What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing can cost half as much as other marketing processes and generates twice as many conversions. Learn 10 more benefits of content marketing. How to build a content strategy in 5 simple steps. PLUS – How to structure content silos for effective SEO.

In a hurry? Skip ahead to your favourite part:

• What is content marketing?
• The purpose of content marketing
• 11 benefits of content marketing
• The best types of content
• What are content silos?
• How to build a content strategy
• The 5 key elements of a content strategy

Did you know that content marketing can cost half as much as other marketing processes yet produce twice as many conversions? According to Forbes, a big reason for this is that 47% of internet users use ad blockers. Another factor might be that 86% of TV viewers skip the ads. Who knows… either way, brands have better control over their marketing strategy when they own the media that attracts and engages their customers… and this article will show you how.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable and credible content – such as blogs, videos and social media posts – that their target customers genuinely want to consume and engage with. 

What is the purpose of content marketing?

Content marketing is a process for reaching, engaging and converting audiences into customers, and eventually, into brand advocates. 

Content marketing also has an additional benefit in that it allows you to have two way conversations with your audiences, so brands can learn what the market wants, in real time, which in itself can be extremely valuable. 

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Like any good content marketing strategy, we’ll tell you what you want to hear first. 

The benefit of content marketing is that you get more sales for less, and it’s a scalable process. 

But that’s not all…

• Content marketing increases brand visibility

In a world of on-demand content, consumers are now in control. If you’re producing content your (potential) customers want to consume, you become more visible to them. Most social platforms include a ‘relevancy’ score in their core algorithms, which look to match the interests of users with relevant content. Ergo, increasing your brand’s visibility is actually as simple as producing relevant content, offering value, and doing it frequently.

Studies show that 47% of internet users use ad blockers and 86% of TV viewers skip the ads, so effective content marketing provides another channel for which your brand can be seen without having to rely on pay per click advertising alone.

• Generates brand awareness

As you start to become seen, you begin to generate brand awareness. It varies greatly from brand to brand, but it is said that brands need to reach and engage potential customers anywhere from 3-30 times before that consumer is familiar with and trusts your brand enough to even think about purchasing from you. The more relevant content you publish, the higher your chances of starting to build a relationship with your potential customers.

• Builds trust, loyalty and credibility

It’s one thing to be visible, but it’s another to be relevant and trustworthy. By offering quality content that adds value to your audience, whether it be via entertainment or education, you’ll start to build brand trust. Doing it frequently and you’ll begin to build a following. Give them what they want and they’ll become loyal. And if you are genuinely good at what you do, you’ll establish credibility. 

• Helps establish brand position in the market

As you build your audience, establish trust and credibility, your audience starts to come to you first when they need advice or are looking for a solution. Why? Because they know you’re the fastest path to success. This concept is called ‘giver’s gain’. And put simply, by providing value, making it easy and connecting with your audience frequently, you begin to establish your brand’s position in the market.

• Real time market research

Content marketing – through channels like social media, live chat, EDMs, polls and surveys – allows you to have two way conversations with your audience, so brands can learn what the market wants, in real time, which in itself can be extremely valuable. Heck, you don’t even have to ask the question… you can simply monitor the comments in popular threads to see what conversations your customers are having, where and when.

• You rank higher on search engines

Search engines and social platforms all look for signals that your brand is relevant, an authority, active and able to help their users when they perform a search. They need to know you can help their users when they have a problem. By deploying credible content across the web, search engines are able to establish who your brand is and what you do, and provide it to their users when they come searching for a solution. For instance, they are more likely to display a plumber who has hundreds of helpful articles and gets great reviews all the time, over one who has a one page website and no track record to speak of.

• Get more traffic to your website

As a result of being found more on search engines and social media, you get more traffic to your website. SEO leaders like Neil Patel found that content marketing leaders see more than 7 times more traffic to their website. And Hubspot found that brands that blog regularly generate more than twice the amount of leads compared to brands that don’t.

• Get more leads and conversions

When you get it right, content marketing helps to educate your brand and the solutions you provide. You might do so by writing a blog that makes them aware of a problem they didn’t even know they had. That blog links to another blog that educates them about solutions to that problem. That same blog might include testimonials or product reviews that establish trust and credibility or allow them to download an information pack which will be sent to them via email (allowing you to capture their details as a potential lead), and in some cases, link off to the product there and then, securing you an online sale without the need for a sales representative to be involved at all.

• Save money over time

The Content Marketing Institute found that ‘content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing’. This is largely because consumers are experiencing ad overload. In fact, 35 years ago, a consumer saw an average 2,000 ads per day, but a study 30 years later (2014) found we now see closer to 5,000 ads per day.

Yes, it can take a while to get an effective content strategy up and running, and that means investing in a process that produces very little ROI in the immediate short term. But content marketing  – when done right – has a compounding positive effect on ROI that advertising can’t. That is – when you publish your content organically it can always be found and can always bring new customers in the door. Whereas if you were to compare it to a paid advertising alternative, as soon as you turn off those ads, your leads may start to dry up.

• Content boosts brand recall

Experts claim we humans make emotional decisions then justify them to ourselves through establishing practical reasoning. We suspect this is a big reason why content marketing tends to also boost brand recall, even if a given particular piece of content isn’t driving direct sales. It’s the ability to stay top of mind that brings that customer back, not any given ad. You can often see this by watching the number of ‘return visitors’ or came to your website and purchased via a brand search query. When this metric starts to grow, you know you’re doing all the right things.

• Drive recurring sales

When content marketing is done right and you’ve got a good content strategy in place, you’ll begin to establish a lasting relationship with your audience. You’ll make new audiences aware of your brand. Educate them about how you can help them. Sell them on your solutions. Hear feedback on how you can improve. And then cost-effectively turn them into advocates who refer new customers. With the right strategy in place, you then begin to be able to scale the process and growth skyrockets.

What is ‘content’? And why is content ‘king’?

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying ‘content is king’. Or even, ‘If content is King, context is Queen… and we all know who runs the house.’

Content is the variable of success. People have short attention spans. You’ve got to be entertaining, education, offer value, free and fast to connect with people. And how aligned your content is with your audience’s wants and needs determines how successful your content marketing campaign will be.

Content is ‘what’ is being consumed in the media. It may be a blog, an entertaining video, a witty meme, email newsletter or infographic. 

The audiences are the ‘who’ that consume it – the people – your potential customers. And if you want them to engage with your content, you need to be relevant.

Good thing that with the growth of social media and on-demand streaming platforms, anyone can now be a ‘publisher’ of that content… which is the real opportunity for brands trying to find and engage new customers. And it means producing content is now (or at least should be) a huge part of your marketing strategy, and hence we’ve seen the evolution of ‘content marketing’.

What are the best types of content?

There’s no single best type of content. It’s about finding what works best for you. Some brands are great at video. Others blog writing. Some have built huge followings on memes. So here’s a look at the best ones to start with:

• Videos are worth the investment. It’s easier to make an emotional connection through video. Plus video can be repurposed and transcribed into blogs and audio podcasts.
• Blog posts are great for educating your audience. And they help with SEO which brings traffic to your website.
• Podcasts are popular because they can be consumed while doing other tasks, like driving to work. And they can be consumed in longer formats.
• Case studies are perfect for showing the real world benefits of a product or service.
• Infographics are a visual way to communicate complex concepts in one page.
• Email newsletters are one of the cheapest ways to reach an existing database.
• Ebooks can be compiled from a series of blogs and used to build your email database.
• Gifs and memes are fast and entertaining – great for staying top of mind.
• … and there are hundreds more once you’ve got the basics covered. 

What is the difference between content marketing and content strategy?

Content strategy and content marketing are fairly similar these days and often interchanged with each other. And they certainly belong to the same family. However, perhaps the easiest way to differentiate the two is – your content marketing strategy looks at the role content plays within your broader marketing strategy when pursuing long term goals, vs, your content strategy is your playbook for how you’ll execute on those strategies. 

Often your content marketing strategy contains confidential data and internal lingo that explains the role of content across all of your marketing channels so it usually stays in-house, where your content strategy is more about how you communicate and who you’re communicating to at what part of their customer journey and so it is intended to be shared with external partners like creative agencies and content creators, alongside your brand guidelines (if you have them).

Your content strategy ties your brand’s mission, vision and values, as well as those of your target audience, into your content planning, production and delivery across your various communication channels. And it’s essential to starting engaging conversations with your audience, getting them hooked, and coming back for more. 

Think of it like if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, your content strategy should include everything your crew or an outsourced team would need to emulate how you start and hold conversations with your audience with the level of detail that ensures your brand appears the same on the outside no matter who is creating the content.

For instance – how you write blogs, social posts, the types of images you use and how you select them or the filter you apply, to your target demographic, as well as what time of day you publish your content across what channels… just to name a few.

Your content strategy explains why you frame conversations in a certain way and how your content will help your brand achieve its goals. Where your content marketing strategy looks at your brand goals and objectives and provides somewhat of a communication roadmap for getting you from where you are now, to where you want to be… your content strategy explains more of the specific of each piece of content, your tone of voice, values and stance on popular topics. And it’s certainly a lot more detailed than your brand guidelines, which typically looks more at the technicals, like your brand fonts, colours, logos and design rules and guidelines, though there is often a little overlap.

In the case of promoting a product or service – your content strategy should outline what the conversation you’re having with your customer looks like, as you first make them aware of your offering, right through the education, consideration, the sale, and the after sales service and re-activation of that customer.

What is the best way to build your content strategy?

1. Understand who your audience is. Age, sex, location, interests etc…
2. Establish when your audience is active online, and on what channels.
3. Do keyword research to understand what topics they care about.
4. Brainstorm content ideas for each content pillar of your brand that your audience is interested in, and that also aligns with your brand values.
5. Start producing content. Aim for quality over quantity. And long-form so it can be cut down into short-form and repurposed.
6. Mix it up and experiment with different content types and ideas. 
7. Focus on the feedback. Are your audience engaging with? What are they saying? What do they want to see more or less of?
8. Include unique calls to actions and value ads in different pieces of content to make it easier to attribute traffic and leads to particular content pieces.
9. Track and analyse the performance of your content so you can look for ways to improve. Among others, improve low page sessions, high bounce rates and low CTRs, plus low engagement on socials.
10. Optimise, optimise, optimise. Constantly look for ways to improve your content. Just be sure to make only one change at a time so you know which ones have a positive effect.

What are content pillars?

Content pillars are the mix of content topics you cover over the course of your content calendar. Your content pillars should communicate the pillars of your brand. The different components or departments that make up the brand as a whole. Your brand values. They might be a mix of entertaining, educational, news, product, events pieces that make up the bulk of the content rotation. The balance usually covers all of your audience’s wants and needs within your brands’ available budgets.

What are content silos?

Content silos are the organisation structure of how related niche content is stored and linked on your website; with the intention of making it easier for search engines to understand the relevancy of content on your site.

Content silos are typically organised so that the main page (usually your converting page) targets your highly competitive primary keywords, with 10-20 supporting pages each targeting related low competition long-tail keyword subtopics. The supporting pages then link between each other, and back to the primary converting page. 

Content silo examples

The best way to visualise a good content silo is to look at an e-commerce shop navigation. Let’s take a home hardware supplier for example. You’d typically have your primary category page such as “bathroom supplies” that links off to subcategories like “bathroom shower screens”, “bathroom tiles”, and “bathroom taps and fixtures”, each tagged with the same “bathroom supplies” main tag. And on each of the supporting pages, you’d include content on sub-topics such as “best shower screens for small bathrooms”, “luxury shower screens”, “frameless shower screens and so on.

The 5 key elements of a content strategy

An effective content strategy encompasses five key elements. 

• Website content structure – well structured content silos containing relevant, original, natural, and genuinely helpful content topics that your audience genuinely wants to engage with.
• Channel strategy – A plan for what channels you’ll publish your content on in order to attract and engage your audience. These channels will be identified in your follower profile. Every channel doesn’t have to link back to your website. Produce good content and your audience will come looking for more.
• Content schedule – A reliable calendar for the production and publishing of your content.
• Content research and curation – Identify reliable sources and tools you can deploy to help curate relevant information to help boost the quality of your content. 
• Brand alignment – The context of which your content is produced should align with your brand values, and match your consumer’s values. If you can tie these together, your brand will resonate with an audience that may also turn into customers.