What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy where content owners produce and share relevant and valuable online content such as videos and social media posts, with the aim of stimulating interest in products and services. This allows content owners to attract, engage and retain their audience.

This content could be shared through different mediums, but the most effective channels are usually a brand’s website or social media platforms. Content marketing is all about storytelling, with the aim of raising brand awareness and showing customers that you have expertise in that area.

It is a long-term game, and to be successful at it you need to think about building a strong relationship with your target audience. By providing high quality and consistent content to your audience at the right times, customers are likely to be loyal to your brand.

Content marketing is the perfect opportunity for businesses and brands to showcase their strengths and expertise in an area, which is also referred to as thought leadership. Rather than directly trying to generate sales, content marketing allows the generation of interest in a product or services, which in turn helps with building brand trust and expertise, increasing your presence in the market.

Let’s think about an example! A backpacking travel company may initially create blog posts on their website on ‘The best backpacking trails in South East Asia’ or a social media post with ‘Top backpacking tips’. This type of free and helpful content is perfect at this stage as it shows you the company is thinking about your interests. A customer is now more likely to engage with this travel company, trust them and buy from them.

Once a company has built a strong brand image and trust from their target audience, they can then start creating content for those that are ready to buy, for instance ‘A 6-week Travel Tour around Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia’. This sort of content will not only help drive sales from those already using your site, but relevant and engaging content will also help the company’s website to rank higher on search engine results. This part of your strategy will enhance your search engine optimisation (something we will cover later) and will help drive more visitors to their site. All of this provides more opportunities to increase sales.

Have you seen real life examples of content marketing? Share these with other learners in the comments below.