What is content marketing?
Content marketing is as a form of marketing which relies on the ongoing creation of written, audio, video and visual content in order to build relationships with customers. This might sound like a wide definition, but that’s because it is. Content marketing encompasses everything from corporate podcasting to blogging, making viral videos and more!
Content marketing relies on a similar set of strategies to inbound marketing, which is all about bringing people to you by providing something of value instead of going out and interrupting them. If someone is searching for information and they land on your website because you’re providing it, that’s inbound marketing in action. If you’re running ads on the TV or on social networking sites then you’re using outbound marketing.
Content marketing, inbound marketing and digital marketing all use a similar set of techniques, but the three of them are very slightly different with some overlaps. Content marketing can use both inbound marketing and digital marketing as techniques with which to deliver the content, but the three terms aren’t synonymous. As a general rule of thumb, just remember that if you’re creating content and someone’s consuming it, you’re carrying out content marketing.
Why content marketing is so important these days?
There are plenty of good reasons to invest in content marketing and the statistics don’t lie:
- it generates three times as many leads as paid search
- it leads cost 62% less than they do when using outbound marketing
- a whopping 82% of marketers who blog see a positive return on investment from it.
Advantages of content marketing
Content marketing has numerous advantages that mark it out against other approaches. One of the most obvious is the fact that content marketing leads to a snowball effect in which it becomes more and more effective over time. Done correctly, your audience will continue to grow and grow while your old evergreen great content will still continue to bring people in.
Some people worry that content marketing is a bad idea, often asking questions like, “Why should we spend money creating content to entertain people or to share our expertise for free?” The truth is that if you don’t do it then someone else will step in and take those potential customers away from you. We’re already at the point at which if you’re not creating content, you’re going to fall behind. You don’t really get a choice.
5 types of content marketing
When it comes to the different types of content marketing that are available to you, the list is virtually endless. Still, you can generally categorise the different types of content under five key headings:
- Audio Content: Podcasts, audio downloads, etc.
- Tools: Such as free software, download templates, etc.
- Video Content: On Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.
- Visual Content: Such as infographics, GIFs, memes, photography, etc.
- Written Content: Blogs, social networking updates, case studies, ebooks, whitepapers, etc.
Remember, though, that this list is far from comprehensive, and that there are all sorts of different types of content. It’s your job as a marketer to find out both the content types that your target audience is interested in consuming and to identify subjects that they care about. Content marketing is all about reaching the right people with the right message in the right place at the right time.
Content marketing examples
To help you to wrap your head around content marketing and the concepts involved with it, we’ve picked out five of the best examples of content marketing in action. Strap yourself in and get ready to learn best practices from some of the most well-known content campaigns out there.1. The Michelin Guide
2. GoPro
