1. Introduction 

Content marketing provides you with a tremendous opportunity to increase brand awareness while also increasing conversions and sales. It is possible to strengthen your online reputation, develop a community, and convey your unique brand narrative by providing interesting and relevant material to your consumers.

A comprehensive content marketing plan should be established for every company. This should include content mapping, creation, and optimization. If you create a strategy that will attract and engage a targeted audience, eventually leading to profitable consumer action.

If you follow the detailed instructions in the accompanying article, you will be able to sketch out the major stages required to establish a solid content marketing strategy for your company.

2. What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing technique that focuses on creating and distributing content to attract, acquire and retain customers. Content marketing includes the creation of various types of digital media, such as blogs or web pages, social media posts, infographics, and videos.

The goal of content marketing is to create valuable content that will be engaging for the target audience. This type of content will help establish trust with the target audience. It will also help generate leads for your business by driving traffic to your website or blog.

Content marketing is an umbrella term for the product or service offerings of a company. It is the process of developing content that attracts, engages, and converts customers. 

It is not just blogging or social media posts, but any piece of content that can be created and distributed on various channels to attract customers. Content marketing efforts are often focused on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because it helps search engines find your website or blog post when people search for related keywords.

Content marketing is a way to attract and retain customers by creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content with them. It is a form of marketing that relies on distributing valuable information to customers in order to convince them to purchase the company’s product or service.

3. Types of Content Marketing?

When it comes to content marketing, it’s hard to know what to use and what will stick out. Content marketers may pick from a range of different forms of content marketing campaigns.

To keep its Twitter page fresh, Southwest Airlines often posts gifs, blog posts, advertising, and retweets. Delta has been on a video and gif binge lately, uploading only advertising, videos, and gifs related to flights.

In the end, it all comes down to what sort of content marketing is most beneficial for your company’s promotion. Aside from that, there are other content marketing methods to choose from when making a huge marketing statement.

Blogs

A blog on your website that is relevant to your product and target market attracts potential customers looking for solutions to their difficulties. It increases the traffic to your landing page.

Blog entries help with SEO and maybe a low-cost approach to increase organic traffic to a website.

Make certain you keep the following points in mind while creating blog posts:

Optimize your content for search engine optimization.

To arrange your blog subjects, consider using a pillar or cluster approach.

Maintain the emphasis and relevance of your material to your product.

Video

Videos have the ability to immediately captivate an audience. According to HubSpot research, 54 percent of viewers want to watch videos from companies that they support, which is a higher percentage than for any other sort of content available.

Second, videos are adjustable; you can create a variety of content that will attract your target audience and leave them wanting more. In this article, we’ll show you how to make use of video marketing to increase your sales.

For example, design companies may profit from augmented reality video marketing, which provides a digital representation of what you see when you use a smartphone to watch it. You can learn how to video advertise like a pro in only 12 stages, which includes learning how to shoot with an iPhone.

Microsoft’s technology is used to empower people all around the world. Several of their recent advertisements have shown exactly how broad their concept of “everyone” is, delivering compelling messages about how technology can motivate many people to accomplish their objectives.

Infographics 

Infographics are a lot of fun, and they can give a marketing plan a boost with eye-catching content. They’re bright, eye-catching ways to show stats or process steps.

Infographics are music to the ears of a marketer because they are quick and cheap to make. Most companies use infographics for Email Marketing Campings. It is the best way to share your content in a professional manner.

Data can be easier to see and understand when it is shown in mediums like this. Using infographics can make your product more credible if it has real data in it, which makes them even better.

Case Studies 

Prospects that want to hear from actual consumers about their experiences with your company would benefit greatly from case studies. Case studies allow purchasers to examine a customer’s journey from beginning to end and to witness comparable use cases in real life. This helps them make a more informed purchasing decision.

LinkedIn has published a case study on Adobe’s usage of LinkedIn to promote their company and attract new employees. It gives statistics and images of Adobe’s campaign and shows how the brand assessed its effectiveness in utilizing the workplace platform. This case study may be useful to other companies looking to use LinkedIn in a similar manner to increase the quality of their application pool.

Video case studies, such as this one on HSBC, are also conducted by LinkedIn. For example, it displays how LinkedIn’s marketing approach incorporates a variety of ways to display its information.

User-generated content

So it encourages consumers to participate, and user-generated content is an excellent content marketing strategy. People are more likely to be interested in your company if they see that you are doing something similar to them.

These are a few instances of Twitter posts that were created by other users. Fans of Netflix’s Hannah Gadsby stand-up special retweeted this phrase from the show. With only one tweet, Netflix’s humor account has immediately shareable material.

Checklists

Customers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), benefit from checklists. They teach you how to solve an issue step-by-step and may be adapted to meet your social media presence.

Memes

Another term for this approach to content marketing might be “do not knock it until you try it.” In terms of content marketing, memes are a relative newcomer. When a picture is accompanied by a culturally relevant text, it is known as a meme. It’s a smart approach to drive traffic if you can time a meme right and fit it with your social aesthetic.

Testimonials and customer reviews

Testimonials and customer reviews, like user-generated content, come directly from your audience. If you’re in a specialized industry, testimonials are a great way to convey why your business is unique.

4. Examples of Content Marketing?

Blogging Examples

Bloggers are often used as an example of content marketing when discussing different forms of content marketing. Blogging helps you attract people’ attention by providing them with useful information. It also gives material to assist you fill out your social media presence and fuel your SEO efforts.

Here are a few instances of businesses that are doing things correctly.

1) OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a software program that automates the process of generating leads. Due to the fact that we’re creating a blog article on content marketing examples, we felt the blog at OptinMonster would be the best place to start.

A great resource for existing clients (who are seeking to utilize OptinMonster in new ways) as well as potential customers, OptinMonster’s blog is maintained by the company. OptinMonster has established itself as an authoritative resource for lead generation advice, tools, and techniques via the publication of this blog.

It’s a good idea to bookmark the OptinMonster blog if you want to develop your email list, boost your conversions, and generate more sales. Also, it’s one of the reasons why OptinMonster has been able to attract more than 1,213,437 websites to employ its products.

2) Buffer

The three-pronged content marketing approach used by Buffer makes it one of our favorite content marketing case studies to study. Writing a couple of times a day and posting material on high-traffic websites was the company’s original growth strategy, which helped them to achieve rapid development. Buffer was able to recruit its first 100,000 customers as a result of their growth hacking method.

In the beginning, the company’s blog focused on writing for the individuals who affected its consumers, producing high-quality content that was also highly shareable on social media.

3) Hubspot 

A company like Hubspot often comes to mind when you think about instances of content marketing done well. In addition to developing a free tool as part of their growth hacking strategy, Hubspot has made use of content marketing to:

Writing in-depth blog entries on the topics that their readers are interested in. Blog articles with content upgrades, such as ebooks, are becoming more popular.

Inbound.org (which receives 321,000 visitors per month) has been established as an educational and content-sharing hub, providing an excellent opportunity for the company to promote its certification and partnership programs.

4) Rip Curl

Rip Curl brands itself as the “ultimate surfing company,” and they certainly have a point. One of the ways in which it demonstrates its commitment is via an online journal known as The Search.

The creation of videos for Facebook and the use of LinkedIn as a traffic generator for such videos. The Search is a documentary that follows surfers on their quest for the finest waves and the perfect surfing lifestyle. It includes stunning imagery as well as tales told by surfers for surfers.

Having more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers and a massive 2 million or more Facebook followers, this is a fantastic example of how to match content to your target audience in order to develop your company and make it more lucrative.

• Social Media Marketing Examples

As indicated in our guide to social media and SEO, social shares may indirectly aid in search engine optimization, which in turn aids in lead creation.

As a result, it’s unsurprising that many businesses have prioritized social media content in order to “WOW” their followers.

1) GE 

If you’re seeking inspirational examples of B2B content marketing, GE is an excellent place to start. We are not referring to washer-dryers and vacuum cleaners, but to the company’s other lines of business, which include wind turbines, jet engines, and locomotives.

GE has a long history of infusing life into what some may consider being a drab industry, and this Instagram content marketing campaign is a prime example.

4-ge-instawalk

GE included influencer marketing into the campaign, inviting six Instagram influencers and numerous superfans to take part in the #GEInstaWalk.This included visiting their production plants and photographing, uploading, and hashtagging images. The findings were astounding:

2) Rafflepress

RafflePress is the best WordPress plugin for running online contests. Additionally, it has been attempting to establish a strong presence on Facebook, since the platform is an excellent method to drive traffic to its blog.

Additionally, they get client testimonials in the comment area of their posts: This is FREE social proof that encourages others to visit the RafflePress blog or website to sample the product.

Finally, if your company expands, even something as easy as resharing blog pieces on social media may be a fantastic content marketing tactic.

3) Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel is committed to small groups, big adventures, and responsible travel. It does this via a content portal dubbed The Journal. The Journal features tales from genuine travelers who share their travel experiences, allowing the organization to connect with its core audience.

However, another component of Intrepid’s content marketing approach is sharing aspirational vacation photographs from passengers on Facebook, interspersed with its own.

Examples of Facebook Content Marketing – intrepid trip

This has resulted in the brand amassing over 600,000 Facebook fans and active communities on other social media platforms.

4) Superdrug 

Superdrug aimed to increase public awareness of body image concerns. To do this, the business requested 18 graphic designers from across the globe to modify a model’s picture in Photoshop to conform to their respective country’s beauty standards.

The business shared the findings on Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, resulting in the following:

Coverage and placements in international news outlets such as the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Business Insider Celebrity endorsements for the ad, such as Sofia Vergara’s, fell below the original study’s 3 million views.

Around 1 million social media shares Sophia Vergara’s endorsement of Superdrug. Additionally, the organization received over 1,000,000 website visits in a five-day period.

Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples

1) Deere & Company

Anyone who has done any research on content marketing is likely familiar with The Furrow, which is widely regarded as one of the earliest instances of content marketing.

John Deere first released this newspaper in 1895 with the goal of assisting clients with their problems while also demonstrating the company’s competence.

Doesn’t it sound familiar?

The remarkable thing is that the journal is still continuing strong more than 120 years later, and is now also accessible online.

The furrow is one of the world’s first instances of content marketing.

2) The AARP

Another content marketing example demonstrates the critical importance of understanding your audience and providing them with the stuff they want.

The AARP The Magazine has received several prizes for the quality of its content, design, and photography, but its success is not secret.

They listen to their readers, who contact them by email, letter, and social media, and utilize that data to predict which issues will connect the most with them.

• Visual Content Marketing Examples

Social media thrives on images. They make it simple to engage with your audience and provide an exciting approach for prospective leads to interact with your business.

Are you looking for evidence that visual content marketing works? Consider the following useful resource: 85 Content Marketing Statistics That Will Convince You to Become a Marketing Genius.

Now, let’s take a look at some proven visual content marketing tactics.

1) Zomato 

Zomato is a restaurant locator smartphone application that is now accessible in 24 countries. The company’s marketing approach incorporates comedy. It is particularly adept at creating and sharing visuals that parody popular culture, as seen by this recent spoof of an Oscar-nominated film.

10-zomato

They are straightforward, inventive, and amusing, demonstrating that a basic approach may be effective.

It seems to be working, as the firm has 1.4 million followers on Twitter, 1.9 million on Facebook, and hundreds of thousands of downloads of the app.

2)  Shutterstock 

Shutterstock is an image company, and it has used its skills to create a resource that anybody can use: a report on creative trends. This makes use of the fact that people value trustworthy data and that this sort of resource is commonly shared.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, last year’s infographic received thousands of social shares and generated more than 6 billion site visitors.

Shutterstock has created an interactive resource that includes not just photographs, but also video and music. It has been shared over 10,000 times so far. Simply being a renowned brand does not exclude you from completely nailing content marketing.

Rolex does this by demonstrating the brand’s excellence and timelessness via superb photography that emanates quality.

Rolex’s Instagram content marketing

And fans adore it: Rolex has around 7 million Instagram followers and over 6.6 million Facebook followers.

Video Marketing Examples

1)  Flyp Home

A property transformation company, Flyp Home, prepares and arranges a home to ensure that it sells for the highest potential price. Instead of merely informing you of this, the company prepared a short movie that demonstrates the “how” of its expertise without attempting to sell you anything.

2) Smyths Toys Superstores

Smyths is a children’s toy shop that offers a range of play equipment and toys. Instead of just telling you this, the business has created a whole YouTube channel dedicated to explaining the many product lines it offers.

3) Charlotte Tilbury

When you view a Charlotte Tilbury video, whether it’s on Facebook or on the company’s YouTube account, the brand quickly draws you in using the power of repetition, beauty, and aspirational images to capture your attention. Because so much of social media advertising is already extremely visual, such a combination may be a very effective method for promoting products.

4) Nike

Nike is a big fan of celebrity endorsements when it comes to marketing its goods. The process Serena Williams used to choose the design team for her forthcoming Nike collection is revealed in this behind-the-scenes look. The store shared a behind-the-scenes film with its online audience to demonstrate the procedures that went into the new relationship.

5. Steps to Create Content Marketing Strategy?

It is possible to foresee issues and manage resources more efficiently with long-term planning. Using these seven steps as a guide will assist you in developing a content marketing strategy that is aligned with your marketing and business objectives.

As previously said, you must create a written plan for your strategy. There are a variety of formats available, including a slide deck, a Google document, a spreadsheet, or another format that is appropriate for your business model and can be easily shared with all key stakeholders.

1. Identifying your target audience and the story you want to tell with your content are the first two steps

Your target audience is the greatest place to begin developing your content strategy, or any other marketing plan for that matter.

It is not always the case that an audience equals buyers.

While your buyer personas will serve as the foundation for your content strategy, keep in mind that your audience is not exclusively comprised of buyers. People who interact with your brand long before they intend to make a purchase are included in your target audience.

Step 2: Analyze Historical Content Performance and Establish Your Content Marketing Goals

When determining your content marketing objectives, take a step back and consider your company’s overall business and marketing objectives at a high level. For example, you could aim to establish yourself as a go-to resource for time management improvements while setting a particular marketing revenue target for this year.

Now evaluate how content may help to these larger objectives, which are often relevant to your company’s operations. Next, choose the content marketing KPIs that are important to you, such as: In terms of statistics, what would success look like? Keep in mind that you should specify a specific success measure for each piece of content you want to generate.

Step 3: Audit Your Existing Content

In the age of mass content development, a content audit may assist you in getting the most out of your current content assets. When you consider that there are over 1.17 billion websites in existence and that more than 70 million blog posts are written each month, the quantity of information accessible to your audience is staggering.

Also important is gaining a deeper understanding of what types of material connect with your audience, from themes to forms. Comply with these recommendations and make use of this tool to conduct automatic content audits on your website.

Step 4: Develop a High-Level Editorial Plan and Content Calendar

Planning your content helps you to manage your resources more effectively, identify which processes are taking longer than planned, and alter your expectations as needed to meet your objectives.

Begin by taking a step back and looking at the larger picture. What major subjects do you want to address in your presentations this year? Perhaps you’d want to take on large-scale, coordinated initiatives. Alternatively, you may need to take a step back and define the rationale that underpins your editing strategy.

In the case of a time management app, for example, a corporation could wish to concentrate on high-level subjects such as productivity and work-life balance.

Step 5: Develop Your Content

The quality of your content should take precedence over everything else, even your desire to rank higher in search results and to generate more material. Make use of the tactics listed below to assist you in creating successful and memorable content that connects with your target audience.

Step 6: Plan Content Distribution

To be successful in content marketing, you must first create high-quality, relevant content. However, making certain that it reaches the appropriate audience at the appropriate moment is also crucial. It is at this point that the content distribution strategy comes into play, as previously stated.

 

Step 7: Continuously Analyze Your Content Performance

Analyzing the performance of your content is the most effective technique to determine which material is most popular with your audience. After that, decide what parts you’ll be making next. In fact, according to our State of Content Marketing research, 66 percent of respondents said that they routinely evaluate the effectiveness of their content.

Your audience will provide you with clear indications about what piques their interest the most, making it simpler for you to create fresh material that will pique their interest more. As a result, frequent content audits and reporting should be included in your content strategy. For example, if you set quarterly content marketing objectives, it is critical to actually track whether or not those goals are being met in practice.

6. Why Content Marketing is The Future?

Planning, creating, and distributing valuable and relevant content helps to engage and build a relationship with your target audiences. It’s your priority to know who your customer is – their challenges, behaviors, and needs. Through content marketing, you can cultivate a positive customer experience by guiding them through every step of their consumer journey. 

Today’s customers have access to 5.39 billion pages of content from sources globally. You need to deeply understand your customer, and providing the right products, at the right time, across the right channels. Businesses are on a quest to provide the most relevant and engaging solutions for an audience who often seek on-demand. With this content has moved from an interesting marketing element to an essential marketing strategy. 

Why Content is Important?

• Content keeps your audience informed

Content is how the audience gets to know about your business and offerings. The visitors who are visiting a business platform like a website or a social media platform are looking for certain answers such as the products or services that the businesses offer, their USPs, prices, the experiences of the past customers, the business process, business culture, etc.

Content is the key to all these answers. And content does not only inform your customers but influences their purchase decisions. Therefore businesses should make sure that they continuously monitor the content requirements of the customers and update their business platforms with relevant and up-to-date content.

• Content is at the center of any digital marketing strategy
  Content marketing acts as the hub that coordinates and supports all the elements of your marketing plan. High-quality, relevant content is the key to any digital marketing strategy such as PPC, social media, website, blog, email campaigns, etc.

• Content is the key to SEO
  When someone searches on a search engine like Google using a keyword or a phrase, the search engines crawl the content of the websites to find the most relevant information to the search query. When you create expert content that is relevant to your business and your audience, it helps you to maintain strong rankings on search engines and you will get high quality traffic to your website.

• Content marketing is cost effective
  When compared to other marketing efforts, content marketing is less expensive. But you shouldn’t underestimate the power of content marketing just because you don’t have to spend a lot of money to create content. You should invest enough time and effort to create authentic content because the more effort you spend on content, greater the results.

• Stand out from the competitors
  Today the businesses are operating with fierce competition and everyone is trying to take various measures to stand out. Content marketing is ideal to differentiate your business from the rest of the players in the market. You can showcase your personality, USPs, values, innovations, culture and any other type of content that set you apart from the competitors through a well crafted content marketing strategy. 

• Increased demand for Content
  The demand for great digital content has increased drastically with the change in the consumer digital behaviour. Today the consumers are hungry for quality content. Internet users spend 20% of their time online reading content and 70% of this is brand related content. 
• Content is Sharable
  Consumers share great content that are unique, relatable and innovative. This amplifies the viewership of content as well as impacts the business reputation positively.  Therefore you should aim to create useful content that people find interesting. With viral content you can gain more momentum than you had ever imagined.

• Give visitors a reason to come back to your website
  Your credibility and trustworthiness increase with great content. This increases the likelihood of people revisiting your website for more content. Businesses should always aim to provide insightful and informative content and to form a community around your content.

7. Future Trends in Content Marketing

How people engage with organizations has drastically changed over the past couple of years. This in turn influences the types of content marketing created, from voice search to live videos. 

Part of understanding your audience is knowing the mediums they proactively engage with. Are there particular segments of your audience who would rather listen than read? Are you targeting a certain customer type who you’ve found learns better via video? Is your customer interested in short- or long-form content when interacting with your brand (or by-product)?

By diving into the details, marketers can empathize with their audience and gain an understanding of the why.

Here are 6 future content marketing trends to investigate.

• Voice Search

Instead of typing, people can search by speaking. This means they can use natural language to find answers.

For example, you might type in “Best CRM software” on Google, but you’re more likely to say, “Hey Google, what’s the best CRM software?” to your Google Assistant. 

Thanks to BERT, Google’s improved understanding of semantics means it can better interpret long-tail search queries.

Voice search has grown rapidly in recent years. During the first quarter of 2019, 42% of the global population had performed a voice search. 

Accordingly, marketers need to start understanding the questions of their customers, considering their intent. And more important to create content than give those questions an answer.

• Personalize Content

Confirmation is at the core of a great customer experience. Creating personalized content helps to establish trust and improves short- and long-term ROI across the entire customer journey.

A customer who searches for “best working from home platforms” doesn’t intend to read a post on “How to Work from Home (…with Kids!)”. 

They’re searching for software that facilitates and eases remote working.

By serving personalized content that appears when and where it’s needed, you can support your customer at every stage. And as a business, you can leverage intent to drive content creation. 

There are four main types of user or search intent:

Informational: the searcher is looking for information; they want to be educated.

Navigational:  the searcher is looking for a specific website and they type this directly on the address bar.

Commercial: The searcher is scanning the market for a specific product or service.

Transactional: the searcher is considering a purchase. In most cases, they are ready to buy or take action.

• Video and live-stream Content

When creating an integrated content marketing strategy, remember that written content is not a silver bullet. Not everyone learns or comprehends content via reading – in fact, many are visual and aural learners. 

It’s noted that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch a video, compared to 10% when reading text. 

This can come in various forms: explainers, interviews, demo videos, and live videos. Videos keep audiences engaged longer, which creates an opportunity to educate, connect, and drive leads. 

Livestream content entered the digital world in 2015 and is now becoming an important component of video marketing. Through live streaming, you can get up-close and personal with your viewers and engage with them in real-time.

• Podcasts

For the audience, integrating a podcast into your content marketing strategy can increase engagement.  Podcasts provide a convenient way for listeners to tune in when they want, where they want. 

In 2018, 80% of respondents in the ABC Podcast Research cited that the reason they listened to podcasts.

Podcasts bring marketing to a more personal, deeper level. 

This form of content works well with busy audiences who prefer to multi-task, like listening on the commute to work.

Podcasts are easily accessible forms of content – both long and short forms, whereas written content often requires time and focused attention.

• Mobile-First Content Marketing

There’s a common divisor across voice search, podcasts, and videos: they’re conducted largely on mobile devices. 

Mobile is so important to the future of engagement that Google Search is seeking to roll out mobile-first. This means that crawlers will use the mobile version of a site’s content for ranking and indexing purposes.  To stay relevant and compete within this new landscape, marketers must plan and create mobile-first and ready content. Further ensuring that Google will render and best present that content on mobile thus helping create an optimal user experience.   

• Crisis Communication Plans

More a ‘need’ than a ‘trend’, it is crucial for content marketers to have a proactive crisis communication plan. The COVID-19 pandemic took the world by surprise and has catalyzed forced and rapid scanning. 

Deploying a crisis communication plan allows an organization to demonstrate that it cares in a time of dire need. It’s important to select the right channels to convey a consistent message and curate the content queue.

A successful content marketing strategy stems from a well-understood audience. When you make confirmation and mobile reading a priority, you make your customer a priority. Find more insights about the future of content creation and the entire marketing landscape in our Sixth State of Marketing Report.

8. Conclusions

You can reach your target audience and enhance conversions by using smart content marketing strategies. There are a variety of content marketing strategies that may be used to increase income, increase brand awareness and recognition, and establish connections with prospects and customers. Here are some examples.

Keep in mind that every piece of content you develop should be able to provide you with additional value in return.

To get started, decide which types of content are most effective for your company and its target audience, and then build a content marketing plan to start increasing your revenue right now.