What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Typically, the goal of content marketing is to educate or entertain an audience in order to establish trust or gain an audience's business. In other words, its primary aim is not explicitly to make sales. Content marketers typically focus on topics that they know their target audiences are interested in; they also try to use this opportunity to build recognition for their brand.

Although content marketing can be used as part of a wider digital marketing strategy, it’s best utilised in its own right. Think about curating and promoting content that will help establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.

We recommend that you think of content marketing as a way to start conversations with your customers. The aim is to educate your audience with helpful information, rather than directly promoting your brand. This approach is ideal for building trust and credibility, which can help you develop long-lasting relationships with your customers.

Although content marketing can be used as part of a wider digital marketing strategy, it’s best utilised in its own right. Think about curating and promoting content that will help establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.

The aim of content marketing is to educate potential customers by providing valuable information that helps solve their problems, rather than directly promoting your products or services.

• For example, a plumbing business could publish a blog post called "When Should You Replace Your Pipes?" and illustrate the topic with examples of old pipes. This is what you want!
• The key to content marketing is consistency. If you can commit to publishing regularly in some form or another — say, a blog post twice per week — you'll find that your audience begins to rely on your content for regular updates on a given topic. The more they come to trust your expertise, the more likely they are to want to use your services when they need them.

There are an infinite number of ways you can use content to market your business online. For example, you could start a blog, produce video content, or publish podcasts.

There are an infinite number of ways you can use content to market your business online. For example, you could start a blog, produce video content, or publish podcasts.

You could also create social media posts, infographics, eBooks, whitepapers, newsletters, case studies, and email marketing campaigns. Or you could even create online courses or host webinars.

Content gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way—to share information that's useful and valuable to them free of charge.

In addition to identifying your target audience and the channels they use to consume information online, you also need to consider how your content can help meet their needs.

• Creating content that offers solutions to problems.
• Helping your target audience achieve their goals.
• Being helpful, not promotional.
• Investing in the long-term viability of your business.

Content marketing is a way for brands to provide value to customers by sharing useful and informative content. By creating valuable and relevant content that helps solve customer problems, you can build meaningful relationships with customers for the long term and establish yourself as a trusted source of information.

Well-written, original content with a clear call-to-action can help you increase traffic to your website, improve search engine rankings, generate more leads and build brand awareness – all at the same time!

How can content marketing help you?

Content marketing allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise, promote your brand and products, connect with your audience, and generate leads and sales – all at the same time. It can even help you improve your search engine rankings. That's a lot of bang for not much buck!

And it's not just a boon for businesses:

• Subscribers get free access to premium content.
• Content creators get paid based on how many downloads they receive (and no need to worry about piracy).

Conclusion

Content marketing is a lot like dating. You can't just show up with a bunch of flowers and expect to win the person over. You need to know what they want, what they're interested in, and how they feel about things before you even think about making your move.

That's why we've put together this guide: to help you understand the basics of content marketing so that you can start creating content that will actually help people—and get them to pay attention to what you have to say!

We've also included some examples of how other companies have used content marketing effectively, as well as some quick use cases for you to reference when trying out our tips for yourself.