What Is Content Marketing? Definition, Types, Best Practices, Benefits, and Examples
What Is Content Marketing? Definition, Types, Best Practices, Benefits, and Examples
In this article, we’ll look at the concept of content marketing, various types of content marketing channels, the benefits of content marketing, and best practices for 2020. Let’s begin!
Table of Contents
- What Is Content Marketing?
- 7 Types of Content Marketing Channels
- What Is a Content Marketing Funnel?
- 5 Best Practices for Content Marketing in 2020
- 3 Benefits of Content Marketing for Businesses
What Is Content Marketing?
Seth Godin, the marketing guru, has famously said, “Content marketing is the only marketing left.” The quote may seem preposterous on the surface level, but when you think about it, that has always been the case. Let’s look at two instances.
When deciding on something as basic as which toothpaste to buy, your decision can be influenced by a television commercial or newspaper ad. As a CMO, if you are contemplating which marketing automation tool to implement at your multinational corporation, your decision could be guided by a stream of content consisting of research, evaluation, product demos, and trials.
You may have realized that content is at the core of any marketing activity, whether online or offline. And while the approaches for B2B and B2C marketing differ significantly, they both prominently rely on content marketing.
Content can be presented in many formats such as blog posts, infographics, podcasts, videos, and downloadable/gated content such as webinars, ebooks, whitepapers, and industry reports. While all these content formats are not suitable for B2C brands, they use many of these formats in different ways up to a certain degree. For instance, besides product videos and commercials, B2C brands capitalize on product comparisons, product ratings and reviews, etc.
7 Types of Content Marketing Channels
To make content marketing work for your organization, you need to have a strategy that will take your content to your audience. To ensure that the content you create gets eyeballs, here are seven types of content marketing channels that need to be part of your strategy:
1. Website
The website serves as the home base for your content marketing initiatives. Any piece of content you create can be hosted on your website or blog. For example, articles, infographics, and gated content will be posted to your blog. And although you might use third-party services for videos, podcasts, and webinars, they’ll be embedded in your blog posts or other parts of the website to provide a cohesive content experience.
This is where you have full liberty to try out different content types and formats. Apart from articles, video, and audio, you can experiment with lists, checklists, curation, repurposed, infographics, and interviews among others.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The role of SEO in content marketing is vast. Right from ensuring that proper technical and on-page SEO practices are implemented on the website, to having a comprehensive off-page SEO strategy (link building, guest blogging, etc.), it determines the success of your content marketing strategy.
The combination of all these aspects boosts your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). A successful SEO strategy takes into account a diverse content mix to leave no stone unturned.
3. Email Marketing
According to Data & Marketing Association’s (DMA) Marketer Email Tracker 2019 report, the ROI of email marketing is 420%, i.e., for every dollar spent on email marketing, you’ll generate a revenue of $42. And these results are possible due to the powerful audience segmentation, targeting, and automation features of email marketing.
Email marketing can help you distribute your content among your target audience. You can segregate your audience depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey and its relevant type of content or offers.
4. Social Media Marketing
Social media platforms allow you to amplify your content distribution efforts. If you’re posting on social media platforms organically, you need to double down on enagaging formats to increase your reach. For example, since video is favored by social media platforms and gets more reach compared to text posts, do more of that.
You can also use paid ads to take your content to your most relevant audience through the platform’s targeting capabilities. Besides this, social media is a powerful channel to initiate a dialogue with your audience (through chat) and build a community (though groups).
Learn More: What Is Social Media Marketing? Platforms, Strategies, Tools, Benefits and Best Practices
5. Digital Advertising
Digital advertising consists of many ad channels and formats to connect with your audience. One of the most common digital ad formats is search engine marketing (SEM), wherein your ads appear at the top and bottom of SERPs for specific keywords. But since SEM is not the most potent format for content marketing, let’s look at other ways as well.
You can also take your content to your audience through display and native ads. Ensuring that your content matches with the context of the webpage your ad appears on, you significantly improve the chances of visitors coming to your website. The developments in programmatic advertising have allowed both – advertisers and publishers to automate a huge chunk of activities.
Learn More: What Is Digital Marketing? Definition, Types, Best Practices with Examples
6. Mobile Marketing
With over 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide, it’s a no brainer that marketers have to ensure that their content marketing strategy adapts to mobile devices as well. The basics of mobile marketing from the content marketing perspective include designing a mobile-friendly or responsive website (that adapts to any device size) and emails to be readable across devices, and ensuring that the mobile experience isn’t compromised.
If your business has a mobile app, you can use it to distribute content through push notifications and the onboarding procedure. You can also tweak your app from time to time, to ensure better user experience based on customer feedback.
7. Content Repurposing
You can convert your content pieces into different formats to diversify your content mix. You can turn a blog post into an infographic and video. If you recently hosted a webinar, you can upload it to YouTube and distribute the slide deck on SlideShare. To boost the reach of your podcast, you can embed it on a webpage and include podcast/show notes to get SEO benefits.
Learn More: Top 20 Content Marketing Strategies For Your 2020 Plan
What Is a Content Marketing Funnel?
A content marketing funnel is a framework that allows organizations to guide their audience through the buyer’s journey using content and its associated distribution channels.
You may have heard of terms such as TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU with respect to marketing or sales funnels. In this section, we’ll look at these terms and how they relate to the stages of the buyer’s journey.
Stage 1: Top of the Funnel (TOFU)
This stage is equivalent to the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. In this stage, the buyer is aware of their problem and looking for a solution. Sometimes they know something’s amiss, but they can’t figure it out on their own.
Your goal at the TOFU is to help them identify their problem or make them aware of your solution, while implicitly driving brand awareness. You don’t want your brand name to be in their face, but your goal should be to educate and inform and help them solve their problem. It is also essential to give them a genuine reason to pick your solution compared to competitors’.
Since the prospect will actively be looking for a solution, you must know the terms and phrases they use to describe their pain points. This will help you create a keyword-driven content strategy. The content formats that work the best for this stage include blog posts, videos, podcasts, downloadable content, and social media.
Example: Moz is an SEO software that helps with keyword research, site audits, link building, etc. Moz has created the Beginner’s Guide to SEO to attract an audience from the awareness stage to acquaint them with SEO and how they can implement it on their website.
Stage 2: Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
Once the user enters the consideration stage, they know your product and are evaluating your offerings against your competitors. The content created for MOFU should be centered around the queries the prospect might have about your offerings. The goal is to convince them that your product is the best fit for their requirements.
Keep in mind that the buyer still hasn’t made any concrete decision, and any attempts to make a hard sell might tick them off. Examples of content for MOFU include case studies, product videos, and webinars, product FAQs, datasheets, buyer’s guides, etc.
Example: OnePlus, a smartphone company, has created an elaborate product specification sheet on its website, which users can go through to understand the product.
Stage 3: Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
In the purchase stage, the prospect has decided to go ahead with your offerings. To successfully facilitate the purchase process, you need to make it as smooth as possible, and content helps significantly in this case.
The BOFU is a convergence of various marketing and sales activities supported by content. It consists of free trials, discounts or coupon codes, social proof (testimonials, ratings, and reviews), and a seamless sales process. You can also support it through lead nurturing (email marketing and remarketing).
Once the prospect becomes your customer, your content strategy should assist them during onboarding. The purpose is to build a retention and referral process that can work passively through the content.
Example: Netflix, on its registration page, has laid out the pricing details for its different plans to help users understand the features for its pricing slabs. Apart from this, Netflix also provides a 30-day trial to enable users to get the hang of the platform.
5 Best Practices for Content Marketing in 2020
Here are five best practices to integrate in your content marketing strategy to succeed in 2020:
1. More Voice and Video
Videos have become an essential medium to consume information. Considering this change, marketers should invest in video marketing this year. This shift needs some forethought with respect to the improvements in the content strategy and logistics, but the sooner you implement, the faster you’ll see results. You don’t need to start with posh production values. Simple animated videos with engaging content could do the trick.
Voice can be divided into two aspects. The first aspect is the rise of voice search. To suit your content to conversational AI, make it conversational and FAQ styled. The second aspect is podcasting, which can go hand-in-hand with video marketing. You can launch your podcast and support it with video marketing or vice versa.
2. Create More MOFU Content
In the pursuit of organic rankings and converting leads, organizations capitalize on TOFU and BOFU content but miss out on optimizing MOFU content. Along with the content formats we saw earlier, lead nurturing plays a crucial part in keeping leads engaged during the consideration phase. It’s necessary to keep popping-up in your prospects inbox, and social media news feeds to stay on top of their minds.
Example: Canva sends out a weekly newsletter with tips and tricks to sustain subscriber engagement.
3. Think Mobile-first
Since users now prefer consuming content on the go, ensure it can be viewed properly on mobile devices and tablets. Whether it’s a video or an email, if it doesn’t translate well on smartphones, your content marketing efforts won’t pay off.
Similarly, it is enticing to create a website that has fancy functionalities, but it is necessary to give equal importance to usability. It is wise to check out your mobile traffic stats in your analytics tool to get a better understanding of your audience and help you optimize the mobile experience.
Learn More: 10 Best Content Management Systems (CMS) Software in 2020
4. Capture User’s Attention Early On
There has been a debate around the duration of the average human attention span. While it has been debunked that the human attention span is not shrinking, you need to take into account that the easy accessibility to content means users have the novelty to skip something entirely if they don’t like it.
So, when creating any piece of content, ensure that you provide a hook or an incentive to keep them glued to your content. For eample, you can provide a summary as teaser before the introduction of a blog post, or build anticipation in the video right at the beginning so that your audience watches the whole video. You can also focus on short-form videos on social media or create interactive content to invite the audience participation from the get-go.
Example: Neil Patel in the following video mentions 5 Actionable Tactics that set the intention even before users click on the video.
5. Strengthen Your Content Distribution Strategy
SEO takes time. While you are making efforts to build your organic rankings, don’t ignore the results a solid content distribution strategy can bring. Evaluate all the owned, earned, and paid media alternatives you have and create a content distribution strategy that is coherent with your content marketing funnel. To get a better understanding of the topic, we encourage you to read our article on content distribution.
3 Benefits of Content Marketing for Businesses
Implementing a content marketing framework is a challenge, but a well-thought content marketing strategy brings long-term benefits for the organization. Here are three such benefits of content marketing for businesses:
1. Builds Credibility
Content marketing helps marketers drive brand awareness. Brands that thrive in the market are often perceived as industry leaders. That’s why organizations use content marketing to develop thought leadership. Brands demonstrate their expertise through content, which helps them build their credibility in their industry.
2. Brings Down Costs in the Longer Run
Creating content requires a significant chunk of investment, especially now, since you need to have a diverse mix of content. While this may seem like an expense, as you build your credibility and rankings, your promotion/advertising, lead generation, and nurturing costs will come down significantly as the content machine becomes self-sustaining.
3. Shorter Conversion Cycle
Converting prospects into customers can be a challenge if content marketing is not a part of the sales process. Content created for each stage of the marketing funnel enables visitors to self-qualify for the next stage and entails salespeople to get into the picture only when they have to make the final sale. This efficiency during the conversion process allows organizations to target a broader audience base.
Closing Thoughts
Content marketing offers benefits that compound over time. You will end up saving resources and increasing sales and ROI while boosting search rankings. But it all takes a lot of effort and experimentation.
A great place to start your content marketing initiative is to assess where you are right now in terms of time, budget, and resources, your goals, and how you can create a content marketing framework under current circumstances. Once you start seeing results, you can scale what works and keep modifying your strategy over time.
How do you plan to get started with content marketing at your organization? We’re keen to know! Tell us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.
