One of the most popular marketing tactics for large companies and startups alike is content marketing. It's sometimes difficult to explain that in marketing, some things can be both strategies and tactics. For example, you can develop a tactical plan for your content marketing strategy while also having one of your tactics for establishing thought leadership or generating leads be content generation. It's like Russian nesting dolls.
With a 10,000 foot view, content marketing is any marketing that uses content to reach your target audience. Not exactly rocket science. Except that it's more nuanced than that in reality.
Here are two of the nuances: content marketing is educational, and it's all about your target audience and what they care about.
There are many, many ways of distributing content. Hopefully this is an exhaustive list!
PS. Be sure to insert "Educational" in front of each of those formats!
To paint all marketing in broad brush strokes, there are 4 overarching objectives:
What makes content marketing so powerful is that it can help you achieve your goals related to ALL of these objectives. Not many other marketing initiatives can do that.
One of the great things about content marketing is that you don't have to spend more to make it work — although additional spend on hiring talent to help you produce and/or promote your content may help.
The only required investment is the time it will take to produce each piece of content. Nevertheless, it's definitely cheaper than "traditional" marketing campaigns.
Companies that do content marketing well are seizing the opportunity to clarify their voice and their thought leadership (read: brand identity) with their target market.
They think through what type of content to produce for their target customer and then publish and/or amplify it on specific channels where their customers are likely to be.
Content marketing should allow you to build credibility and authority with your target audience.
A successful piece of content marketing will be valuable to your audience — and it should be presented in context with where they are in their buyer's journey (hint: if you haven't yet built a customer journey map, this is one area where such a framework would be extremely helpful.)
I tend to liken the process of successful content marketing to dating. The earlier someone is in their journey, the more your content should be about them, their problems, and their world. Further through the journey, it can become more about your company and your solution. Hopefully you wouldn't go on a first date planning to share your life story and propose!
Photo Credits
Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash
Photo by Matt Hoffman on Unsplash