What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is tricky to define as it serves as an umbrella term for lots of types of creative marketing. But in short, it is a long-term strategy that focuses on building strong relationships with your target audience by giving them relevant, high-quality content on a regular basis. Read on to find out what types of content marketing there are, which types may work for you and how to write content with purpose.

How To Define Content Marketing

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

“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.”

In our eyes, whatever form your content marketing takes, the four most important purposes of content are:

To entertain
To inspire
To educate
To convince

In doing these things, you will be able to gain and retain customers, provide them with content they can’t get elsewhere, and ultimately increase your sales and revenue.

What Types Of Content Marketing Are There?

There are so many different types of content out there, and each type has its own intended purpose and audience. Here are a few well-known types of content that are worth spending time and effort on creating:

Blog posts
Videos
Infographics
On-page copy
FAQs
Product descriptions
Case studies
Podcasts
Email marketing/newsletters
Social media
Webinars
Whitepapers
Website headers and footers

For more in-depth information into each type of content marketing, how to create and use them, take a look at our free content marketing eBook.

What Types Of Content Work?

What content types work for your business will be unique to your product or service offering and who your target customers are. However, as a general rule, these three areas of content should have a useful purpose in your digital marketing strategy:

User-based content: User-based content is unique to your company and may include case studies about the amazing clients you’ve worked with, or interviews with clients or employees that only you would have access to. Presented in an original way, this type of content is sure to be shared; it’s the type of content prospective clients want to see before they enquire.
Analytical content: This type of content works well because it cannot be replicated by others. A comprehensive guide is great, especially if it’s about a topic that only you know about! Users are likely to turn to these guides when they want to learn about a certain topic. Content based on surveys or research (such as whitepapers), will require a lot more manpower and resources but are fantastic because they offer truly unique data that you can present in a way that readers will want to share.
Interactive content: This content type could be the most successful if done well. How can you present your content in a creative and interactive way? How can you engage users? Why will users want to share it? Consider creating something such as a dazzling infographic that presents a process or answers a key question based on keyword research related to your business.

How To Write Content For Your Business

Being a good content marketer doesn’t happen by chance. Four factors to bear in mind when planning, creating and measuring the performance of your content are:

Don’t just create content for the sake of it: Content should always be interesting and targeted at building a relationship with your visitors.
Monitor the performance of the content: Look at the number of visitors and page views, the average time spent on the page, the bounce rate and the conversion rate to see how well your content is doing.
Keep the content up to date: If something becomes stale, write a new version and link the old version to the new. Alternatively, you could amend the existing content and make a note of when the content was updated and why.
Create content on a regular schedule and stick to it: Plan ahead with a content calendar but be prepared to make adjustments to that calendar should events dictate.

If you need help with any of the above, SilverDisc can help!

You can find a wider range of examples of the types of content marketing worth utilising, and clear examples of how to do so in our Ultimate Content Marketing eBook.

For further information surrounding the world of content marketing, why not explore the content marketing portion of the SilverDisc Knowledge Centre, where you’ll find interesting articles such as these:

We'll show you how to connect with your customers, write with purpose and continuously measure results to ensure your website is driving traffic and conversions to help your business grow. If you need help with anything to do with your content marketing strategy, contact SilverDisc today!