Five Essential Things to Know About Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach involving the creation and sharing of relevant online content that educates potential buyers. It has grown in popularity in recent years, with companies realizing its value in building authority and trust with customers.

Thanks to its popularity and success, the content marketing industry is booming. But before you dive head first into its strategies for your business, it’s important to be familiar with the basics at least. As such, here is an overview of five essential things you should know about content marketing.

Content Marketing Requires Customer Knowledge

The target customer base is the key point for marketing teams to understand when developing a content marketing strategy. Companies often create buyer personas, which are simply case studies of fictional, representative customers that include basic demographics and their needs and problems.

For example, buyer personas of a company selling software that streamlines human resource (HR) functions are likely to be office managers and HR professionals who work for companies with a technology budget. Overall, this technique makes developing a targeted content marketing strategy a simpler process, as the company can ‘speak’ to a few people with purchasing power rather than to a mass audience.

Content Marketing is Diverse

The word ‘content’ covers many different types of online material, including blog posts, ebooks, videos, podcasts, and white papers. This diversity is obviously an advantage for marketing teams, but it can also be hard to know where to focus content creation resources.

Once a company has defined its buyer personas, it can find out where they are spending their time and how they like to consume their content – and the content strategy (and budget) can then be tailored accordingly.

For example, research indicates that US consumers aged under 30 are more likely to use Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, so they may be less likely to engage with lengthy written content, such as an ebook or report.

Content Marketing is About Telling a Story

While companies find all kinds of ways to publicize their brand – from using cool merchandise businesses such as Anthem Branding to buying advertising on various platforms – content marketing takes a subtler approach. Rather than selling, content marketing offers a chance to tell a story to potential and existing buyers.

Companies can communicate their values and highlight how their products and services solve real problems. In terms of the above example of the HR software firm, the content strategy could include a series of blog posts on how employers can navigate the recruitment process. Each post could then link to a single white paper that explains the benefits of the software in greater detail.

Content Marketing Offers a Chance to Build Trust

One of the advantages of content marketing is that it is a long-range strategy that allows a company to establish its authority and build trust with consumers. Companies can build trust through content marketing by consistently publishing high-quality content that answers relevant questions asked by buyer personas.

So, when a buyer is researching HR software solutions, for example, they will automatically think of a company whose high-quality content they have previously seen – and they will be more likely to consider that company and its products and services over other competitors.

Content Marketing is on the Rise

Finally, it is important to appreciate that content marketing is a growing market. Indeed, a recent report by Technavio suggests the global market is set to grow by $487 billion between 2021 and 2026.

This massive predicted increase is attributed to the rise in social media users, as well as the spread of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence. This means that consumers will increasingly benefit from useful and relevant content, while companies will enjoy even more opportunities to tell their stories to clients and customers.

Content marketing is popular among companies of all sizes. However, an effective content marketing strategy requires careful planning and defined targets. It all starts with knowing the customer base, so companies can anticipate buyers’ needs, answer their questions, and provide quality content throughout the buying journey.