What is Content Marketing? And Should You Try It For Your Business?

Should your business have a content marketing strategy?

Content marketing is a huge marketing buzzword these days. While it’s growing in popularity in recent years, it’s been around for quite some time, it’s just morphed into a more targeted and focused marketing strategy.

There are whole books written about content marketing, including one of our Favorites, They Ask, You Answer, where Marcus Sheridan breaks down the success of his business by sharing in the importance of content marketing. So what exactly is content marketing?

What is Content Marketing?

Depending on your knowledge surrounding marketing, one way to let you know what content marketing is, is by telling you what it is not. Content marketing does not include sales materials or sales collateral. Content marketing is basically any helpful or educational content targeted at an audience that is relevant to them, although not directly related to their product. So what exactly does that mean? Instead of directly pitching your product or service to customers, you’re offering them relevant or helpful content to help solve their issues.

What is An Example of Content Marketing? 

Let’s walk through an example. Say you own a luxury sweater business and want to do some content marketing. Content marketing for your sweater company could include the following: 

• Tell the brand story. Where does the yarn come from? Why did you choose that source?
• Provide styling tips! Show users how to style some of your pieces and share styling tips and tricks they can use right now. 
• Share your favorite trending styles of the season. Walk through what you like and are excited about, and if any of your products fall into the category, you can link to them. 
• Highlight customers that have tagged your products! Show “our favorite looks from this month” and show how they styled your sweaters. 
• Give a sneak peek of production and how your products are made. Whether it’s where you source the material, how you choose styles, or even showing how you wrap and ship products, behind the scenes are a great content marketing idea. 

While these are just a few ideas, there’s tons of options for companies to use content marketing! And you should note that content marketing works just as well for service businesses too.

Why Does Content Marketing Work? 

The reason content marketing has grown in popularity is that you’re not just straight selling things to your customers, which is often a turn off. With content marketing, you’re building trust and providing helpful information for your customers or clients.

The content marketing institute puts it well:

“By becoming a credible, authoritative resource on topics that matter to potential customers, your business is more likely to get discovered by the right audience and earn their loyalty and trust – which, in turn, enables your brand to strengthen its customer relationships, grow an active and engaged subscriber base, and even increase its profits.”

Should You Try Content Marketing for Your Business? 

As we’ve mentioned, there’s some great opportunity and great returns on content marketing. You can build long-term relationships with clients, which helps build return customers and ultimately grows revenue. It may take awhile, but once you get started, you can work out a strategy to stay consistent and start seeing results. 

There are some easy ways to start content marketing, like writing on your blog and engaging on social media. You can start by asking yourself, what are questions people often ask us? You can write about it or highlight those things.
If you’re a service firm, you could talk about things relevant to your industry or share tips on how to walk through a complex part of your service. If you’re an eCommerce busines, you could use any of the ideas we shared above.

Interested in Developing a More Robust Content Marketing Strategy?

We can help. As an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy, we know that content marketing can help set you up for success. If you’re interested in learning more, fill out the form below and one of our Digital Strategists will reach out!