What Is Content Marketing? [Simple Definition + Starter Guide]

Oct 09, 2024 07:59 PM - 4 months ago 152734

What Is Content Marketing?

Content trading is the process of planning, creating, and sharing valuable contented to pull and prosecute a circumstantial audience. To build relationships that yet lend to business results.

It focuses connected solving problems and answering questions. Not needfully straight trading products aliases services. 

Common types of contented include:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Podcast episodes
  • Infographics
  • Ebooks
  • Newsletters
  • Social media posts
  • Webinars

The goal? 

To build spot pinch your assemblage and found your expertise. So that erstwhile your assemblage needs a solution you offer, they'll beryllium much apt to move to you first.

For example, look astatine really Dove uses contented marketing:

Dove's Instagram grid, blog post, and YouTube videos show their marque values and messaging.

Their blog contains articles connected assemblage positivism and self-esteem. Their inspirational YouTube videos situation beauty stereotypes. And their Instagram showcases real, unedited photos of women of each shapes and sizes. 

Each contented type serves a circumstantial purpose. But together, they create a level of empowerment and self-acceptance. 

This attack helps Dove build a loyal organization and positions their marque arsenic much than conscionable a soap. 

Which means:

When personification shops for individual attraction products, they’re much apt to take Dove.

Key benefits of contented marketing include:

  • Higher hunt motor rankings: Publishing and updating website contented that’s created pinch hunt engines successful mind tin thief you look prominently successful hunt results
  • Increased integrated traffic: Having your contented look prominently successful hunt results often leads to much website visits
  • Enhanced customer loyalty: Providing contented that your assemblage finds valuable tin foster spot and loyalty
  • Increased conversion rates: engaging contented tin person visitors into loyal customers

Further reading: Content Marketing Statistics You Need to Know

How Does Content Marketing Work?

Content trading useful by reaching the correct assemblage astatine the correct time. Which is mostly astir targeting each shape of the trading funnel—from consciousness to decision. 

The trading chimney pinch “Awareness” astatine the top, followed by “Consideration,” and “Conversion” stages.

Awareness 

At this stage, contented trading is each astir creating consciousness for your marque and your products aliases services. 

Your imaginable customers are conscionable realizing they person a problem. And your extremity is to drawback their attention.

You should create contented that provides high-level acquisition and has wide appeal. To pull arsenic galore applicable group arsenic possible. 

Effective contented types for this shape tin include:

  • Blog posts
  • Infographics
  • Ebooks
  • Social media posts

Example: The Squarespace blog helps businesses and entrepreneurs study really to build their ain websites.

SquareSpace blog posts astir extensions for online stores, multichannel selling, and really to create customer task proposals.

And their blog brings successful astir 14.9K monthly visitors from integrated hunt alone. 

SquareSpace blog postulation arsenic seen successful Semrush's Organic Research tool.

Image Data Source: Organic Research

Consideration 

In the information stage, you tin nurture leads and impulse them to see your business. Because your assemblage is actively researching solutions. 

Your champion stake is to create in-depth contented that’s persuasive and explains what makes you guidelines retired from the competition. 

Effective contented types astatine this stage:

  • How-to guides
  • Comparison articles
  • Webinars

Example: Podia’s “alternatives” webpage pinch in-depth accusation astir really their merchandise compares to their closest competitors. 

Podia's database of competitor merchandise comparison articles specified arsenic Podia vs. Teachable and Podia vs. Shopify.

Decision 

In this 3rd and last stage, leads are fresh to buy. So, supply leads pinch contented that solidifies your worth to springiness them the last push toward taking action. 

You want to create contented that instills a consciousness of urgency, addresses immoderate objections, and makes it easy to return the adjacent step. 

Effective contented types:

  • Success stories
  • Product demos
  • Customer testimonials

Example: Gong’s YouTube transmission highlights really existent teams and businesses person benefited from utilizing their tool.

 How utilizing Gong transformed their strategy

How to Get Started pinch Content Marketing 

What does contented trading really involve?

Let’s spell complete the main steps:

1. Define Your Goals & Audience

Before creating immoderate content, you request to cognize 2 things: your goals and your audience.

Your goals are the circumstantial outcomes you want to execute pinch your contented marketing. 

For example, you mightiness want to summation tract postulation by a definite percent aliases thrust a circumstantial number of leads successful support of a larger institution goal. 

Your audience is the group of group you want to scope pinch your content.

For example, you mightiness want to target bloggers successful the nutrient manufacture aliases caller assemblage graduates seeking internships.

This measurement is critical.

And here’s why:

  • Defining your goals and assemblage guides your full contented strategy
  • A coagulated strategy helps create contented apt to resonate pinch your audience
  • Impactful, applicable contented leads to amended ROI

You tin quickly find your target assemblage by analyzing competitor audiences pinch One2Target. 

Enter up to 5 competitors’ domains, and the instrumentality will stitchery accusation astir their audiences’ demographics, socioeconomics, and behavior. 

Like this: 

One2Target Behavior study shows apical societal media utilized and mobile vs desktop instrumentality usage

Here are immoderate further steps you tin return to specify your goals and audience:

  • Review your existent performance. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your opportunities and threats?
  • Create your perfect customer personas. Who are they? What are their symptom points, needs, and desires? How tin you thief them?
  • Conduct a competitor analysis. Who are your main competitors? What are they doing good and poorly? How tin you differentiate yourself from them?
  • Set the correct types of goals. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals make it easy to spot whether you’re connected track. For example, a SMART extremity could be: “Increase integrated postulation by 50% successful the adjacent six months.”
  • Choose cardinal capacity indicators (KPIs) that measurement progress. For example, communal KPIs for contented trading are sessions, bounce rate, mean engagement time, societal shares, email subscribers, etc.

Further reading:

  • Target Audience: What It Is & How to Find Yours [+ Examples]
  • 16 Marketing KPIs You Need to Monitor

2. Choose the Right Content Formats

You’ve defined your goals and audience. Now, you request to take the champion contented types for your contented trading efforts.

We discussed immoderate of these earlier, including:

  • Blog posts
  • Ebooks
  • Videos
  • Podcast episodes
  • Webinars
  • Case studies
  • Social media posts

Don’t cognize wherever to start?

A awesome measurement is to reverse-engineer your competitors’ contented strategies. See what’s moving for them and replicate it successful a amended way. 

Open Organic Research, participate immoderate competitor’s domain, and caput to the “Pages” tab. 

Pages study successful Organic Research shows apical URLs, their traffic, and much metrics

This is simply a database of your competitor’s pages, conveniently sorted by the estimated magnitude of integrated postulation they bring in. 

Click the icon adjacent to the URL to spot the existent page:

open URL icon highlighted

Browse done respective of their apical pages. And repetition this process for your main competitors. 

As you do this, look for patterns.

For example:

  • Do they usage tons of ocular assets?
  • Is the contented mostly long-form aliases short-form?
  • Are the URLs mostly landing pages, ebooks, lawsuit studies, aliases thing different?

Follow a akin process utilizing Social Tracker to spot what kinds of societal media contented your competitors post. And what resonates pinch their audiences the most.

The apical contented by transmission overview shows the apical performing posts, by engagement, among competitors

Again, reappraisal the contented to look for patterns and inquire questions. Then, usage the answers to guideline your contented choices.

Here are immoderate further tips for deciding which contented types to use:

  • Align contented types pinch your goals. Different contented types person different purposes and benefits. For example, blog posts are awesome for driving traffic, ebooks are awesome for generating leads, and videos are awesome for expanding engagement.
  • Align contented types pinch assemblage segments. Some contented types entreaty to different segments. For example, immoderate audiences for illustration ocular content, immoderate for illustration audio content, and immoderate for illustration interactive content.
  • Experiment and optimize. You don’t request to instrumentality to 1 contented type. In fact, you shouldn’t. Mix and lucifer to spot what useful best. Track KPIs and set accordingly.

Further reading: 17 Types of Content Marketing to Use for Success

3. Determine Your Content Topics

Start pinch keyword research to find contented ideas that are applicable to your brand, popular, and imaginable to rank highly for. 

An effective measurement to do this is to participate a taxable related to your marque into Topic Research. 

Then, click “Get contented ideas.” 

topic entered into Topic Research

The instrumentality will show related contented ideas sorted by “Topic Efficiency.”

These are topics pinch precocious hunt volumes (a precocious number of mean monthly searches) and debased keyword trouble (a debased people that indicates you tin feasibly rank for a fixed term). 

Content thought cards show contented trading ideas

Click “Show more” connected immoderate paper to spot the hunt volume, trouble score, celebrated headlines, related questions, and related searches for that topic. 

Like this:

Content paper is opened to show headlines, questions, and related searches

Use these ideas to create different contented types astir celebrated topics. 

4. Create High-Quality Content

You’ve done the difficult activity progressive successful planning. 

Now, it’s clip to create immoderate high-quality content.

This tin disagree by platform. But astir high-quality website content is:

  • Valuable to your audience
  • Original and unique
  • Well-researched and accurate
  • Well-written and easy to read
  • Well-designed and visually appealing
  • Optimized for SEO and conversions

Once you’re fresh to write, get thief pinch the SEO Writing Assistant.

Start a caller archive by penning your contented straight successful the editor, copying and pasting it from different document, aliases importing it from a URL. 

Then, capable retired the remaining specifications and click “Get recommendations.”

article and target keywords entered into tool

The instrumentality will analyse top-ranking pages and supply recommendations regarding readability, originality, reside of voice, and SEO. 

Suggestions for readability and SEO are listed specified arsenic splitting agelong paragraphs, utilizing progressive voice, and adding recommended keywords

Adjust your contented according to these recommendations. 

And arsenic you do, the instrumentality will update its assessment. 

The people for this article is 7.5 retired of 10 aft making a fewer changes.

Here are a fewer options for creating different types of content:

  • AI Social Content Generator to thief you create and people societal content
  • AI Video Marketing Automator to create videos utilizing AI
  • Landing Page Builder to build and motorboat landing pages astatine scale

Further reading: SEO Writing: 16 Tips for Creating SEO-Optimized Content

Great contented needs to beryllium seen to do its job. Which is why promotion is truthful important.

Effective contented promotion tin summation visibility and pull imaginable customers. 

Some contented promotion strategies (many of which are contented types themselves) include:

  • Social media: Use your societal media platforms to stock stand-alone posts and beforehand contented connected your tract that you want to thrust much group to
  • Paid advertising: Use Google Ads to quickly get your contented successful beforehand of much people
  • Email marketing: Send your subscribers caller contented and promote them to publication and stock it
  • Content syndication: Share your contented connected relevant, third-party sites to grow your reach
  • Digital PR: Use strategies for illustration media outreach to get your contented featured successful different publications

Not each of these will activity for you. 

So, make judge to prioritize the ones that align pinch your goals and your audience. And trial and iterate often. 

Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution (+ Examples)

5. Monitor and Analyze Your Results

Your last measurement is to show and analyse your results. So you tin spot really your contented is performing and whether it’s helping you execute your goals.

How?

Try pursuing these steps:

  • Use analytics tools. These are devices that tin thief you measurement and way your contented performance, specified arsenic Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Semrush.
  • Use feedback tools. These are devices that tin thief you cod and analyse feedback from your audience, specified arsenic SurveyMonkey, Hotjar, and UserTesting.
  • Use reporting tools. These are devices that tin thief you create and stock reports connected your contented results, specified arsenic Google Looker Studio, Tableau, aliases Power BI.
  • Compare results pinch your goals. See really your contented is performing against your SMART goals. Identify what’s working, what’s not, test, and iterate.
  • Make data-driven decisions. Based connected your results and analysis, determine what actions you request to return to amended your trading content. For example, you mightiness want to create much aliases little content, alteration your contented types aliases channels, aliases optimize your contented for SEO aliases conversions.

Develop Your Content Marketing Skills

This guideline gives you a coagulated start. But mastering contented trading requires continuous learning and the correct tools. 

To build an effective strategy, you request to dive deeper into the nuances of contented creation, SEO, and assemblage engagement.

Semrush offers free resources to boost your contented trading skills. Pair these pinch a free account to put your caller knowledge into action.

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