What is Content Marketing?

Your marketing should be built around useful content.

Traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute. As a forward-thinking marketer, you know there must be a better way.

Content marketing comes along.

Content marketing is a strategic way of marketing that focuses on making and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and keep a clearly defined audience and, in the end, to get customers to do something that makes money for the business.

Instead of trying to sell your products or services, you give your prospects and customers really useful content that helps them solve their problems.

Brands that do well use content marketing.

From the research we do every year, we know that almost all marketers use content marketing. In fact, many well-known companies around the world use it, such as P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and John Deere. It is also made and used by small businesses and shops with just one person all over the world. Why? It works, that’s why.

Here’s one example of how content marketing works:

Content marketing is good for your customers and for your bottom line.

There are four main reasons why businesses should use content marketing, as well as four main benefits:

• Sales go up
• Cost savings
• Customers who stick around longer
• Content as a source of income

Content is where marketing is now and where it’s going.

Go back and read the definition of content marketing again, but this time take out the words “relevant” and “valuable.” That’s what makes content marketing different from the other useless information you get from companies trying to sell you “stuff.” Companies are always sending us information, but most of the time it’s not very useful or relevant (can you say spam?). In a world where each person gets thousands of marketing messages every day, this is what makes content marketing so interesting.

Without quality content, marketing is impossible.

No matter what kind of marketing you do, content marketing should be a part of it, not something you do on its own. All types of marketing depend on good content:

• Content marketing comes before your social media strategy when it comes to social media marketing.
• SEO: Businesses that put out good, consistent content are rewarded by search engines.
• PR: For a PR strategy to be successful, it should focus on things that readers care about, not on what they want to hear.
• PPC: For PPC to work, it needs to be backed up by great content.
• Inbound marketing: Content is the key to getting visitors and leads to come to your site.
• Content strategy: Most content marketing plans have a content strategy as a part of them.

What if your customers were excited to hear from you?

What if they spent 15, 30, or 45 minutes with it when they got it in print, by email, or on a website? What if they were ready for it and told their friends?

We can help if you are interested and want to find out more. Here are some common ways to get involved:

• Is content marketing new to you? Check out our getting started guide to learn what content marketing is and how to put together a basic plan for it.
• Need a plan for your content? Read our Web Leads DA frameworks to learn about the most important parts of a good content marketing program.
• Need some examples of content marketing? Get this e-book: 40 Examples of Content Marketing.
• Are you in charge of marketing? Sign up for our free magazine, Chief Content Officer, to learn about the latest trends in your field.
• Need advice that is specific to your business? Contact our consulting group, which is led by strategist Robert Rose, to find out how they can help you solve your content marketing problems.

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