What is Content Marketing? Definition, Types, and Benefits

Content, in its various forms, is key to promoting your brand, products, and services to potential customers. Content marketing ensures that the content you produce, whether visual, audio, or text, reaches more people and convinces them to interact more with your business.

Because content is at the heart of most digital marketing strategies, including search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, and social media marketing, it helps to have a deeper understanding of what it is, its types, and why it matters.

This guide breaks down content marketing basics by diving deep into the following topics:

• What is content marketing?
• What are the types of content marketing?
• Why is content marketing important?
• What are the benefits of content marketing?

Content marketing definition

Content marketing is a powerful digital marketing technique that involves creating and sharing various forms of online content, such as articles, videos, social media posts, and more. This content is shared on different platforms to inform or educate your target audience about your business, products, services, or industry insights.

It involves extensive research to produce unique and relevant content that is valuable throughout the buyer’s journey and generates different results, including increased traffic, leads, engagement, and conversions.

Content marketing introduces your businesses to more people and convinces them that you have the solution to their problems. It aims to keep you at the top of your audience’s minds as a trusted industry authority, making it easier for them to pick your products or services in a crowded marketplace.

What are the types of content used in content marketing?

You must understand the different content marketing assets when figuring out your content marketing plan. Content for content marketing can be categorized into four broad categories: written, audio, video, and image. It can then be broken down further into:

• Blog posts: These are the most popular form of content marketing, but clearly not the only one. They cater to audiences at the top of the marketing funnel looking for answers to inform the start of the purchase journey.
• Social media posts: Social media content, such as static posts, videos, and carousels, helps expand your reach and effectively engage your audience. Additionally, it allows you to make meaningful connections and build stronger relationships with clients.
• Infographics: These break down complex information or large amounts of data in a visual and entertaining way that’s easier to comprehend. Good infographic designs engage your audience and drive desirable results.
• Email content: This includes custom drip campaigns, product launch announcements, and monthly newsletters personalized to your subscribers to encourage them to complete specific conversions, such as making purchases.
• Videos: Video content includes engaging visuals that improve the user experience on your site. You can use it to answer questions, present complex ideas, highlight your product features, or help people solve problems.

Why is content marketing important?

Content marketing is essential to any business’s digital marketing strategy and can impact a business’s reputation, industry influence, and profitability. Let’s look at the impact of content marketing by the numbers:

• Content marketing generates up to three times more leads than traditional marketing but costs about 62% less
• 72% of businesses agree that content marketing has increased their leads
• 77% of businesses are pleased with their content marketing ROI

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Content marketing has many benefits for businesses. Here are some of the main ones:

• Build brand awareness
• Enhance trust and authority
• Generate more qualified leads

Build brand awareness

Sharing unique and valuable content on various digital platforms to tell people what you do and how you can solve their problems helps build brand awareness and visibility. You can leverage content to make your business appear before more people and allow them to familiarize themselves with your brand and offerings.

Creating content like blogs and videos with hyperlinks and a share button allows those who come across it to share it with their family and friends interested in the same content. When people are aware of your brand and products, they can keep coming back to find information about your business or industry until they eventually convert.

Establish trust and authority

When people can count on you to provide relevant and helpful content, they start trusting you and considering you an authority in your industry. Once trust is established, potential customers are more likely to turn to you first when it’s time to make a purchase and even return whenever they need more products or services within your scope.

 

To build trust and authority with your audiences, you must consistently produce high-quality content that meets Google’s (E-E-A-T) guidelines — that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. E-E-A-T determines how people perceive your content and the value they gain from engaging with it.

For example, suppose you run a garage door business and share content about common garage door problems and how to fix them. Clients who find this content helpful may return to you when they need bigger repairs or replacements because they already trust you.

Generate more qualified leads

Qualified leads refer to potential clients interested in your products or services by engaging with your content. High-quality content that answers their questions and addresses their pain points pushes them further down the marketing funnel, bringing them closer to closing sales.

Content marketing helps you generate more qualified leads by:

• Attracting qualified traffic, which refers to site visitors with an interest in your products or services and a higher likelihood of conversion
• Demonstrating your industry expertise, keeping you at the top of the client’s mind, and making you the first choice when it’s time to purchase
• Helping you rank higher on search engines when you produce high-quality content that satisfies searcher’s intent and follows SEO guidelines
• Offering you an opportunity to advertise your products or services without being pushy or salesy
• Highlighting past successes to show potential clients how you can effectively solve their problems

FAQs about content marketing

Even with all the basic concepts of content marketing at your fingertips, most marketers have some burning questions, and here are the answers to these.

Is content marketing worth it?

Yes! Content marketing is worth it for businesses in many industries because it drives qualified traffic and leads to your website, ultimately boosting conversions and revenue.

Why invest in content marketing?

You should consider investing in content marketing if you want to boost your business’s most essential metrics, such as traffic, leads, conversions, and revenue.

How do you get started with content marketing?

To start with content marketing, you need to understand your target audience and their needs at different stages of the buyer’s journey. Then, create content for each stage, keeping in mind the latest content marketing trends. Utilizing content marketing tools can help streamline your process and enhance the quality of your content.  Promoting your content and publishing quality content regularly contributes to the success of your content marketing efforts.

What is the difference between content marketing and SEO?

Content marketing focuses on crafting valuable content for your website, whereas SEO is all about optimizing that content to enhance its visibility in search engine results. By integrating both strategies, you can maximize your online presence and drive more traffic to your site.

Learn more about content marketing vs. SEO

Start your journey to successful content marketing

With all the knowledge and insights on content marking shared in this guide, you’re well on your way to launching successful content marketing campaigns.

However, while we’re confident you can do it yourself, partnering with a renowned content marketing agency like WebFX — the experts behind SEO.com — can help strengthen your efforts. WebFX has over 500 experts who are well-versed in the different types of content and best practices for each.

If you’re ready to start your content marketing journey, request a custom proposal today to get started!