What is Content Marketing? + Example Business Model

Content marketing is an area that plays a very important role in popularizing products and companies. It has been with us for a long time. Only the forms change. In the early years, marketing was getting used to the presence of bloggers and collaboration. Currently, we have many forms, often dedicated to one social medium (e.g. Instagram). Undoubtedly, this field will still be present, but it will evolve. We will take a closer look at this topic in this article.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that consists in creating and publishing valuable content that attracts the attention of potential customers. The goal of content marketing is to build lasting relationships with customers. Companies can create content marketing under their own brand or collaborate with content creators to commission it.

What are the benefits of using content marketing?

The use of content marketing in marketing activities can bring many benefits to companies, including:

• Increasing brand awareness – by regularly publishing valuable content, a company can gain greater visibility among its target group and increase brand awareness.
• Building relationships with customers – valuable content can attract customers’ attention and make them contact the company, which allows you to build lasting relationships with customers.
• Increasing online sales – regular publishing of valuable content allows you to increase customer interest in the brand, which in turn may translate into higher sales.
• Community building and involvement – if some of the competencies are transferred to Content Creators or clients in various forms. This builds a community and commitment around the brand.

What content is worth creating as part of content marketing?

As part of content marketing, it is worth creating valuable content that responds to the needs and problems of customers. You can create content like:

• blog articles,
• guides and manuals,
• case study,
• video materials,
• infographics.

Adapting the content to the target group and meeting their needs, is crucial.

How to promote content in content marketing?

An important element of content marketing is also promoting content so that it reaches as many potential customers as possible. As part of the promotion, it is worth using:

• social media – publishing content on social media platforms can attract the attention of more potential customers, especially if the content can arouse their interest and encourage interaction.
• e-mail marketing – sending newsletters with valuable content can attract the attention of customers and encourage them to visit the company’s website and familiarize themselves with the offer.
• positioning in search engines – valuable content published on the company’s website can help attract new customers through high positioning in search results.

An exemplary business model based mainly on content marketing

In previous episodes, we wrote about Affiliation and Newsletters. As part of the strategy, it is worth including these topics. Regardless of whether we are the original seller/business owner or the creators themselves. (For both groups, this topic is important)

Newsletters are part of building tools for content marketing and can be used both to build your own base of loyal customers and to promote in the mailing lists of other creators. You can find newsletters about your industry on this website.

You can also combine the entire business model with Affiliation. Like Newsletters, it is a tool for both Content Creators as well as Sellers and Brands. If a satisfied customer can recommend the product to a friend and get some bonus for it. It will build commitment. Our blogs are an example of a model that uses this approach. At TravelBlog, we have a dedicated place to look for inspiration, plan and order accommodation, rent a car or search for flights. However, the basic part is the knowledge base and it is the reason for entering the site, not the sale, which is an add-on there.

How to measure the effectiveness of content marketing?

To assess the effectiveness of content marketing activities, it is worth measuring such indicators as:

• number of page views and unique users on the website,
• the number of interactions with content on social media platforms,
• number of newsletter subscribers,
• online sales quantity,
• conversion rate.

Measuring the effectiveness of content marketing activities allows you to make adjustments in the strategy and adapt activities to the needs of customers.

Summary

Content marketing is an area that can bring many benefits to companies that sell online. By publishing valuable content, a company can increase interest in its brand, build lasting relationships with customers and increase sales. Adapting the content to the target group and meeting their needs, as well as accurately measuring and adjusting content marketing activities to meet customers’ needs, is crucial.

Currently, businesses use it as a business model to create and engage with a community. We can use this knowledge both as a Product Company and as Content Creators. We may not have any product and rely on creating communities and content, and sell third-party products with the help of affiliations and discounts.

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This series is cross-published in SellBiz Blog. It is created as non-paid cooperation as workload exchange. In the first season, you can read half articles written by a Blogelist representative and the second half by SellBiz.

The Polish version of this article is published in SellBiz Blog here.