What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a current buzz phrase around the internet marketing community and is often misunderstood as well as considerably misused. In reality, the definition of content marketing is simple; it is the provision of information designed to attract your targeted customers within your sphere of influence with the intention of driving sales or other desired outcomes.

In order to be clearer it is useful to look at the individual components of the definition. The content itself can be come in many digital forms.  Many people automatically associate content with blogs posts and while these are certainly the most popular form of content marketing, they are by no means the only one. Video, email, curations, images and podcasts are all ways to deliver information as part of a content marketing strategy. Good website design with all this in mind is crucial.

Next, let’s turn to the phrase, ‘targeted customers’. The key here is to be very focused on the specific target. Any company that is looking to pursue a content marketing strategy needs to have a very clear idea of the audience they are looking to attract. This will then determine the subject of the content that needs to be produced. For example, a garden centre may produce content on how to lay a new lawn or the most effective ways to take plant cuttings: information that is designed specifically to appeal to the targeted customers.

Producing the content and aiming it at the target market is however ineffective unless joined by the final key in the definition; that of using the audience to drive sales or other desirable outcomes. It is on this point that many companies fail with their content marketing strategy. They gain an audience but fail to understand how to convert the traffic into sales. There are a number of tried and tested ways to turn traffic into conversions including special deals and time restricted offers, however each business is different and a content marketing strategy needs to be tailored to individual companies.