In today’s world, content marketing has become one of the important forms of digital marketing to reach the targeted audience without spending more money. But as more and more businesses are adopting content marketing strategies in their business it has become important to make sure that the content marketing strategies are competitive.
According to research conducted, it is observed that effective content marketing strategies can increase 50% of the leads for B2B while increasing up to 80% of website traffic for B2C businesses. So it has been proved that content marketing can help to achieve the desired business goal by spending less money.
In this blog, we will explore the different types of content marketing and how we can effectively use them to achieve our business goals.
1. Blogs
Blogs are a foundational content marketing asset. From short posts to long-form content, blogs allow brands to share insights, perspectives, how-to advice, industry trends, and other valuable information. Blogs help establish subject matter expertise and trust. They also provide keywords and topics to optimize as well as content to repurpose into other formats. For leads in the awareness stage, blogs raise interest and provide education. For leads further down the funnel, blogs address questions and concerns. However, no strategy will work if a relevant topic is not selected or there is no informational content in the content marketing strategy.
2. E-Books and Whitepapers
Long-form, text-rich, relevant content presented in downloadable formats, ebooks, and whitepapers allows in-depth exploration of topics. For example, an accounting software company can offer an ebook on payroll best practices. These asset-building contents demonstrate thought leadership and are useful for complicated topics requiring advanced explanation. Gate submission forms enable lead generation. eBooks and whitepapers nurture leads throughout the buyer’s journey by providing education and addressing pain points.
3. Case Studies and Testimonials as social proof
While the above content types discuss your brand, case studies and testimonials allow your brand’s value to be explained through client examples. Detailing a client’s challenge, solutions implemented, and results achieved, case studies provide convincing proof of concept. Testimonials directly quote a customer’s positive experience. Both build trust and credibility for leads evaluating options.
4. Video Marketing
From brief demo videos to 30-minute webinars, video content presents information through engaging visual storytelling. Videos can bring blogs and e-books to life, convey key messages in a dynamic format, or deliver educational tutorials. Videos aid understanding for visual learners. Webinars allow lead nurturing through expert-led virtual workshops. Product demo videos or unboxing walkthroughs show how offerings work. Videos appeal to all learning styles.
5. Infographics & Presentations
Infographics simplify complex information into easily consumed, visually engaging graphic representations. Infographics turn statistics, timeline data, workflow processes, comparisons, and other concepts into exciting visual content. In a 2020 poll, over 40 per cent of marketers affirmed that authentic portraits like infographics and illustrations played a key role in accomplishing their advertising and marketing objectives for the 12 months. Presentations consist of slide decks, typically given in person or via webinars. Well-designed infographics and presentations promise quick comprehension and sharing. Leads benefit from digestible data visualization.
6. Checklists, Templates and Tools
Checklists, templates, calculators, and interactive tools provide practical, actionable content while requiring some information to be imported from the lead, enabling passive data collection. A tool prompting a lead to input their name, email, and metrics to receive customized output allows lead generation while delivering value via personalized recommendations. Checklists and templates that help streamline workflows also aid leads.
An integrated content marketing strategy requires planning and developing assets tailored to reach customers at every stage, from initial awareness to consideration and decision-making.
7. Content Map
A content map or matrix helps outline proposed content during the customer journey phase. The brand can brainstorm topics for each stage based on customer questions, objections, and motivators. A grid allows the alignment of content types with stages and topics to shape assets around the customer’s perspective.
8. A Piece of Content Creation and Distribution
With a content map as a guide, the brand creates posts, ebooks, videos and more that provide customer value in awareness, consideration, and decision stages. Some assets may meet needs across multiple stages. Quality over quantity is key—well-researched and expertly crafted assets perform better.
Distribution involves promotion across owned channels like blogs and websites and sharing on social media platforms. Email campaigns with links to downloads and paid ads also raise awareness. Aligning topics and formats to stages impacts reach. For example, an educational awareness-focused ebook may promo through Facebook while a comparison chart appeals to evaluating shoppers through retargeting ads.
Conclusion
Continually assessing performance metrics helps identify high-value content for further promotion across channels and enables refinement of content strategy over time. 83% of marketers believe it’s more effective to create higher quality content less often. The most effective assets can be repurposed into new formats as well. To summarize, it can be said that interactive content and valuable content, as per business goals, are a few of the most effective content marketing strategies to draw a wide range of potential customers.
