Content is king. For your marketing plan to be effective, it should include a heavy dose of content marketing.

 

There was a time not long ago that marketing was just, well… marketing. Businesses were either doing it or they weren’t. The advent of the internet changed all that. Marketing has undergone a dramatic evolution in recent years. Traditional marketing is losing ground—and its effectiveness—to other methods of reaching customers. Content marketing, while not new to the industry, has become one of the most widely embraced sales tools among progressive business marketers.

 

 

What is Content Marketing

 

Not to be confused with digital marketing, content marketing is


a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action


according to the Content Marketing Institute.

 

So, What Does Content Marketing Do?


It may seem contrary to conventional thinking, but content marketing is not an overt pitch for your product, brand, or services. Instead, content marketing is the practice of providing relevant, helpful, and useful content to your audience that enables them to solve a problem or educates readers about a particular topic.

Examples of Content Marketing


Content marketing examples include:

  • How-to videos
  • Webinars
  • Newsletters
  • Educational articles
  • E-books 


Basically, content marketing boils down to anything that informs people, makes them aware of advances in their industry, and answers their questions in a way only you can provide. This establishes you or your brand as a subject matter expert in your field and a go-to resource for business solutions. It increases the trust and loyalty of your users and boosts your chances of being discovered by the right audiences. This in turn can grow your user data and cultivate qualified leads for your business. In other words, content marketing helps you increase sales. But building content marketing that is effective can take time.

 

How to Use Content Marketing


Content marketing is all about creating value for your audience. What are their interests, concerns, issues, and challenges? What keeps them up at night? This might take some additional time and research on your part. Look at what your competitors are offering. Use keyword research tools to see what your target audience is searching for online. Visit online discussion groups or explore industry hashtags on social media.


Once you’ve identified those topics, you supply the solutions in the form of content marketing, whether it’s a how-to video, in-depth blog post, case study, downloadable PDF or some other type of digital content.

How do People Find Your Content?


If you’ve done your homework, created valuable content, and efficiently executed your search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, your audience will find you organically as they search for answers to their questions or more information on your topics.


Users can also share your content on social media, which is high-quality no-cost brand awareness that helps you reach an even bigger, more engaged audience.


Another distribution avenue to explore is paid search, which includes ads on, search engines like Google and Bing!, social networks, podcasts, display advertising and re-targeting campaigns.

Who’s Doing Content Marketing Well?


The Furrow - John Deere


There’s no way to talk about successful content marketing without mentioning John Deere’s brand magazine The Furrow. Hailed as a pioneer in content marketing, The Furrow nowadays features articles about individual farmers, the agriculture industry, and other informational content. A recent issue featured a story about the skyrocketing popularity of cauliflower and how one farmer is capitalizing on it. There was not one mention of a John Deere product. At its height, the magazine had 4 million subscribers; it still has almost 2 million.

LinkedIn

 


Anyone who uses LinkedIn has most likely seen a LinkedIn Workforce Report. The report is issued monthly and analyzes employment trends in the U.S. workforce. The product of LinkedIn Economic Graph, the report positions LinkedIn as an expert and trusted resource on employment and the global economy. Readers learn about their opportunities in the marketplace and what skills are in demand. While it does not “sell” LinkedIn’s premium services, the report turns LinkedIn users into loyal customers who might one day buy a LinkedIn premium account to access even more of the platform’s capabilities.

Microsoft

 

The Microsoft Design team publishes a blog on Medium about how their products are created, success stories featuring businesses or people who use Microsoft products, and other industry news and trends. It is an interesting look at how some of the most popular software and hardware products in the world have come to be an ever-present part of life. One of the most popular articles in 2018 was about the process behind redesigning the Office 365 app icons. It is way more interesting than it sounds.