Content marketing is the creation and distribution of digital marketing collateral with the goal of increasing brand awareness, improving search engine rankings and generating audience interest. Businesses use content marketing to nurture leads and enable sales by using site analytics, keyword research and targeted strategy recommendations.
Why is a content marketing strategy important?
Creating a strategy that’s suited to your specific business and target audience is how you stay true to your brand and make marketing materials as effective as possible. It’s important to evaluate every asset for the value it adds to the strategy as a whole, and
then make adjustments as needed. A 360-degree content marketing strategy educates customers, nurtures prospects and closes sales.
How does SEO fit in?
In a practical sense, search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are one in the same.
To rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs), you need high-quality organic content. To know which keywords to target in your copy, you need SEO.
SEO is a foundational component of content marketing in that it is often the centerpiece of all strategies and campaigns. Optimizing your content allows you the opportunity to update your brand messaging for a modern audience, outrank competitors for high-value keywords and keep your web pages aligned with Google’s sitemap preferences.
To achieve your content marketing goals, SEO is often the best tactic to start with.
Ranking factors
Within the practice of SEO, there are specific ranking factors to consider. According to Google, there are more than 200 criteria the search engine weighs when it crawls and indexes your web pages. Based on how your site and your content fares in these assessments, an algorithm will serve your pages to searchers.
Some ranking signals are stronger than others, and Google doesn’t often reveal the exact weight of each one. What we do know is that the top factors include:
-
- Links.
- Content.
- RankBrain.
- Direct web traffc.
- Mobile responsive design.
- HTTPS.
- Anchor text keywords.
- User behavior signals
In layman’s terms, everything you publish on the web needs to 1) generate reputable backlinks, 2) be useful to readers and 3) have a strong click-through rate and dwell time.
You can’t do content without SEO, and you can’t do SEO without content – they are inseparable.
Benefits of content marketing
Some of the most prominent benefits include:

Cheaper conversions.

Faster sales.

Reduced marketing and sales overhead.

Low barrier to market entry.

Stronger lead generation and qualification.

Measurable, actionable results.

More traffic.

Higher search engine rankings.

Thought leadership.

Mind share.

Reputation management.

Email list building.
Unifying the sales and marketing teams is a prized goal of every company, but one that’s rarely achieved. With content marketing, both departments’ efforts feed into the same funnel, making scalable alignment as easy as ever.
For example, the marketing team can leverage insights gleaned from sales calls and customer feedback, while the sales department can complement their prospecting by distributing marketing collateral.
A clear way to look at the benefits of content marketing is to take a step back: What does your organization want to achieve? From there, you can tie your commercial objectives to specific content marketing goals and actions.
If your goal is improved lead quality, a targeted lead nurturing campaign would prove invaluable. Similarly, if your goal is thought leadership, investments in social media and organic content creation would be a worthwhile attack strategy.
Running content marketing campaigns empowers you to achieve any objective you need to, without wasting resources on short-term strategies or costly advertising.
B2C v B2B content marketing
Content marketing applications are industry-agnostic. Regardless of target market, geography, language or product, companies have to publicize their message and form a connection with customers.
In general, B2C is characterized by a heavier reliance on consumer-centric social media platforms, ecommerce websites, mobile-friendliness and shorter-form assets. Sales cycles are shorter and user expectations are extremely high.
Conversely, B2B content marketers typically make greater use of LinkedIn, long-form collateral, account-based strategies and niche audience development. Sales cycles can take months or years, and customers may have million-dollar RFPs.
Brief history of content marketing
Content marketing has been around for centuries; it just wasn’t referred to as “content marketing.”
If you take a broad view of the term, Benjamin Franklin’s publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732 is commonly credited with being the first example of content marketing. Franklin created and promoted content that his audience wanted to read as a way to increase awareness of his local printing business.
Fast forward to the 20th century and Michelin began publishing guides to Parisian attractions for an audience of 3,000 automobile owners – this was in 1900! Four years later, Jell-O created and distributed recipe pamphlets door to door to generate interest in just how versatile Jell-O mix was for the average homeowner.
Pre-internet, Proctor and Gamble perfected branded radio by broadcasting soap operas with strategic product placements aimed at stay-at-home moms. In the ’50s, Kellogg’s tailored their graphic design and brand messaging toward children, allowing them to sell more cereal.
Today, big brands dominate the web, and social media platforms have supplanted traditional advertising vehicles. It’s virtually impossible to succeed as a B2C or B2B enterprise without leveraging content marketing in its modern form.
How content marketing relates to traditional marketing
Traditional marketing refers to older, more conventional tactics used both in the past and even today. By this we mean:

Direct mail (brochures, flyers, coupons, cards, etc.).

Print advertising (magazines, trade publications, billboards, etc.).

Radio or TV commercials.

Telemarketing (cold calls, etc.).

Outdoor sales.
Content marketing examples
Because content marketing can take so many forms and speak to so many audiences and buyer personas, there are endless possibilities for what a single piece of content might look like.
Here are 7 content marketing examples, spanning various formats and buyer stages you might consider when building out your campaigns:
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