content to draw people to your business rather than pushing out promotional messages and ad campaigns. The idea behind it is that, if you provide helpful content and answers to questions, potential customers will come looking for more and engage with you.
It's not just about writing a good blog post or creating an interesting video. You need to be strategic about what type of content you create, where you distribute it, and the SEO best practices you implement—all while keeping your audience's interests in mind.
Why Is Content Marketing Important?
The process of content creation is costly in both time and money. So why should you bother? What is a content marketing strategy, after all?
Content marketing is vital, and it's one of the most effective marketing strategies known to man. Take a look at these statistics, and you'll soon see why:
CMI reports that 67 percent of marketers believe their content strategy generates leads; 72 percent say that it educates their audience; 63 percent report that it assists with loyalty and trust-building.
Content marketing generates more than 3 times the number of leads that outbound marketing strategies do—and it actually costs 62 percent less.
In a Google survey, 70 percent of respondents made a purchase after seeing a product on YouTube.
It's been proven time and again that content marketing is a must for any business that wants to grow and succeed.
A great example of content marketing—and arguably, one of the first examples in history—is The Furrow, John Deere's industry magazine. More than half a million people in the agricultural industry in North America alone read this magazine today, but did you know that it actually launched in 1895?
Credit: John Deere
This was long before anyone mentioned the words "content marketing," but The Furrow was an excellent example of it. John Deere provided readers with helpful, relevant content about the industry and their products without making a hard sell or pushing out promotional messages. Over a century later, it's still a thriving publication.
It's no surprise that this strategy worked; by providing customers with actionable information, they created trust and loyalty to the brand.
Content Marketing and the Sales Funnel
Many decades have passed since The Furrow launched, meaning we've had a long time to perfect the art of content marketing. We now understand that the best delivery method is to use a sales funnel, where content is tailored according to the user's stage in the sales lifecycle.
The thinking is that potential clients are more receptive to sales-based content once they've been “warmed up” with non-transactional, informative content. Here's how it works.
Top of the Funnel
Here, your brand is making first contact with your audience of potential clients. This is where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes into play.
What is content marketing in SEO?
SEO is the process of making the content on your website more discoverable to people searching for specific topics on search engines like Google. By using specific keywords in your content, you can draw this organic traffic to your website.
A few examples include:
Blog posts. Blog posts are articles that educate your audience about specific topics; they are sometimes part of a pillar page and topic cluster strategy, which makes your blog posts interrelated and interlinked.
Guest articles. If you can land an SEO-enriched blog post on a high domain authority website like Forbes or Entrepreneur, you'll gain tons of exposure with backlinks to your website.
Short videos (Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts). Videos grab attention immediately. If they're educational or entertaining, they can compel the user to click through to your website.
LinkedIn posts. LinkedIn is an excellent place to post educational content because it's what most people expect when scrolling their network. Write something worth reading, and your audience might just be motivated enough to research what the brand is behind these awesome ideas.
Your goal here is not to close the sale; it's to put your brand in the conscious awareness of the customer. A strong sales pitch right off the bat may only work if you're selling a high-demand product. Most of the time, you need to build a relationship first.
Middle of the Funnel
Once potential clients have clicked through and visited your website, it's time to convince them that you're worth their trust. Here are some examples of middle-of-the-funnel content:
Ebooks. People love more in-depth information that either teaches them something worthwhile or goes into detail on a specific topic, so why not give them something valuable? Ebooks are a fantastic way to provide in-demand information and also show off your brand's expertise. Ebooks can be gated (you ask for a lead’s contact information before they download it), or they can be with no strings attached.
Webinars. Your leads are more amenable to long-form content at this stage of the funnel; they're actively pursuing more information about your brand to either give or withhold their trust.
Case studies. Customer stories are a soft, yet powerful example of social proof for your brand. You aren't outright saying "We're the best," but the positive outcomes achieved by your past and current clients speak for themselves.
Worksheets and other PDF resources. People like to be given tangible content that they can use, as it makes them feel like they've gotten strong value from your brand.
From here, you can begin moving into more sales-based messaging; your clients have collected enough information to make an informed decision about your brand as a whole, and now it's time to nudge them in the right direction.
Bottom of the Funnel
Be aware that the bottom of the sales funnel does not always call for direct product advertising or calls to action. It definitely can include those things, but don't let go of the informational approach entirely.
Some content that works well here includes:
Videos of your products. People want to see what they're buying before they buy it, so give them the opportunity to see your goods in action. If you're a service-based company, videos of your team in action or interviews with experts are great for this.
Reports. Authoring reports where you reveal unique trends, stats, or behaviors in your industry, from your own research, boosts your credibility immediately. It positions you as the expert in your field and sets you apart from your competitors.
White papers. Service-based companies in particular can benefit from the in-depth, problem-solving nature of white papers. Brands selling CRM or ERP software, for instance, could use white papers to explain the research-backed advantages of their solution in detail.
Content marketing is a powerful tool, but it only works if you understand the different levels of engagement required for each stage of the funnel. With a combination of SEO-enriched blog posts, engaging videos, and informative resources like webinars and ebooks, you can make sure that your content reaches people who are interested in what you have to offer.
How to Implement a Content Marketing Strategy
Ready to start planning out your content strategy? Let's walk through the step-by-step process.
1. Know Your Audience
The sales funnel is a solid marketing theory – but only if you know your audience well enough to target them. A SaaS project management platform, for instance, isn't going to gain as much traction on Twitter as it would on LinkedIn; the B2B market resides in the latter, while the former is all about B2C.
Make use of different tools and methods to better understand who you're marketing to, so that you can personalize your content for maximum impact. SEO tools like Semrush, Google Analytics data, social media analytics, and even customer surveys all help this cause.
2. Decide on the Content Type
Got your target audience sorted out? Make a list of the platforms they're most likely to use and the content type that works best there.
On LinkedIn, for instance, text-based posts will do better than videos; Instagram is the exact opposite. For your website or blog, you'll need to decide how much of it should be informative versus promotional.
Don't be afraid to use multiple content forms. This is called a multi-stream content strategy, and it allows you to reach a wider audience.
3. Choose How and Where to Distribute Content
It's time to choose where and how to distribute your content. You can post it on your website or blog, of course. Don't forget to share it across social media and other channels, as well.
Make sure to optimize your posts for the platform they're on; make use of hashtags, captions that get straight to the point, and visuals that draw people in. And remember: always link back to your website.
4. Set Up a Content Calendar
The last step is to set up a content calendar. A simple Google Spreadsheet or Google Calendar works well for this, and they’re free. Any calendar app will also do.
Plan out when you'll post what content, where it will be posted, and which keywords to use for SEO purposes. You could also add in reminders to promote the same piece of content multiple times.
5. Monitor Results and Optimize
Don't forget to monitor the results you get from your content marketing campaigns. Google Analytics, Semrush or Ahrefs, and live SERP (search engine results pages) results will give you all the information you need to further optimize your content marketing plan.
A/B testing is also an excellent tactic in which you monitor two versions of a piece of content to see which one performs better. This way, you can tweak your strategy as needed and maximize the effectiveness of your efforts.
How to Use SEO to Get the Most From Your Content Marketing
SEO is a powerful tool when used in combination with content marketing.
When optimizing your content for search engines, make sure to use keywords that are relevant and related to the topic of your post (and which you know your audience is actually searching for). Use them strategically and moderately in titles, headings, body text, URLs and meta descriptions.
Try to keep up with SEO best practices, like writing to match the search intent. Your copy needs to match the headline and the topic, and it should be full of valuable information that readers will appreciate. Avoid filler, fluff, and keyword stuffing.
A very simple way to outperform competitors is to analyze their high-ranking blog posts—which you can research on the live SERPs—as a reference point, then add even more value, so you come out on top.
Repurpose Your Content for Greater Value
Working with a content marketing agency will produce a prolific output of content. That's why it's a good idea to repurpose your content whenever possible.
By transforming existing pieces into something new and fresh, you can get more mileage out of them without having to create something entirely from scratch each time. This will save you time in the long run and maximize your productivity. Done right, it will also keep readers engaged.
Perhaps you've got a blog post that is doing quite well in the SERPs. Why not borrow a paragraph or two, and post it on a social media platform? You can also post entire blog posts on LinkedIn and Medium, as well as repurpose blog posts for your email newsletters.
Make Content Marketing Work for Your Business
A marketing strategy doesn’t exist without content marketing. It's one of the most important elements of any digital marketing campaign, and it's essential to use it if you want to reach your target audience and stand out from the competition.
Content creation isn't easy, but with a bit of practice, you'll soon be able to create engaging and effective pieces that will help you build relationships with your readers. If you don’t want to do the heavy lifting yourself, you can always work with an agency like The Glorious Company for your all-in-one content solutions.
Have any questions? Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below.
Related blog posts you don’t want to miss:
How to Start a Blog and Make Money in 2023
Content Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: What's the Difference?