What is Content Marketing?

When I decided to launch my own marketing agency, more often than not, friends and family would ask, “So what is content marketing?”. It’s quite simple really. Instead of selling directly to your targeted audience, we create value, trust, and community through content.

In this article I’m going to expand on that statement and if you still have questions, please feel free to contact me at karen@digitalhugsmarketing.com.

CONTENT MARKETING DEFINED

The content marketing institute defines content marketing as “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.”

…So there’s that, but I have a feeling there still may be some confusion.

Here’s a very simple example: You’re a lawn care company and you create a brochure. This brochure contains 5 tips with visuals of how to ready your lawn and garden for the coming winter months.

Of course you add your contact information on the last page but you don’t directly list of the services you provide or anything like that. It is purely “value” for your clients and target market.

You distribute this brochure virtually through email as well as physically by mail. You also add the content (the 5 tips) to your business Facebook page and your website via a blog post.

Bam. Content marketing. You educate. You create trust. You create a community.

What was that? Your looking to get clients not just educate?

DemandMetric states that “Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.”

Content marketing has been proven to be one of the most effective, long-term solutions for creating a loyal customer base. Not to mention all the other benefits from search engine rankings to social media followings (we’ll discuss this in more detail below).

Are you with me now? Let’s drill down.

TYPES OF CONTENT

When you think of the word content, many automatically narrow their mindset to articles and images. The types of content you can use in your content marketing campaigns is actually pretty extensive and is growing all the time as new technologies evolve.

Here is a basic list of commonly used content in marketing campaigns:

• Static blog posts or articles
• Video
• E-Books
• Whitepapers
• Case studies
• Interviews or Q&A’s (Video or written)
• Podcast
• Vlog
• Webinars or presentations (Live or filmed)
• Infographic
• Testimonials or review
• Memes or images as a story
• Newsletters
• Best practices
• Press release
• A quiz or survey results

BENEFITS OF CONTENT MARKETING

The benefits of content marketing are extensive and really depends on the strategy your using, the types of content, and the frequency of your campaigns. Here are the top 8 benefits of using content marketing:

1. More content for your marketing campaigns.
Many companies struggle with lack of content to use for their social media, digital marketing, and other traditional campaigns. By creating strategic content campaigns first, you will always have something to start with when expanding the creative into your other campaigns. Like display ads or paid social media posts or even your e-newsletters.

2. Higher visibility in search engines (SEO).
Wikipedia describes Search engine optimization (SEO) as the process of growing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results and excludes direct traffic and the purchase of paid placement.So basically getting your website or landing pages to rank as high as possible on Google and other search engines. One of the best ways to do this, is to regularly add useful content to your website that Google determines is written by an expert, is authoritative, and is trustworthy or E.A.T (we’ll get into this more in another post).

3. Social following and community.
When you regularly add valuable content to your social media channels, your following will grow. Period. There are several tactics to execrate this process but the most important step is to share and engage with your audience.

4. Garnering trust.
By offering value to your clients and potential clients without strings attached other than their loyalty, is extremely important in today’s customer experience. Using valuable content to do this creates a non-invasive, touch-point to interact with your audience.

5. Brand reputation.
This goes hand-in-hand with trust. Once your client base trusts you, your reputation can only go up from their. When your target market reads or watches the free value your are offering through your content, they’re building an impression of your brand. If they trust you, they’ll think more highly of your brand. Furthermore, they’ll perceive of you as an established thought leader in your industry.

6. Word-of-mouth (referrals)
This is what happens after you gain trust and build your brand reputation. People will recommend you to their communities. If you question this, just check out daily feeds on Nextdoor. People like to help other people. And if you help them, they will help you.

7. Reach.
By growing your audience through SEO, social media, referrals, and lists. You are extending your reach. Growing your potential client base. That’s pretty self-explanatory.

8. Compounding value.
This for me is the ultimate reward of content marketing. Over time, with consistent valuable content delivery and engagement. You will rank higher and higher on search engines. You will continue to gain clients. You will grow your social following. You will improve your reputation. And you will make more money.You will do all of this and you will send less on your marketing over time. By continually investing in your content marketing efforts, you will grow your organic reach to the point that you won’t need to budget as much for paid marketing campaigns.

EXAMPLES OF GOOD CONTENT MARKETING

There are so many great examples of content marketing that I come across everyday. From the local grocery store that shares recipes on their blog and social accounts to the hardware store that hosts virtual DIY classes. We interact with content marketing everyday. Here are a few (billion dollar) companies that are the epitome of content marketing:

1. Hubspot

   Hubspot is essentially a marketing platform built for business professionals to manage their marketing, sales, and customer experience efforts. They built their following and success on the methodology of Inbound marketing (content marketing fits into this). Not only do they provide you with the tools to deliver and organize your efforts, they used this method to grow their own company to be valued at over a billion dollars. Check out their blog here.

2. Glossier

   Launched in 2014 by Emily Weiss, Glossier, Inc. was founded on the belief that beauty isn’t built in a boardroom—it happens when you’re a part of the process. They got their start with Into The Gloss, a beauty blog devoted to people sharing the products they love, and a source for inspiration and information (valuable content). Quickly growing a readership and a loyal social following, Emily used the platform to launch her cosmetics brand and the rest is now history. Today, only 6 short years later, Glossier is now valued at over $1.2 billion. Learn more about Emily’s path to success in this Vanity Fair exclusive.

3. Mail Chimp

   Mail Chimp was launched in the early 2000’s as an alternative to the oversized, expensive email software platforms. It was specially designed for small businesses and marketers looking to reach their customers through email marketing, which was still relatively new at that time. Today, Mail Chimp has grown into one of the most popular all-in-one integrated marketing platforms used globally every day by small business owners. They are well-known for their content sharing and quirky ad campaigns. Whether you use the service or not, you will be sure to find value from their website and blog. They recently also acquired print publisher, Courier, thus extending their content reach into print. They had an estimated valuation of $4.2 billion in 2018.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out our other posts on the Big Digital Hug blog.

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