Chapter 12

Content marketing: the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and
consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly-defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable
customer action.

Their definition highlights the fact that content marketing is part of overall marketing strategy. As such, content
must be created with a specific, clearly-defined target audience in mind. The content must be useful to them—
must resonate in their lives—and it must motivate them to take the actions the marketer calls for. That is good;
isn’t it enough? No, in order to accomplish the content marketing task, marketers need a content strategy. Here
is a good definition that clarifies the difference:

Content strategy deals with the planning aspects of managing content throughout its lifecycle, and includes
aligning content to business goals, analysis, and modeling, and influences the development, production,
presentation, evaluation, measurement, and sunsetting of content, including governance.

In other words, content marketing is not just a bunch of people writing, filming, or otherwise creating content
that they find interesting. It is an activity that is aligned with marketing and digital marketing strategy and
carefully tracked and evaluated. That still leaves two interesting terms in the definition.

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, it is about the stories you tell.”

Why Is Digital Content Different Than Traditional Content?

The comparison makes it clear that information is the primary characteristic of online channels while push and
image best characterize traditional media. People are tired of promotional content; they want information that
helps them improve the quality of their lives. The number of communications channels has exploded and many
of them give the smaller business an opportunity to be heard at an acceptable cost. The emphasis on information
in digital channels and the importance of community building there means that transparency and trust are
indispensable if content marketing is to achieve its goals.

Current examples of offline content marketing are AARP’s (formerly known as the American Association of
Retired People) way of connecting to their members who publish the AARP Bulletin and the AARP Magazine.

There has been much discussion over what “counts” as content marketing over the years. A helpful tool titled the
“Content Marketing Matrix” finds that content typically falls into a 2 × 2 matrix: purchase intent × engagement.

As you can see in the upper left corner of the matrix, the goal is to entertain consumers by creating awareness
with products that have an emotional undertone (i.e., dating websites, fitness plans, etc.), the content that fits
best is interactive, with quizzes, viral videos, competitions, etc. This will likely get consumers to think about the
brand in a more unified manner because they are invested in learning more about it. In comparison, in the lower
left corner of the matrix, the goal is to educate consumers. With this type of content, firms want to create
awareness with products that are more rational (i.e., investment trends as they relate to the economy). These
types of topics work better with infographics, guides, and trend reports.
Furthermore, as you can see in the upper right corner of the matrix, sometimes the goal is to inspire consumers.
This is when the company is trying to encourage an emotional purchase (i.e., anti-aging skincare products,
impulse items). Celebrity endorsement in content marketing is turning commonplace in social media. Some of
the more successful campaigns include musician Travis Scott teaming up with McDonald’s to create “The Travis
Scott” meal (a medium Sprite, a quarter pounder with bacon, and fries with barbecue sauce). Or Shaquille
O’Neal teaming up with Papa John’s to create the Shaq-a-Roni pizza. When this topic occurs, the firm should
consider adopting celebrity endorsements, celebrity cameos, and community forums to help create buzz. Finally,
in the lower right corner of the matrix, when the goal is to convince consumers to purchase a rational product
(i.e., life coaching services, insurance, etc.) running a webinar, creating checklists, calculators, etc. are more
helpful content pieces.

Who Uses Content Marketing—What and How Much?

 90% of marketers are using content marketing.

 66% of marketers expect their budget to increase for more content marketing.

 Over 60% note that they consider their content successful by measuring their sales conversions.

 Primary goals for content marketing are: brand awareness, increasing sales, and increasing engagement.

 Successful content marketing achieves: brand awareness, building credibility and trust, and educating
audiences.
 The top challenges with content marketing are: creating content that generates leads, finding ideas for
new content, and creating content that receives high levels of online engagement.
 Google’s search algorithms are trying to transcend text to images, voice/podcasts, and videos.

 Video is the number one format marketers used in their content strategy in 2021.

 The top four formats marketers leverage in their content strategy are videos, blogs, images, and
infographics.
 The top technologies B2B organizations use to supplement content marketing are analytics tools, social
media publishing, and email marketing software.
 The top three owned media content distribution channels for B2B marketers are a personal website, blog,

and email newsletter.

Does it surprise you to see B2B marketers spending more on most aspects of their content marketing? Business
marketers have a pressing need to inform their customers and prospects, and content marketing is the answer.
B2C markets are increasingly realizing the need to inform their customers but they use more expensive—and
entertaining—tools.
B2B and B2C content marketers have somewhat different objectives. Top objectives for B2B marketers are:

 Lead generation

 Sales

 Lead nurturing

 Brand awareness

B2C content marketers prioritize:

 Retention and loyalty

 Engagement.

B2B digital content marketing involves creating, distributing and sharing relevant, compelling, and timely content
to engage customers at the appropriate point in their buying consideration processes, such that it encourages
them to convert to a business-building outcome.
They also point out that most discussions of B2B content marketing focus on unpaid content, although there are
important types of paid B2B content. When they add social digital content to the framework it becomes an
important way of understanding B2B content.
The Content Marketing Strategy Process

1-Creating Content

The first step in the strategy process is to create content. There are several ways of looking at the content
marketers have available.

Sources of Content

There are three basic ways in which marketers obtain content. Marketing teams can:

 Create the content themselves, which is labor-intensive but hopefully produces high-quality, relevant
content.

 Curate content, which is basically locating good content from other publishers and publishing all or part
of it with an explanation to your audience about its relevance.

 Purchase syndicated content, a traditional publishing model in which content from a recognized source is
republished, usually for a fee. There are several networks that specialize in syndicating marketing content.

Developing a persona: The steps in developing a B2C customer persona are as follows:

•Develop the personal profile. The data is likely to be available in the business’s marketing database or its metrics program
—Google Analytics or another.

•Give the person a relevant but hypothetical name that doesn’t produce any predispositions about the person.

•Include a photo.

•Financial status and preferred payment methods. There is a substantial amount of secondary data available on the
finances of various cohorts of generational groups, one of which your persona should fit into.

•Describe “a day in the life.”

•Describe the hopes and dreams of the persona.

•Also describe worries and fears.

•Explain how the persona interacts with and uses technology.

•Provide a social media profile.

•What information the persona finds influential.

•What are the current brands used?

•Add a quote that sums up the persona

Types of Content

Basic content types are shown as a pyramid. The large foundation of the pyramid is made up of high
frequency/low effort types of content while the top is made up of in-depth publications that provide detailed
customer assistance. B2C and B2B marketers use somewhat different mixes of content types in spite of the
differences in effort.

2-Identify and Develop the Target Audience

Marketers know well the types of information used to segment and target customers: demographics, lifestyles,
and media use. The bare statistics—although readily available from online behavioral data and marketing
research both online and offline—are cold. Consequently, marketers have turned to buyer personas to put flesh
on the bare bones of the statistics.

The steps in developing a B2C customer persona are as follows:

 Develop the personal profile. The data is likely to be available in the business’s marketing database or its
metrics program—Google Analytics or another.

 Give the person a relevant but hypothetical name that doesn’t produce any predispositions about the
person.
  Include a photo.

 Financial status and preferred payment methods. There is a substantial amount of secondary data
available on the finances of various cohorts of generational groups, one of which your persona should fit
into.

 Describe “a day in the life.”

 Describe the hopes and dreams of the persona.

 Also describe worries and fears.

 Explain how the persona interacts with and uses technology.

 Provide a social media profile.

 What information the persona finds influential.

 What are the current brands used?

 Add a quote that sums up the persona

Audience development: creating a loyal following for branded content.

3-Select and Optimize Distribution Platforms

It shows a basic set of platforms including the brand hub: either a website or a blog. It includes email, sponsored
content on what could be thousands of websites, blogs, and other properties, and several social media platforms.

Choosing platforms and sites on which to distribute content is not easy, even when guided by a strong audience
definition, because there are so many options to choose from. Choosing the best set of channels with which to
reach your target audience is the optimization step.

The advice centers around beginning with the brand’s owned channels. Most brands have a website and a blog
and a few social media channels including perhaps a Facebook page, Twitter account, and a YouTube channel.
Red Bull lists nine video channels on its YouTube page along with a TV channel for first-run films and videos. A
brand can have a great deal of owned media, but it takes a great deal of effort, money, and usually a lot of help
from user-generated content to keep multiple channels viable. It also takes a large audience to make them
worthwhile.

The process of selecting and optimizing platforms for distribution has a huge role in audience
development and marketers need to carefully match channel to audience persona.
Having created and distributed relevant content to identified target audience segments, marketers must then
measure the success of their content marketing efforts.

4-Monitor Conversations and Evaluate Content Marketing Effectiveness

It is important to listen to the conversations that surround brand content to gain insights about what can make
content more effective. Marketers also need to monitor their content for amplification—the degree to which
content is shared by users. There are social media tools to measure sharing and it is a feature of many metrics
platforms. How much the content is shared tells the marketer a lot about how effective it is, but it is not the only
important type of content metric.

There is a fair amount of agreement among content marketers about the four key types of content
metrics. They are as follows:

 Consumption
1. How many people are consuming content?
2. Which channel?
3. How frequent and how in-depth is their content consumption?
 Sharing
1. Which items are being shared?
2. By whom and how often?
3. How and where are they sharing?
 Lead generation
1. How is content supporting lead generation and nurturing?
 Sales
1. Is content driving sales and revenue?
2. Is there appropriate content at all stages of the customer journey to support customers and
move them through the journey?
Using Content to Engage Readers—Storytelling and More

The concept of engagement with content is both important and frustrating. Marketers want viewers to pay
attention to their content and to react to it in some way. It is about as far as agreement goes; there is simply no
agreed-upon definition of engagement. One school of thought believes that engagement means that the reader
takes some action, from liking a post to purchasing a product. The other believes that engagement means
building stronger emotional ties with the product or brand. You can see the divide here between sales goals and
branding goals.
We shall therefore combine two approaches to present a workable method for creating engaging content. They
are as follows:

1. Storytelling is at the heart of good content marketing. Many marketers agree with this statement and
Neil Patel and Ritika Puri of Quick Sprout built an infographic that covers many of the issues. In it they
say:

o Contrary to popular belief, brand storytelling is not about your company. It’s about your customers
and the value that they get when engaging with your product or service. The most powerful brand
stories are the ones that prioritize customers as the stars. Think of your company as a supporting
character.
2. Brand stories are all around the alert content marketer. Consultant Heidi Cohen has concrete
suggestions for how to find those stories. Cohen says you find stories in your company in several
places:

 Your company—its heritage, “a day in the life,” its community outreach, and more.
 Your products—special history or product lore, famous people associated with them, unique product
features, special uses, and more.
 Your brand—what is special about the brand, its logo, its story over time, the causes it supports, its
mascot, and more.
 Your employees—who are they, what are their relationships to your products, what are their
associations with causes and community activities, and more.

Hall also breaks down the four components of a great story. A great story must contain:

1. Identifiable characters
2. Authentic emotion
3. A significant moment
4. Specific details
Consumers love stories. We, as marketers, have to learn how to tell them. People are more open to new ideas
when they are told in the form of a story.

Notes

Content Marketing: a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and
social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
Content Strategy: is the high-level planning, execution, promotion, and ongoing management of the content lifecycle to
support key business initiative.