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Content marketing revolves around creating helpful content for your target audience and then getting as many eyeballs on it as possible. It will depend on the stage of the journey your potential customer is in, but usually the point is not to sell your product/service right away — rather to solve an issue.
It’s important to build trust. Instead of pitching your product/service, focus on helping a person find an answer to their problem. If the reader finds your content helpful, it increases the odds of them coming back to you with their next issue.
Over time your potential customers begin to trust you. When they are ready to address the issues they have long-term, their minds will naturally shift to your brand — if you move them through the sales funnel right. We’ll talk about it in a bit.
There are several reasons why content remains at the heart of marketing efforts.
7 in 10 marketers said that content marketing importance rose in 2023, as well as stating they have a strategy in place, whether documented or not.
That’s the sales funnel we’ve mentioned twice already. Your goal is for your customers to discover your content when they need it — and gently explain why you are best placed to help them.
There are four main stages when it comes to content marketing. They are based on how people make decisions after encountering a problem. From the business side, these stages are awareness, consideration, decision and retention.
Now, based on the stage your potential customer is in, you’ll serve them up with different kinds of content. At the awareness stage, you might go with blog posts and infographics, for example. The consideration stage can consist of how-to guides and hands-on videos. The decision-making stage will be heavily laced with success stories and testimonials from your customers — or even comparisons with your competitors.
To retain customers you’ll have to continue being useful to them. You can create educational content; not to mention they will appreciate things like discounts, reward programs, and exclusive offers now that they are your customers. But these perks aren’t directly related to your content.
Content marketing is a long game — so you shouldn’t expect immediate results. A sound strategy is another important point to keep in mind. You might be producing content but without defining who it’s for, which channels you will use for promotion and the results you want to achieve, it will lead nowhere. Let’s break down how you can hash out a content marketing strategy.
What does your average customer look like? What are their interests, where do they hang out on the internet? Which kind of content they prefer to consume: text-based, videos, infographics? Most importantly: how is the content you craft help solve their problems?
Answers to these questions will give you a sense of direction. Asking your existing customers directly what content they prefer and why they like your product/service is the best way to do it. Conduct a survey via email, or even invite some customers for short interviews to get a better sense of how you can attract new buyers with content marketing. You can then create different marketing personas based on which of your readers prefer what.
You need to understand what you want to achieve and when. We are fans of a SMART goal-setting system. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For example, increasing newsletter subscription rates by 10% by the end of fourth quarter. Vague goals like “increasing conversions” will only hurt your planning.
Depending on the stage of your buyer’s journey (top, middle, bottom of the funnel) there are different metrics you should keep an eye on to measure your content’s success.
These are pretty similar for top and middle-of-the-funnel content:
And a little more specific, business-oriented, for bottom-of-the-funnel content (stands to reason):
Look at the content you already have, whichever shape it might be in. Does it help or hurt the goals you’ve set? Is it valuable to your target audience, perhaps after a content refresh — if not in its current form? Don’t be afraid to get rid of outdated content that no longer aligns with your strategy: irrelevant content can actually hurt your search engine rankings.
You can also look at what your competitors are doing, review their content and its usefulness. If something works for them, it can also work for you, or at least give you a sense of direction. Just don’t blindly copy their ideas — we’ll expand on that point later.
It will be based on your target audience and your goals. It will also be based on which stages of the buyer journey you need to fill. There are three main stages for the buyer we’ve outlined above: awareness, consideration and decision-making. These correspond with your content: it can be almost entirely educational for the first stage, more hands-on for the second, and very service-oriented for the third.
Developing a content strategy is also where you decide which type of content (e.g. text-based, video, etc.) you should and can produce. Think about the people you have on your team and which kind of content they can create — and how often.
It will help you and your team have peace of mind. Everyone will know what they have to do and by when. More importantly, it’s about setting expectations and meeting them when it comes to your customers. They will know when they can expect new content, on which channels, and plan when and how they’ll consume it.
We suggest using a project management tool of your choice as well — Asana, Trello, YouTrack, etc. This way you’ll be able to create tasks for your team and track their progress. Oh, and like we said, you shouldn’t expect immediate results when it comes to content marketing, so draft a content marketing plan for 3-6 months and stick to it.
Now you just have to go with the strategy and content calendar you’ve drafted. We imagine a lot of will revolve around the content you create for your website, so here are a few pointers:
As for content distribution channels, these will slightly vary based on which stage of the buyer journey the content was created for. The following three channels can work equally well for all content:
While these two channels would be better suited for top and middle-of-the-funnel content:
There are a lot of ways to skin a cat: the kind of content you produce will depend on your product/service, the team you have at your disposal, and your resources. We’ll provide content marketing examples from your favorite brands, by several possible types. You can mix and match the kind of content you produce of course — it doesn’t have to be just one type.
It’s the blog posts, the case studies, the e-books, the white papers you produce. Long-form written content lends itself to repurposing into smaller chunks (e.g. X threads, email newsletters) and also plays well with SEO.
The more content you produce on a specific topic you want to be known for — and the better you optimize it for keywords — the higher you’ll rank on Google. One of our favorite blog examples is Ahrefs. They produce unique content on SEO, don’t shove their service down your throat, but structure a lot of content in such a way you won’t be able to get the most of it without an Ahrefs subscription.
Here’s how they structure one of their articles on easy SEO tactics you can quickly implement. It’s educational, helpful, yet you’ll struggle to fully follow their advice without an Ahrefs subscription.
With social media marketing, you are at the mercy of the company that runs this or that channel. If the algorithms change, you can encounter a drop-off in engagement.
However, it’s still a good way to connect with your audience. LinkedIn has been picking up steam lately: it grew by 20% in 2022, and another 7% in 2023. It’s still well behind Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in terms of revenue, but it’s on par with TikTok, for example.
There are examples of brands doing social media right aplenty. We are particularly fond of Wendy’s sense of humor: the brand is famous for roasting McDonalds. Wendy’s is also mindful of trends. Here’s what they tweeted after McDonald’s rolled out their new quarter-pounders — the same week Avengers: Infinity War hit the cinemas.
Another possible route is visual content marketing. We’ve already mentioned it, but just to emphasize: short-form videos are all the rage right now. No wonder TikTok is so popular.
Of course, there’s always the danger of a company employee becoming the face of your company — if said employee leaves. For example, we love this from Dollar Shave Club, and their decision to go with the company CEO is as bulletproof as can be. However, Michael Dubin is no longer the CEO — we wonder how DSC will work around that.
That’s why it might be safer to do what Mercedes did — and it’s good fun too.
Their main competitive advantage is that they can be passively consumed — while listeners are doing something else. That can lead to higher retention rates: some speculate they can be anywhere from 40% to 80%.
Podcasts can become part of a person’s routine, the way music does. Going for a jog, walking the dog, visiting the gym, doing the dishes are all possible examples. Of course, the point we raised above still stands: if the employee hosting the podcast leaves the company, you can find yourself in a pickle.
One of the podcasts we enjoy is Washington Wise: it comes out every two weeks, when Congress is in session and delivers the latest news and insights on policies that impact investors.
Crafting effective email marketing content is another potential strategy to explore. You own your subscriber lists — and don’t rely on any algorithm changes. Your email subscribers are also one step closer to becoming customers, as they have already given their email addresses to you.
Not to mention email marketing can — and ideally should — feel highly personal to your subscribers. One of the newsletter we enjoy over at Selzy is Why We Buy: it delivers actionable insights on buyer psychology in a crisp and fun fashion.
Finally, there are things you’d want to keep an eye on when putting your content strategy into action. We’ve rounded up the top ones below.
Content marketing is about delivering value, solving issues for your reader/potential customer. It’s not a sales pitch. So you should aim to help readers with their issues first: this is usually done by means of in-depth articles/videos/podcasts — whichever formats you choose.
More doesn’t always mean better, not to mention oversaturation can burn readers out and turn them away. Google emphasizes usefulness in their ranking algorithms, and on user experience. They also seem to be onto brands that use AI to churn out a lot of content daily — so tread carefully.
Сontent marketing manager at Animalz
By now, everyone who’s serious about marketing knows that ChatGPT can’t autonomously write high quality content for you. Yet many people do think it’s a great tool for filling the blank page, to get you over the initial starting barrier. That’s actually a big mistake (a don’t).
“When you let AI fill the blank page, you risk anchoring your thinking to suboptimal ideas and short-circuiting the serendipity that leads to your best work. Instead, always start with your own input, even if it’s just a vague idea or outline, before involving AI. That way, you’ll end up with more original and high quality work as you steer the algorithm off its beaten track.
You have to be recognizable regardless of the medium you use to promote your content. Brands are great at it: you can stumble upon Nike’s advertisement/post/newsletter, and instantly know it’s them. To foster trust and connect with the readers, your tone should be consistent on every platform.
Organic traffic is on par with social media in terms of ROI — so SEO is very much alive in 2024. Focus on a niche you want to be viewed as a thought leader in, and produce content specific to that niche. But keep in mind you are solving an issue first, not selling your product/service.
It takes time to see the effects of your content marketing efforts. Once you have a solid strategy in place, stick to — that is true for your content promotion efforts too. You know where your target audience hangs out, so post on these channels regularly and measure results.
A word to the wise: your audience might not be where you expect them to be: that’s why it’s vital to research potential content marketing channels when shaping your content marketing strategy.
Сontent marketing manager at Animalz
When creating a content strategy, many marketers default to a specific content channel — often SEO. There’s nothing wrong with SEO per se, but we see time and again that when you take time to evaluate all your potential channels, you’ll find overlooked and under-utilized opportunities. (We always do this with new clients in an exercise called the Growth Quadrant.)
“A distribution-first strategy starts with analyzing all your potential channels, including the unsexy ones, to find the biggest opportunities before creating content. This approach can reveal surprising high-ROI channels, like creating content specifically for your sales team or leveraging an executive’s large LinkedIn following.
This is important when you make adjustments to your original strategy. You might notice some types of content get more engagement than other types — or that one social media channel far outweighs another. That’s why it’s vital to track your performance: so you can focus on what helps readers and does well.
Looking at what they do is perfectly normal. But copying blindly is dangerous because you don’t know their strategy inside out. What works for them might not necessarily work for you. Have faith in your original plan, and only factor in adjustments that you know will work with it.
Content marketing is all about creating valuable content for your target audience. It can help your company foster trusting relationships with potential clients, increase conversion rates and drive more organic traffic to your website.
There are four main stages of content marketing: awareness, consideration, decision and retention. Before actually producing the content, you should shape your strategy though. Define your target audience, set goals and ask yourself how you’ll measure if they are reached, conduct an audit of your existing content, develop a strategy, create a content calendar — and start pumping out and distributing content.
You can create content of all sorts: long-form-written content, social media posts, videos, podcasts and email newsletters, to name a few. Prioritize quality and consistent delivery of your content and optimize written content for search engines. Pay attention to the channels you’ll use to distribute it, track analytics and don’t blindly copy competition.
We are hoping we’ve given you enough pointers above to shape your content marketing strategy.
