What is content marketing and why is it important? (with examples) - Equinet Academy (2023)

This article was last updated on August 6, 2019.

content marketing. In recent years, this term has been overused, abused, and confused with other forms of marketing. What exactly is content marketing and why should companies pay more attention to it?

This article outlines the definition of content marketing, shows content marketing examples, and highlights the importance of a content marketing strategy. By the end of this article, you will have a better idea of ​​what content marketing is and how to get started with content marketing.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a form of marketing that involves: creating information (in any content format) and distributing the content (through any marketing channel) with the aim of shaping the perception of the brand by the audience. audience and influence the purchase of products and services.

The truth is that the “tactics” and “principles” of content marketing have been used for centuries. In fact, one of the first examples of a content marketing campaign launched in November 1867 was amagazine publicationfrom Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which provides useful technical information for equipment owners and operators to manage risk and resolve operational problems.

In recent years, the term content marketing has been used in almost every online marketing activity that marketers from different industries can think of. Speaking of "abuse of terms," ​​there have even been cases of unimaginably bold statements from digital marketing agencies.„Content marketing is digital marketing“.

To avoid confusion about the importance of content marketing, it would be best to point it outComprehensive definition of the Content Marketing Institute:

"Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a well-defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer actions."

Let's break it down.

Content marketing is astrategicmarketing approach–Content marketing is not a marketing channel or tactic per se. Rather, it is more of a focus or discipline within the field of marketing, holistically speaking.

in focusCreate and distribute valuable, relevant and consistent content– Content marketing focuses on creating content that provides immense value to target audiences, creating content that is relevant to both business goals and the pain points and goals of target customers, and developing content that is delivered to the target audience in a timely and consistent manner. .

Forattract and retain a clearly defined audience: aand finally todrive profitable customer actions– This is the marketing objective of content marketing, which is not only about attracting newly defined target groups, but also keeping them for future marketing campaigns, which ultimately aim to generate more profit for the company through activities valuable to the customer.

Why content marketing?

According to a global survey, more than half of APAC marketers and agencies ranked content marketing as their top priority.Messageby NewBase. This is not surprising, as smartphone penetration rates and the amount of time consumers spend with digital devices continue to rise.

one in singaporeOpinion pollA study by The Straits Times found that consumers in Singapore spend an average of 12 hours and 42 minutes a day on their smartphones. While the main online activities that they perform at least once a day are classified as follows:

1. Reading private emails
2. Online calls and messages
3. Media and social networks
4. employment and business purposes
5. News and sports updates
6. Gaming apps on smartphones and tablets

People are consuming content on their digital devices at an unprecedented rate. However, the average click-through rate across all display ad formats and placements is only0,05%. In fact, according to Solve Media, you are 475 times more likely to survive a plane crash than to click on an ad.

There is an immediate need for businesses to shift their focus towards creating valuable and consumable content instead of spending all their money on advertising spend.

Othersfor studyfound that 81 percent of consumers research online before making a purchase.

What do these studies mean for businesses and why is content marketing so essential?

Content marketing generates positive long-term ROI

Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates approximately three times more leads than traditional marketing for every dollar spent. –demand metrics. Content marketing users have almost 6x higher conversion rates than non-users. –aberdeen.

Brands that can offer high value during the consumer buying phase earn their trust and build a loyal following.

People love to consume content and they trust content to support their purchasing decisions. B2B companies that blog have 67% more leads than their competitors, while small businesses that blog have experienced 126% more lead growth than their non-blogging peers. –social networks today. An audience that trusts what you say will choose your brand over your competitors. This shows inDemand Gen 2016 Content Preferences Report, where 80% of B2B customers consume at least 3 pieces of content before talking to the seller.

Content marketing complements the efforts of other sales and marketing channels

Content marketing helps in generating leads and sales campaigns. TODemand Generation 2017 Content Preference Research Reportfound that B2B buyers are more likely to share their data in exchange for white papers, webinars, eBooks, and analyst reports.

Content marketing also offers more opportunities for link building, which helps improve organic search engine rankings. Creating and distributing valuable content like case studies, research papers, and extensive guides is a great way to do this.build backlinks.

Content marketing is in fashion

Over the past decade, content marketing has had a dramatic impact on the way brands and consumers interact.Customers who expect more authenticity and transparency from brandsand more and moreB2Band B2C brands dedicating more of their budgets to content marketing.

Content Marketing Examples

What marketing activities make up content marketing? First of all, it is important to distinguish pure advertising from content marketing. The focus of content marketing is not to force the consumer to buy a product, at least not directly. Instead, a more cumbersome approach is taken to provide consumers with valuable information throughout their buying process.

Examples of content marketing are:

• Schedule an editorial calendar for blog posts (eg share free tips, tutorials, guides) and implement search engine optimization to rank and drive traffic to them.
• Interview your company's CEO about sharing industry knowledge and distributing content on social media channels (Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn).
• Create a newsletter series (e.g. free courses, article series, trend reports), set up a lead capture form on your website to build your email list, and launch an email drip campaign - Marketing
• Create a contest to select user-generated content (for example, photo of the day for the fashion industry, completed student projects for the education industry,Video de PinkBike + GoPro Evolutionwettbewerb) and present user-generated content through branded marketing channels (email, social media, blog)
• Start a series of how-to video tutorials and market them on social media, websites, and SEO (eg.Home Depot y Lowes)Check our list120 types of contentthat you can use for your next marketing campaign.

Examples of types of content used in content marketing

there are dozenscontent typesUse in content marketing from digital to offline:

• blog posts
• infographics
• webinars
• E-books
• white books
• conferences
• Seminar Preview
• direct mail
• User-generated content, such as forum posts and reviews on third-party websites

How do you determine the most appropriate type of content for your content marketing efforts? The type of content used can vary depending on factors such as B. what media your target group uses, what marketing goals you want to achieve, and how much budget you have available.

For example, if your audience visits YouTube, starting a YouTube channel and posting a variety of video content would be a great strategy to drive engagement and traffic back to your site. Video is fast becoming a content consumption preference compared to otherscontent types–64%of B2B content marketers surveyed reported an increase in the use of live video and webinars for content marketing.

If your marketing goal is to generate leads, it makes sense to block content like white papers, eBooks, and webinars in exchange for your prospect's contact details. If you're on a tight budget, sending EDMs via email can be a more cost-effective alternative to sending printed product catalogs directly.

You should also check if you can reuse your content in a variety of other content formats. Reusing content in a different content format requires much less effort than creating new content from scratch. For example, a series of blog posts can be combined into an eBook or SlideShare presentation, while a research report can be turned into an infographic.

here is onecrazy examplethe ability to turn a blog post into a SlideShare presentation that generated over 2 million views for Eugene Cheng's SlideShare channel.

Examples of media channels to distribute and promote content

After creating the content, the next step is to distribute and promote the content through owned, earned, paid, and shared media channels.

Ownership: assets that you actually own and have full control over

Owned media are assets that your company creates, owns, and controls distribution.

Examples of proprietary media channels are:

• Sections within your site
  • the blog
  • resource library
  • Press
  • News
  • events
• Email Subscriber List
• SMS Subscriber List
• online forum
• encounter group

An example of proprietary media content marketing would be writing an article and publishing it as a blog post in the blog section of a website and then emailing the post to a list of email subscribers.

Earned: free advertising/endorsement

Earned media is content created/distributed by others that you obtained for free (not for a fee).

Examples of earned media include:

• Place your blog post at the top of organic search engine results pages, e.g. B.Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu
• Get invited to write a guest post to be published on an affiliate blog and get backlinks that will boost your organic search engine rankings.
• Have a partner recommend you in their monthly newsletter
• Get invited to an interview with an established newspaper
• Customers who independently write reviews on forums, review sites, and third-party social media profiles that recommend your brand
• Influencers independently write positive comments about your brand on their own blogs and share them with their followers.

Paid – pay to promote content

Paid media is the promotion of content driven by monetary incentives or transactions.

Examples of paid media are:

• Create a white paper and promote it through Facebook Sponsored Posts and Display Ads through the Google Display Network.
• Host an industry conference, invite speakers and provide branded content in specific segments
• Pay a post to write a sponsored post that highlights the features of your newly launched product

Shared: content co-created on shared platforms (mainly social networks)

Shared media is content produced on shared platforms where both the brand and the consumer have influence over the channel. Shared media is mostly driven by social media and content marketing efforts to create the content.

Examples of shared media are:

• Post videos to YouTube and respond to user comments on the video
• Post status updates on Facebook and engage with fans who respond
• Create a forum topic on Quora and respond to user responses

How do big brands do content marketing?

Content marketing is such a broad marketing approach that it's easy to get caught up in a web of projects that don't lead to the end goal. What separates the great brands from the good brands? On the one hand, big brands have a content marketing strategy. They apply models like this.hub and spokemiHeld, Higiene, Hubmodels They involve their clients in their content creation strategy.

especially big brandsDocument your content marketing strategy. This allows them to create and deliver a complete content experience, maximize any content, and focus on content marketing tactics that work.

Let's see how two of the biggest brands in the B2B and B2C industries achieved god-like status through content marketing.

B2B Content Marketing Example - Hubspot

Hits:

• #5 traffic ranking in the world
• Build an online audience of over six million people
• Revenue growth from $0 to $100 million in 8 years and 49% growth from 2015 to 2016 ($181.9 million to $271 million)

And?:

• Ranking for over 3.4 million organic search terms
• Offer free downloadable guides on the main website to generate leads
• Generate quality leads from sponsored content from LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and organic search
• Well-designed content funnels to convert qualified marketing leads into qualified sales leads

B2C Content Marketing Example - BMW

Hits:

• BMW's Instagram has 22.1 million followers so far
• The #BMW hashtag was used more than 19 million times in 2017 (the most popular in the automotive industry)

And?:

• BMW shares photos taken by enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers with the community to recognize its loyal fans around the world.
• BMW uses its Instagram channel to share the BMW brand lifestyle with its followers, through the latest news about upcoming models, information about its own history or a glimpse into the future of mobility. –SGCARMART

How should you get started with content marketing? - The following steps

We hope this article has helped you better understand what content marketing is and how brands are doing it today. If you're inspired by this article, keep in mind that content marketing is just one of many digital marketing disciplines you can apply. To gain a fuller understanding of digital marketing, at Equinet Academy we offer a range ofDigital Marketing CoursesTaught in person in Singapore or online.

If content marketing is one of the priorities in your business growth and expansion plan, you may need to have a content marketing strategy.

Begin with:

• Learn how to create a content marketing strategy for your business. Our intensive two-day training is based on a 6-step content marketing strategy process.Content-Marketing-Strategy-Kurswill equip you with the knowledge, skills, and tools you need to maximize your content marketing ROI.
• Document your content marketing strategy withEquinet Academy Content-Marketing-Strategieplanvorlage.