The Complete Guide to Content Marketing
Content marketing has become an essential tool for businesses. Eskimoz can help you create a high-value content strategy that meets your needs.
Understanding Content Marketing and Its Goals
So, what exactly is content marketing?
In essence, it’s a long-term strategy that focuses on drawing visitors to your website by providing valuable, informative, and relevant content to online users. Unlike traditional marketing methods, content marketing is non-intrusive and attracts consumers through the quality of information provided by your company or brand.
The main objective of a content strategy is to showcase your company’s expertise in your industry and address the needs of your target audience in a meaningful way.
Good to know
Content marketing is distinct from brand content marketing, which focuses on promoting products, while the former is customer-centric. In content marketing, the focus is not on what is being sold, but rather on what the company is doing for the customer and the benefits they can derive from it.
What is the relationship between content marketing and inbound marketing?
Content marketing is part of a broader approach called inbound marketing. In contrast to outbound marketing, inbound marketing involves naturally attracting potential clients and converting them into customers, without using aggressive or intrusive methods (unlike outbound, which uses techniques such as cold calling, invasive advertising, or street marketing). Prospective customers are acquired through tailored content, which requires an appropriate content marketing strategy. Other methods are then added to achieve desired objectives: SEO, SEA, nurturing, automation, etc.
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing has become crucial because it meets the expectations of modern-day consumers. With the expansion of the internet and the rise in competitors, buyers have become more discerning and unpredictable.
Gone are the days when they would make purchases without any research. They now seek information, read customer reviews, interact with experts, and desire personalised messages. Content marketing is the optimal way to satisfy these new demands. By implementing a content strategy, a company/brand can increase its digital presence, show off its expertise and added value, and establish itself as an industry leader.
Content marketing helps build confidence in your brand
Implementing a content marketing strategy enables a company or brand to address the major commercial challenges of our time. In an era where consumption is heavily shifting to the web, digital visibility is no longer an option: it’s a necessity for any player wishing to gain market share or simply maintain their hard-won position. However, content marketing also has another fundamental virtue: it creates trust and, in doing so, fundamentally changes the relationship between the professional (who sells) and the consumer (who buys). As a result, it provides a multitude of benefits.
What content marketing can do for you
The benefits of content marketing
Visibility
Regularly publishing SEO-optimised content strengthens your digital presence by improving your visibility.
Traffic
High-quality content ranks higher on search engine results pages, driving more traffic to your company website.
SEO
The volume and quality of content produced in content marketing impact your SEO strategy. Creating high-quality content in large quantities helps to improve your website’s ranking.
Potential customers
Creating high-value content attracts qualified prospective clients to your website who are interested in your products or services and are more likely to contact your sales team.
Clients
Content marketing is part of a larger strategy aimed at converting potential leads into paying customers. Specific types of content are designed to optimise this crucial stage of the customer journey.
Leadership
With an effective content marketing strategy, you can demonstrate your expertise and position your company/brand as a leader in your industry and market, making you a key player in your field.
Awareness
By providing an excellent user experience through your content and sharing it on various digital platforms, you can develop your brand awareness and gain a significant competitive advantage.
Customer retention
Content marketing doesn’t end at the point of sale. It can continue to work by retaining customers, who may purchase additional products/services or become your brand ambassadors.
Longevity
Content marketing builds a long-lasting acquisition and conversion strategy that can continue to work for years, even if you stop producing content overnight.
Content Used in Content Marketing
A strategy based on content creation
As the name suggests, it relies on a process of creating content that meets several criteria. Content should be relevant to the expectations of consumers, informative rather than promotional, provide advice and tips, and contain an emotional aspect that attracts attention and provokes emotion. Moreover, the term “content” is not limited to blog articles, newsletters, and other textual formats. Videos, infographics, and contests are also used to deploy efficient marketing by mixing types of content and formats.
The Types of Content Used in Marketing
Here are the primary types of content used in a content marketing strategy.
Highlight
Blog articles
Blog articles, whether short or long, demonstrate your expertise on specific topics and strengthen your digital visibility when published on your company blog.
Whitepapers
These long and in-depth contents, also known as e-books, effectively demonstrate your expertise and are especially suitable for the conversion stage.
Case studies
By highlighting specific cases of your clients, you showcase your product or service’s benefits.
Surveys and polls
These formats are characterised by their pedagogical aspect, as they provide readers with insights into your area of expertise and positioning.
Landing pages
This highly specific type of content refers to the pages where visitors land when they click on links. They enhance conversions.
Testimonials
An interview format that can be either neutral (with an expert) or promotional (interviews of clients or employees).
Checklists
Highly appreciated, checklists serve as valuable organisational tools that grab the attention of visitors and encourage sharing.
Product sheets
Essential for e-commerce businesses, they serve as SEO boosters, landing pages, and informative content for potential customers.
Infographics
Visual content that provides clear information through an accessible format and requires limited attention, hence its strong potential for going viral.
Videos
Videos are easily consumable from any device. It’s no wonder that this is THE most popular content format!
Webinars
Online conferences (webinars) allow you to offer expertise through a format that encourages interactivity.
Podcasts
Increasingly present in content marketing, podcasts are significant vehicles for expertise and brand awareness for companies.
Slideshows
This conventional format is experiencing a digital renaissance in the form of PowerPoint presentations and SlideShare.
Newsletters
Newsletters remain one of the most appreciated formats for companies to follow up with prospects and retain customers.
Social media posts
This type of content covers all forms of posts on social networks (posts, tweets, live videos, Stories…).
Press release
Content dedicated to corporate communication that allows you to convey a message (news, reaction, promotion…) and boost visibility.
Templates
Templates are particularly popular with internet users looking for practical information. They are also valuable engagement drivers.
Games and quizzes
Entertaining content like quizzes and contests helps you collect strategic information and get to know your audience better.
Good to know
Content produced within a content marketing strategy must follow a set of rules: it must be adapted to the web (quick reading, consultation from mobile devices, limited attention span…) while respecting search engine requirements for indexing. Marketing content should be structured in a certain way (in an “inverted pyramid” where the most important information should appear first), use HTML tags, contain outbound links, etc.
The Key to Building a Successful Content Strategy
It’s not just about content, it’s about strategy
Content marketing relies on the creation of relevant and high-value content to capture the attention of prospective clients. But that’s not enough! Like any marketing strategy, a content-focused approach must take into account a number of factors, and its deployment must follow several fundamental steps. Without a well-established plan of action, you risk not reaping the rewards of your efforts and generating frustration due to a lack of results from your investments. Yes, content marketing has a cost, and therefore inevitably a return on investment!
How to create a content marketing strategy
Here are a few steps you need to follow:
Content marketing in B2B and B2C
B2C content marketing
B2B content marketing
Examples of successful marketing strategies
The huge diversity of content marketing
Content marketing is diverse and adaptable to all types of businesses and brands, in all sectors, and to any target audience. Strategies can be extremely varied, from the chosen formats, to the content on offer, to the preferred distribution channels, or even to the tone adopted to address audiences. In reality, anything is possible when it comes to content strategy: you just need to find the right way to communicate with your audience, the one that resonates with your company/brand and corresponds to its positioning.
4 examples of successful and inspiring content strategies
To illustrate our point, we have selected four examples of successful content marketing strategies implemented by large brands, which are particularly inspiring.
4 examples of successful and inspiring content strategies
Colgate
From expertise to customer service. Colgate, the well-known toothpaste and toothbrush brand, runs a blog that offers a variety of content categorised based on users’ different needs (developing their knowledge of oral health, improving the aesthetics of their teeth, being proactive), in various formats. The company doesn’t just sell a product – it leverages its wealth of knowledge to provide its audiences with high-quality, informative, and useful content in large quantities (over 1,500 pieces so far). This approach has made content marketing the cornerstone of its digital strategy.
Redbull
A multi-targeted content strategy. Red Bull’s content marketing approach is a prime example of a successful multi-targeted strategy. On its content-dedicated website, The Red Bulletin, the brand covers a wide range of topics, including sports, culture, arts, fashion, lifestyle and entertainment – some of which are seemingly unrelated to its core business. Rather than trying to obscure the fact that it sells energy drinks, Red Bull aims to increase its visibility across a variety of themes and be everywhere all at once! This digital strategy mirrors the broad strokes of its “traditional” advertising strategy.
Buffer
Long-form and high-quality content. Buffer is a social media publishing platform that has adopted a slow content strategy, focusing on long, in-depth and high-quality content that provides a lot of value to its readers. It publishes this type of content at a reduced frequency, typically two or three articles per month. The result is a well-maintained blog that stands out for the richness of its articles, the quality of the information provided, and the transparency of its approach. The content openly discusses the company’s internal organisation, business processes, and experimentation.
Zomato
Marketing through humour. Zomato is a true online “Cinderella” story: a small Indian website for restaurant reviews that has transformed into a restaurant and food delivery mobile application with 65 million monthly users. This transformation is partly due to a marketing strategy that combines innovative communication with entertaining content published on social media. In particular, the brand creates original visual content that links food and popular culture with a good dose of humour. This content is clearly highly appreciated by users since Zomato’s Twitter account is followed by 1.3 million people.
Content Marking Trends to Look Out For
Content marketing, a strategy of the future
Content marketing, like all digital approaches, is constantly evolving. The tools we use, the methods we employ, the platforms we leverage, and even the SEO algorithms we optimise are all subject to change. As our audiences become more discerning and demanding, implementing a successful content marketing strategy requires constant adaptability. Despite the challenges, 78% of marketers view content marketing as the future of their profession. It’s therefore crucial to remain vigilant and anticipate the major trends on the horizon, so that we can integrate them into our existing strategies and reach an ever-widening audience.
What will content marketing look like in the years to come?
Highlight
Live video
The live video format is enjoying considerable success on social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram. It is likely to intensify and become a cornerstone of content strategies.
Audio content
Voice search is experiencing spectacular growth. Future content will have to adapt to this search mode by offering audio responses (podcasts and others).
Interactive content
Interactivity is a source of engagement and content is adapting (quizzes, contests, webinars and live videos…). This is a trend that is expected to quickly intensify.
User-generated content
UGC (User-Generated Content) is increasingly used by brands, and for good reason: user-generated content is a powerful generator of trust for consumers.
Personalised content
Effective audience segmentation will allow for maximum content personalisation to target specific audiences. Making each reader feel unique and special.
Long-form content
The “slow content” trend is gradually taking hold: longer and more in-depth content is replacing “snack content”. All for the benefit of consumers.
« Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. »
Our Commitment
Expertise
Since 2010, we have worked with over 2000 clients across 90 countries.
Passion
We are a team of passionate, industry-focused individuals who are committed to your success.
Performance
We’re committed to implementing a data-driven strategy, making a real impact on your bottom line by providing avenues for growth.
Any questions?
Let’s talk