Content marketing is a common marketing tactic used to describe a content-led approach to delivering marketing activities and campaigns. Content is not a new area of marketing, it has been around for as long as time goes back. However, with the emergence of more and more channels, marketers have found the need to diversify their content mix to engage and delight prospects and existing customers wherever they are.
Content examples
Content comes in many formats - here are just a few examples:
- Written format, which can be simple and ordinary content item such as blogs, news stories or press releases. In addition, written content also extends to things like eBooks, whitepapers and reports, which are deemed to be much longer form
- Email marketing - whether that's promotion or transaction. Both are types of content
- Video or animation
- Design, for example static imagery, gifs or infographics
- Social media posts, which themselves have multiple platforms and ad types
Things to consider when creating content
When creating content, it's important to consider a few key things:
- Your target audience and where they like to absorb and engage with content
- At which stage of the engagement/buyers journey are they in? Are you creating top, middle or bottom-of-funnel content? (Read more about funnel marketing here)
- Your format(s) will dictate the tone of your content piece. For example, if you're creating social posts, you need to be short and to the point. Whereas, if you are creating a more long-form blog, you can afford to be a lot more explanatory.
- How you will bring it to life. Static text on a page generally isn't that exciting. Think about the content, think about the format and think about how you can help your readers to take in your key messaging. The use of imagery generally helps, but so does simple things like breaking up paragraphs and adding in additional spacing. You could also consider adding a contents to the top of the page, so that people can jump to the section(s) they care about most easily.
Before you get too far down into a rabbit hole, it's important to have a solid marketing strategy in place, whereby content is one part of many execution tactics.