What Is Content Marketing? A Complete Guide

What is content marketing?

Everyone has come across the term ‘marketing’ before, but do you know what content marketing is? Indeed, content marketing and marketing are two distinct terminologies, and this post will give you a clear explanation. Besides, this post will also discuss some of the aspects of content marketing, such as the content marketing services you can access, content marketing agencies and content strategy.

Let’s begin with a simple step-by-step definition. Content marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on the creation, publication and distribution of content for a targeted audience over the internet or online. If you are a business owner, whether large or small, you will be interested to know that your business will benefit from content marketing for several reasons.

For instance, content marketing allows your business to establish itself in the industry and generate more prospects, not to mention the expansion of your customer base. Content marketing also allows increased brand awareness if you deal with the production or providence of certain goods and or services and will increase brand engagement in potential customers who are on the web.

Therefore, the main goal of content marketing is to increase traffic on your company’s or organisation’s website. Why build trust among new and existing customers and provide new and delightful services for your customers from which they can benefit? 

Content marketing began with the creation of the internet, but businesses have been using it for years. For instance, charts and graphs will be useful in a sales pitch since they provide meaningful and understandable information and ideas.

However, content marketing is not to act as only a sales pitch. Therefore, an organisation should not use language that urges consumers to buy a product, primarily when information is provided in a blog post.

With this in mind, content marketing takes on different approaches guided by different sets of content. One content strategy may be efficient and effective for one business but maybe a total failure when implemented for another company.

Content strategy

Earlier on, we talked about the relevance of content strategy and how one content strategy may work in one business and fail when used in another company. But what is content strategy?

A content strategy is a field in content marketing that is tasked with satisfying the requirements of the organisation by creating and distributing content. Do not be surprised by this because currently there are a lot of people and teams who write and design content but content strategy means that a group or an individual is going the extra mile of asking the question ‘What does the business need?’, ‘What should be created?’ and ‘Why is this important?’

A content strategy will identify the interests of your business. It will involve certain activities such as:

  • Understanding business requirements. Ideally speaking, the content strategy should understand the organisation’s needs then define the issues that form the basis of the content solution.
  • Content strategies also must know if the content strategy will solve the business problems that have been established.
  • It is essential to conduct in-depth research on the audience to understand the brand personas.
  • A content strategy must also have a strategic vision that summarises the preferred outcomes.
  • It is also essential to find a friendly tone and auger well with the target audience. The tone must also be kept consistent across the content strategy.
  • Ideation is also another important activity, and it involves the generation of solutions to the identified problems through activities like brainstorming. 
  • Once the content has been created, it is vital to bring it to the audience, and this is made possible by the use of social media platforms or email chains.
  • Lastly, content strategies develop an execution plan that outlines how every outlined objective and activity will be achieved in a said period.  

Content marketing services 

Before a content marketing agency can get started on a job, it must first learn the intended audience for the content. The agency must also determine the message to be communicated and how it will be regarded by the audience. The content must be relevant, valuable, profitable, and optimised.

Content marketing agency

You should now have a solid idea of what content marketing is and what it entails. It’s often sensible to make use of a content marketing agency – they will produce and share videos, infographics and other written materials on your behalf and help your business thrive.

Many content marketing agencies offer an array of services related to the publishing of content – here are some of the few most common:

  • Copywriting agencies will provide persuasive copy written by highly trained experts that will guarantee more clicks and shares, boosting your business.
  • Guest posts
  • Photography
  • Video
  • Blog posts
  • Infographics
  • Content marketing
  • Social media

Here at Woo, we are experts in content marketing, so if you’re keen to boost this side of your business, please get in touch with us today. We’d be delighted to hear from you.