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How content marketing adds value to business
The internet is essentially made up of content. If we step back from our screens, we can see that the
internet is simply a means to navigate content, words, text, opinions, images, and videos.
Consumers (B2C) and businesses (B2B) are searching for and engaging with content all the time, so
content marketing is an opportunity for organizations to create the type of content that people want.
The marketing element can be seen as a strategic way to create content with the aim of building
brands and educating customers to the benefits of your products and services.
How does content marketing add value to a business?
Content marketing drives valuable search traffic and email and social media engagement to increase
the number of valuable actions taken by your target audience. It begins a relationship, a familiarity
and trust as you repeatedly show up when people search online for information or just to be
entertained.
Benefits of effective content marketing
Why should you use content marketing in your digital strategy? Here are some of the key ways it will
help:
Grow awareness of your brand or business.
Recruit advocates of your brand.
Increase and improve your search engine rankings (SEO).
Generate new business leads, nurture sales prospects, and convert customers.
Enhance understanding of your business proposition.
Content marketing is not just about promoting your business or brand. It's about forging a long-term
relationship of trust and familiarity with people.
Content marketing and the Buyer’s Journey
Just as the best strategies have a clear objective, the best content has a clear purpose, or intention.
So always make sure that your content has an identifiable intention. Why are you writing the content?
Consumers can easily spot a lack of intention – and when they do, they won't react to your content!
Let's look at the ways that your content intentions could align with the traditional sales funnel.
Awareness: Let potential customers know why you exist, what you stand for, and your unique
selling points (or USPs) compared to competitors. Tell potential customers what you do, how
you do it, and how you can solve a problem for your customers.
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Interest: Capture the audience’s attention beyond awareness and convince them of your
proposition. Get them interested!
Consideration: Give further details on what you do. Tell potential customers about your
expertise, price offerings, and other happy customers. Show why customers should choose
you over your competitors – demonstrate your experience, customer testimonials, and
expert knowledge. Always ask yourself, “What do customers need to know to help them say
‘yes’ to choosing your brand?” Give customers a reason to consider you as the solution to
their problem.
Conversion: Foster an enticing and personalized experience between your customers and
your business. This includes lead nurturing, adding value, managing customer expectations,
clear terms of service, requesting feedback, and community management. This will nudge
customers towards taking valuable actions, such as subscribing to a list, downloading a
brochure, buying a product, or signing up for a service.
Retention: Encourage repeat business but also highlight positive customer experiences for
new potential customers. This involves celebrating, or ‘heroing’, champion customers and
showcasing user generated content (UGC) through your content marketing channels.
Remember, it’s cheaper to retain existing customers than find new ones!
Qualities of effective content marketing
Once you’ve settled on the intention of your content, you need to polish it to that it delivers on your
business objectives. How can you do this?
Effective content will:
Be relevant.
Be personalized.
Be educational.
Be useful or entertaining.
Address needs and interests.
Include CTAs.
Demonstrate that you are the solution.
Types of marketing content
Broadly speaking, we can group content into two broad categories:
Topical content
Evergreen content
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Both types have benefits when it comes to creating content for your digital marketing efforts.
Topical
Topical content is content that ties into something that is happening now and typically has a short
lifespan. It is usually inspired by trending topics.
Topical content is usually shared on social media or email. Examples include:
Short written pieces
Tweets and social media posts
Memes, videos, and images
Audio content, including podcasts
Example
The J.P. Morgan Making Sense podcast is highly topical, reflecting on the latest news in finance and
discussing the market outlook. In each episode, the hosts tackle a complex issue affecting the global
economy. Interestingly, the podcast features experts from within the company, helping to position it
as a market leader. It also draws on its external connections to bring in well-known thinkers from the
finance world to discuss breaking news.
A similar approach would work well in any other knowledge-based service area!
Evergreen
The second content category is evergreen content. This is content that has a longer lifespan and is
generally of high value. It helps brands to drive conversions and brand affinity over a longer period of
time, as people will always be looking for this kind of ‘timeless ’content.
Examples include:
‘How-to’ articles
Video tutorials
Beginner’s guides
FAQs
Case studies
List articles
Checklists
Example
Hobby Lobby created a very detailed guide to knitting for a YouTube video series. The video has
attracted over 8 million views!
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It does an excellent job of explaining knitting for beginners, but it also ranks for a variety of SEO
keywords in what is an evergreen topic. The content was created in 2015 and it remains relevant
today. Putting the time into creating a truly comprehensive resource was worth it for Hobby Lobby.
The Hobby Lobby video aims to teach the basics of knitting in a no-nonsense way, giving the facts
unencumbered by distracting visuals or jarring music. The video is simply 14 minutes of instructions,
and not much else. However, people can follow the instruction in real time, knitting along with the
video.
This video also highlights how important it is to tailor your content to your audience. As the title says,
this video is aimed at beginners, and the content was created with beginner knitters in mind. They
don’t want to get overwhelmed with background information or get lost in fast-paced instruction.
They want content that meets their needs, at their pace. Also, for many of the people in the
audience, knitting is a hobby, an enjoyable project. The video also aims to be enjoyable, but
instructional.
What is a content marketing strategy?
A content marketing strategy is an ever-evolving plan that outlines your content marketing goals and
target audience.
It determines the content needs of your target audience.
It defines their user journey, content formats, and content styling.
It aligns to business objectives, and it is fully integrated with the wider business.
It is ‘ever evolving’ and should always be tweaked and modified to adapt to changes in the
market and how people are consuming your content.
A content marketing strategy is essential for quality content marketing, as it sets out the
objectives and scope of your project. Your strategy will help you to keep everything on track
while providing a roadmap for execution of the different aspects in the strategy.
Bear in mind that your content strategy aims to communicate your brand or campaign messaging
consistently across different creative assets and channels.
Basically, your creative strategy sets out your messaging and tone to be applied to all creative assets
and content pieces. These pieces include:
Website creative
Email templates
Promotional videos
Banner ads for digital display and social media
Any offline creative pieces such as TV, radio, or print
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Example
The smoothie producer Innocent has a very clear tone and brand identity, which it communicates
through all its creative assets.
It uses playful design on its website, as well as its product design. The key here is that while it is
consistent in tone, it also is adaptive to different media environments. For instance, Innocent has a
distinctive voice on social media that responds to the audience’s needs in that context. It is more
conversational and humorous on Facebook than it would be on a TV ad, for example.
It’s important to note that developing a content marketing strategy is a cyclical process that evolves
when the data and performance indicate that you need to adapt your content in relation to your
marketing goals. Don’t fall into the trap of sticking to a rigid strategy that is no longer fit for purpose.
Moving through a complete content strategy process will help you create meaningful content for
your target audience. This will also allow you to apply learnings from one phase of the campaign to
another and to optimize future campaigns.
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