What is Content Marketing? A Full Guide [2023]

In today's fast-paced digital world, businesses and brands are continuously vying for consumer attention, making it essential to create captivating, relevant, and valuable content. 

Enter content marketing, a strategic approach that has rapidly emerged as a cornerstone of modern marketing efforts. 

This article delves into the intricate world of content marketing, exploring its core elements, purpose, and benefits for businesses of all sizes. 

By understanding the essence of content marketing, organizations can effectively engage their target audiences, foster lasting relationships, and ultimately drive growth and success in an increasingly competitive landscape.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, consistent, and relevant content to attract, engage, and retain a specific target audience. The primary goal is to establish trust, build brand awareness, and foster customer loyalty, eventually leading to increased sales and customer retention. 

In contrast to traditional advertising, content marketing focuses on delivering value through educational, informative, or entertaining content, which subtly promotes the brand while addressing the audience's needs and interests.

Contrary to what most people think, content marketing isn’t just about written content. It includes using a variety of channels to promote content.

The most common content marketing channels generally include:

Blogging 

Blogs are a powerful content marketing channel, providing a platform for sharing in-depth articles, expert insights, and valuable tips that cater to your target audience's interests. 

Regularly publishing high-quality content on your blog can establish your brand as an authority in your industry and improve search engine visibility.

Social Media

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest offer unique opportunities for engaging your audience with visually appealing and shareable content. 

Tailoring your content to each platform's user base and optimizing it for each platform's algorithm can drive organic reach and audience growth.

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters and promotional campaigns enable you to maintain direct communication with your audience, delivering personalized content straight to their inboxes. 

By segmenting your email list and using targeted campaigns, you can provide relevant content that meets the specific needs and interests of each subscriber group.

Following a dedicated outbound email strategy can help you attract a wider audience and build a loyal reader base. 

Video Marketing

Videos offer an engaging and versatile format for storytelling, tutorials, interviews, and more. We leverage video in many different pieces, such as interviews with fractional employees. Check out our interview with Eva Tang, our Head of Growth.

Platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, as well as native video features on social media platforms, allow you to reach a vast audience with entertaining, informative, and shareable content.

Podcasts

Podcasts are an increasingly popular content marketing channel, providing an on-demand and easily accessible format for sharing information, interviews, and stories. 

By creating a podcast relevant to your industry or niche, you can reach an engaged audience and build brand authority.

Webinars

Webinars offer a dynamic and interactive way to present valuable information and engage your audience in real-time. 

Hosting webinars on topics relevant to your industry can help position your brand as a thought leader and help generate leads.

The 5 Key Benefits of Content Marketing

Here are just some of the many key benefits of investing in a comprehensive content marketing strategy:

1. Building Brand Awareness

Content marketing enables businesses to create and share informative, educational, or entertaining content that showcases their expertise and unique selling points. This helps establish brand identity and credibility in the market, making it easier for customers to recognize and trust the brand.

2. Attracting and Retaining Customers

One of the biggest advantages of content marketing is that it helps you provide valuable content to your customers, and to potential audiences. This is great for attracting new audiences; if someone likes the content you’re producing, they’re obviously more likely to choose your product or service. 

By keeping customers informed, entertained, and educated, businesses can foster a strong connection, demonstrating their commitment to their audience's success and well-being. 

This consistent communication helps build trust, strengthens brand loyalty, and encourages customers to continue choosing the brand's products or services. 

It also reinforces the brand's position as an industry expert, assuring customers that they've made the right choice, ultimately reducing churn and driving long-term relationships.

3. Improving SEO and Online Visibility

Search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer relevant, valuable, and up-to-date content. Regularly publishing high-quality content is an excellent way by which businesses can improve their search engine rankings, drive organic traffic to their websites and increase the likelihood of attracting potential customers.

4. Generating Leads and Boosting Conversions

Content marketing allows businesses to capture leads by offering valuable resources in exchange for contact information. 

By nurturing these leads with targeted, personalized content, businesses can guide prospects through the sales funnel, increasing the chances of conversion and long-term customer relationships.

5. Establishing Thought Leadership

Positioning a brand as an industry expert can enhance credibility and trust among customers, peers, and competitors. 

By sharing insightful content that demonstrates in-depth knowledge and expertise, businesses can establish themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries.

Understanding Content Mapping

One of the reasons why content marketing is so successful is because it follows a comprehensive content strategy. Content mapping is obviously a key part of the entire plan, and it’s something that many businesses struggle with.

A content map is a strategic plan that outlines the creation, distribution, and management of content across a brand's various touchpoints and customer journey stages. 

By identifying and addressing the unique needs, interests, and pain points of the target audience at each stage of the buyer's journey, a content map ensures that businesses deliver relevant and impactful content that resonates with their audience. 

This critical blueprint not only enables brands to create a cohesive and purposeful content marketing strategy but also enhances customer engagement, nurtures leads, and drives conversions, ultimately leading to a more satisfying and memorable customer experience.

Essentially, content mapping allows you to come up with a variety of topics to write about. These are topics that are relevant to your niche, that your audience will prefer to read, and more importantly, will help build trust and awareness among your readers. 

Content mapping even helps you identify any micro-topics that you can write about, allowing you to build a rapport with your audience. 

However, many businesses find it difficult to create content maps, simply because they don’t have the resources to work with an established content marketer. 

At Divisional, we help growing companies scale their content marketing efforts by connecting with fractional content marketers. 

Get in touch today to see how we can help. 

How to Market Your Content in 2023

If you’re planning to start content marketing, it’s important to understand how content marketing as a whole has evolved over time. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Invest in a Keyword Research Tool

Whether you plan on creating evergreen content or simply wish to focus on more SEO-friendly articles, it’s important to invest in a keyword research tool. At Divisional, we use Semrush to research keywords and topics.

The primary reason for using a keyword research tool is to identify the most relevant and high-traffic keywords that users are searching for in relation to a specific topic, product, or service. 

By understanding the search patterns and behavior of your target audience, you can optimize your website's content to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), thereby increasing your online visibility, driving more organic traffic, and ultimately boosting your brand's credibility and authority in the industry. 

Additionally, keyword research tools enable businesses to analyze their competition by providing insights into the keywords that are driving traffic to competitors' websites. 

This information is invaluable for identifying gaps and opportunities in the market that can be exploited to gain a competitive edge. It’s one of the best tools for running growth experiments at early-stage startups too.

By incorporating these high-performing keywords into your content strategy, you can improve your website's relevance to search engines, enhance the user experience by providing content that matches users' search intent, and ultimately increase conversion rates.

Understand Your Audience

A key component of content marketing is to ensure that you produce content that your audience can relate to. The screenshot above is from Buffer.com, a platform that companies can use to drive organic growth. 

As you can tell, they produce a range of content types, including SEO-friendly pieces as well as thought leadership content. One common theme that you can identify is that all of this content is focused on a specific audience: small business owners. 

It’s imperative that you first identify your core audience. Who are the people that you’re producing the content for? Make sure you have a clear vision in mind before you start writing. 

Focus on Repurposing Your Content

The “one and done” approach to content is no longer viable. In fact, you need to look at ways to repurpose your content in a variety of ways. 
People no longer just consume written content. In some cases, certain pieces of content might do better if you repurpose them as an infographic, for instance. 

Here’s an example of an infographic we created recently: 

This is just one of many ways to repurpose content. Companies often create explainer videos, case studies, and other types of content to promote to their audiences. 

If you have an article on your site that’s gained a bit of traction, you may want to look at ways to repurpose it. You can share such content on social media channels too, allowing you to gain more traction. 

Content Marketing Can Help You Build a Strong Brand

At Divisional, we help companies market their content more effectively and find new ways to engage their audiences. With an effective content marketing strategy, you can easily grow your brand and build a funnel that helps generate quality leads over time. 

Contact us today for a 1 on 1 consultation.