What Is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is one of the most important specialisations of digital marketing. It’s about how you market the product/service online using the right content. Content Marketing is all about storytelling because every great brand is made up of great content. Content marketing is at the heart of every digital marketing initiative. Growing technology, demographic diversity and ever-growing media consumption have really impacted the way individuals consume information. People really want content that will help them make good purchase decisions but at the same time, don’t want to be told what to do. A really good content marketing strategy can really help you build a loyal customer base by driving more traffic to your website, boost your search engine ranks, and give the audience a reason to share and create conversations about your content.

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 today’s online marketplace, buyers traverse 60% - 90% of the sales funnel by
themselves and then contact the brand person as opposed to the previous decades where salespersons were paid to find out potential customers for the product/service.

Most of the consumers today resort to online purchasing or researching the product well online before they step into the store. Why is this happening?

Because of the creation of relevant, highly valuable content which engages the right target audience and educating them as well. The advantages of content marketing are that it increases brand awareness as more and more people come in contact with the brand information online. It also is very cost effective as content once generated will serve for a lifetime with timely upgradations.

Types of Content Marketing

Let’s look at the various forms/types of content that’s produced in the market.

Blog

Blogs are long-form content of around 350-1000 words on various topics in the
company’s functional niche. For example, an automobile company writing blogs about how to increase speed in cars, or how to purchase the right car, etc. Blogs are used by companies to cross-promote their services and to connect with their TG.

Ebooks

If you’re keen on giving out some valuable information that’s educative, ebooks can do the trick. This helps in gathering customer data while you let them download your ebook which has valuable information in terms of content and visuals, both.

Infographics

Infographics work really well. As the name suggests, they are a mix of information and graphics, a visual representation of content. With minimal wordings, here the visuals speak the most.

Videos

Video content is timeless and people today are watching 150 million hours of videos on YouTube, today. Almost 62% of marketers have rated videos as an effective tool for content marketing, says research by CMI. This type of content is more engaging and works better with the audience nowadays.

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