It’s no secret that I think the traditional marketing model is broken. The mentality of “yeah, that ad campaign sucks, but I’ll make it work” no longer applies and content marketing has actually become the way savvy marketers boost their brand awareness and generate more business.
By providing audience members with useful content to educate them on your products and services — and show them how those products and services effectively solve their pain points and challenges — you can increase conversions, improve brand awareness, become a thought leader, boost revenue, and more. Sound interesting? Then why doesn’t everybody do this?
Part of the problem we come across when talking with brands about getting their content marketing strategies together is that they think content marketing only revolves around a single discipline.
The truth though is there are many disciplines in the content marketing framework. Today I want to share 5 different types of content marketing with you. Before I do so though, let’s quickly define what Content Marketing is, and why it’s important, for any of you that aren’t quite sure.
What Is Content Marketing?
“Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience. As a business, this tactic can help you improve brand awareness, boost sales, connect with your target audience members, and engage prospects and customers.”
Why is content marketing important?
Outbound marketing (e.g. something that reaches out and disrupts a potential customer to get them to stop and absorb your message) is much less effective at converting leads as it once was. Content marketing has become a popular way for businesses to combat this issue. In addition to expanding your reach, content marketing helps your business:
- Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
- Boost conversions
- Build relationships between your customers and business
- Connect with your audience to show them how your products and services solve their challenges
- Create a sense of community around your brand
- Establish your brand as the thought leader in your space
Content Marketing Examples
Content marketing is a great marketing tactic for just about any company. Putting together an effective, creative, and persuasive campaign though can be much harder than it sounds.
One concern you don’t have to face though when planning your content marketing strategy is being forced into one single type of marketing vehicle. There are many different content marketing vehicles to choose from which will allow your brand to choose the one that is most realistically attainable given your available amount of time to plan your campaigns and skill level at actually rolling it out.
Types of Content Marketing
There are many types of content marketing your business may decide to leverage. Here are my 5 favorites:
Social Media Content Marketing
Social media is perhaps the most popular form of content marketing businesses engage in. With platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat, there is a platform out there that will suit just about any business’s needs.
Using these platforms, businesses can share photos, videos and now even “stories” that will uniquely connect their brands with their potential customers.
Taking a look at Honest Company’s Instagram account, you can see that they’ve branded the look and feel of their page to be on-brand with their website and their other social media profiles.
The posts they post do showcase some products, but also speak about their core values (and arguably the core values of their ideal customers), reinforcing who they are, what they stand for and what they offer consumers.
Infographic Content Marketing
Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand, graphic format. With a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear images, infographics are a great way to effectively communicate your content. They work well if you’re trying to distill an educational and/ or complex topic down so all audience members can understand it.
Check out this infographic from REPOWER Orange. The graphic is highly informative and succinctly breaks down the different elements and considerations a homeowner should take into account when figuring out how to lower their home’s power bill.
You don’t have to be an electrical engineer to understand this data. It can be reviewed and easily absorbed in a matter of minutes.
Blog Content Marketing
Blogs are perhaps one of our favorite “go-to” forms of content marketing. They are so powerful because you can be so descriptive, giving out information to your customers and ideal prospects. While the main focus of blogs should be to convert visitors into customers, they are also excellent for keeping you top of mind with customers and ensuring they continue to do business with you over the long haul.
Depending on the goal of your specific blog, you may choose to promote other blog content by linking to various posts, sharing links to your social media pages, linking to your partners’ websites and products, or writing about your product line.
Check out Lisa Eldridge’s beauty blog. Lisa has a fantastic blog where she shares beauty tips and “how to” videos, beauty product reviews, looks at fashion trends of the rich and famous, and articles about the history of the beauty industry.
Her blog regularly publishes this content to keep readers engage and the wide range of topics ensures that they will feel confident that by visiting her blog, they can get answers to just about any type of beauty or product related question they may have.
Podcast Content Marketing
According to Convince and Convert, 90 million Americans listen to podcasts at least once a month. Podcasts have become so popular simply because they are a form of content that is convenient to consume. You can listen to them in the car commuting to work, at the gym, or sitting at your desk while you work.
That’s why so many businesses have started creating podcasts. They help improve brand awareness, build relationships with audience members, and promote their products, services, and partners.
Tim Ferris wrote a book called “The 4 Hour Work Week” and started a podcast to take the ideas expressed in his book and interview world-class people in all walks of life, deconstructing them, and digging to find tools, tricks and tactics his listeners can use to help become their best versions of themselves. You can either subscribe to consistently receive their hundreds of podcasts or pick and choose which ones you want to listen to.
The podcast is on-brand and complements his book very well. It also serves as a great way Tim to connect with his target audience, enhance brand awareness, and gain a following of audience members through a medium that differs from the typical way they would come across him (e.g. reading his book).
Video Content Marketing
Video marketing can boost conversions, improve ROI, and help you build relationships with audience members. You may choose to share your video marketing content on social media platforms, site pages, or on your partners’ websites — expanding your reach across different media.
LEGO is the undisputed king of YouTube brand channels, with a cumulative 6 billion views over its lifetime. The toymaker has a broad audience, ranging from tiny tots to aging adult assemblers, and the brand’s commitment to video content is easily demonstrated by its five separate YouTube brand channels and assorted other related accounts.
Videos include product spotlights, movie and game promotions, build challenges, LEGO stop motion animation, and more. With over 7.8 million followers on the main LEGO YouTube channel, they do a great job at staying on brand and reaching their diverse audience in ways that keep them engaged with the brand and being loyal customers.
The Bottom Line
It should go without saying that any brand that wants to build awareness, engage with more people and do more business should be actively engaging in a consistent content marketing strategy. To successfully execute on this, you just need to have the right tools in your arsenal. Hopefully, this article will give you an extra tool or two to build your brand, get noticed and do more business.
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