Content marketing has been a buzzword in the past couple of years. And it’s been for a good reason because content marketing drives three times more leads than conventional marketing.
But what exactly is content marketing?
While there are many variations to its definition, content marketing is a long-term marketing technique that revolves around creating valuable, relevant, thought leadership content to attract, engage and inspire user action.
To maximize its traffic to lead-conversion potential, you must understand the different content formats and when to use them.
Content marketing is an ever-evolving niche, and many new types of content marketing emerge continually. However, we’ll highlight our favorite types of content marketing in this piece and explore how they benefit your brand.
Let’s jump in.
1. Blog Posts
Despite the emergence of nearly endless types of content in recent years, blog posts in digital marketing are still widespread.
Blog posts allow brands to easily update their sites with fresh, insightful content that thoughtfully addresses the reader’s pain points, positioning them as an industry authority.
Regularly updated content also makes websites more appealing to search engines increasing opportunities for better rankings and quality traffic. Since blog posts also feature comment sections and are easily shareable to social media, they allow engagement opportunities with your audience.
More importantly, blog posts enable you to market your solutions in a non-sales approach and earn you back-linking opportunities that make your site more authoritative. Hence, it’s no surprise that blogs make up a third of all existing web pages and are considered a priority by about 55% of marketers.
Blog Posts Tips
Here are some excellent blog post tips for incorporating into your marketing strategy.
To make the most out of this content type, research and understand your audience first to determine the kind of content they’re looking for and their buying journey.
Also, research and incorporate keywords naturally, and if possible, set a well-planned blog schedule to help you stay committed to the task.
Here are some examples of the main types of blog posts:
a. Checklists
Checklist blog posts are exactly what they sound like — a blog offering the reader a checklist of tips or things to tick off their list whenever they’re approaching or performing a particular task.
A good example is a blog explaining the step-by-step process of selecting an SEO provider or how to start a business.
Checklists are more like a quick reference source when the reader needs advice on a particular topic but doesn’t have the time to analyze things deeply.
b. Listicle
Listicles are essentially list-based blogs.
They break down complex information into easily digestible, list-based data that’s easy to skim through and share. Listicles are also relatively easy to write and can cover all sorts of content.
Examples include the top seven social media marketing tips, five blogging myths, or ten ways to save money.
2. Videos
Videos are currently the most popular trend in content marketing.
As of writing, 50% of internet users check out videos before completing a purchase, while 93% of marketers believe it’s an integral part of their marketing strategies.
Using video in your content marketing strategy lets you capture the increasing number of consumers who watch videos before making a purchase, which helps boost conversions.
Since video content is visual, it allows marketers to break down complex topics into digestible bites that are fun and informative, making it a more effective way to build trust and reach your target audience.
What’s more, videos are easily shareable and can be repurposed across different marketing platforms, which helps expand your reach.
Videos exist in various formats such as:
- Product demo videos
- Event videos
- Educational videos
- Animated videos
- How-to videos
Video Content Tips
Take time to learn the different types of videos and choose the appropriate strategy to make the most of video marketing.
But, be sure to learn about your target audience before creating marketing videos and maintain the proper length for each video type with your target audience in mind.
3. Social Media
These days, social media is everywhere.
It is rapidly changing every facet of our lives, from shopping, dating, and learning new things to entertainment.
Today, more than half of the world’s population is on social media, making platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok an excellent place to find new customers and interact with current ones. It’s even possible to expand your reach beyond boundaries without incurring the traditional costs associated with the endeavor.
Engaging on social media also enables brands to build a community of loyal consumers who’ll be more receptive to clicking and reading through the content and even sharing it with friends and family. This, in turn, increases your exposure and organic social media traffic to your website.
Social media even allows market segmentation, meaning brands can create content for a defined audience, which is less time and resource-consuming than crafting content for the general public.
However, as the number of active users grows, many enterprises use social media to drive brand awareness and connect with customers.
Tips for Social Media Posts
Thus, to enjoy the perks of social media in content marketing, you need to create social media content that cuts through the noise. To do this, find a social media content marketing platform that suits your business model and zero in on it.
For instance, if you target millennials, video marketing through TikTok would be ideal since most of the platform’s users are between 19 and 29. But if your target audience is primarily seasoned professionals in fields like medicine and finance, a platform like LinkedIn would be the most appropriate.
Even so, this doesn’t mean you cannot use multiple social media platforms to promote your content.
Instead, it means you identify platforms that work for your business model and make the most of them instead of trying to use every existing one.
While at it, use your brand’s official name as your social media handles and usernames. This way, your customers will have an easier time finding you across different platforms.
4. Case Studies
Today, consumers are more empowered than ever.
Before buying a product, they can quickly determine whether it’ll efficiently solve their problems by reading reviews, customer testimonials, and case studies. Leveraging such mediums is a great way to reach your prospects.
Case studies, to be precise, offer powerful social proof, allowing brands to prove positive customer experiences directly from real-life scenarios.
Case studies are a great way to educate prospects about the benefits of your product or services and guide them through their buying journey, so they can know what to expect right from the awareness stage.
When shared on social media, case studies also help drive organic traffic to your website. But, keep in mind that you need to create case studies that build trust to enjoy these benefits.
Case Studies Tips for Your Marketing Strategy
Since case studies aim to showcase the value of your product or service, start by identifying the challenges you want the case study to address and how your product or service solves them. To make it even more personal without overwhelming the reader, you should build the story around a single client.
Then, take the prospect through every step of the client’s engagement with their brand so they can envision themselves as the person you’re writing about.
Before wrapping up your case study, don’t forget to highlight how the product or service addressed the client’s problem.
Before you publish a case study, ensure you have the green light from the customer to tell the story. Write a letter to the customer or client detailing the subject matter, the presentation formats you’re using, and how they’ll benefit from the project.
5. eBooks
eBooks offer marketers an opportunity to educate the reader in-depth on a particular topic.
By writing an entire eBook on a consumer’s pain points, brands also get to be experts on the subject, which is beneficial to the brand’s overall content marketing efforts.
Consumers who read an eBook that sufficiently addresses their problems are more likely to read through other content on your website, such as blogs and case studies, watch your content marketing videos, and even share them.
That sounds like a win-win to me!
Ebook & Long-Form Content Tips
To craft compelling eBook content, be sure to write content that engages and inspires user action, covers a topic in length, and includes accurate stats, expert input, and real-life stories.
Also, ensure you summarize each broad topic in bullet points and include infographics so skimming readers can easily find the information they need.
6. Email Marketing
Despite the widespread use of social media, email remains one of the most effective types of content in digital marketing.
Most people, even those not interested in social media, often have an email. What’s more, messages sent via email are usually more likely to be viewed than those sent via social media platforms.
Plus, since emails are often personal, you can tailor these messages to fit each customer.
This makes email marketing an effective way to promote your content marketing efforts as you can always share content such as blogs and newsletters directly with the consumer.
Email Marketing Tips
To use email marketing to fuel your content strategy, start by identifying the content you want to promote. Remember, even though email is effective, it only takes a second for a prospect to close it and move on to the following email. So, be sure to tailor your content to be attention-grabbing and, most importantly, relevant to the reader’s interests.
Include links to engaging pages on your website in email marketing content. It’ll be easier for the reader to access your site as they only need to click the link instead of typing in the URL.
Finally, regularly track and analyze metrics such as open and click-through rates to identify your email marketing strategies’ effectiveness and weed out the ineffective ones.
7. Testimonials and Customer Reviews
Testimonials and customer reviews are another incredibly effective type of content marketing.
Unlike most forms of content marketing on this list, reviews and testimonials are often user-generated. And since 90% of consumers want to know what previous customers have to say about a product or service before purchasing it, incorporating testimonials and reviews in your content marketing strategy enables you to offer honest opinions from real users.
Testimonials and customer reviews also help build trust and credibility, which is excellent for your brand.
Since they’re collected directly from the consumers, these forms of content marketing often humanize your brand, allowing prospects to connect with content and better understand how your solution solves their problem.
This leads to increased conversions as a consumer who reads a review or testimonial from a satisfied customer is often more likely to buy your product or engage with your services.
Testimonials and Customer Reviews Tips
To effectively use testimonials and customer reviews in your content marketing strategy, ensure you include them on your website homepage, service pages, and email social media marketing campaigns.
For testimonials, detail how your product helped solve the customer’s problem and how you collaborated with them from the word go.
8. White papers
Although they’re often confused with eBooks, white papers are a type of mid-funnel marketing content that’s persuasive and authoritative.
White papers are typically longer than articles but shorter than eBooks and are critical in content marketing as they allow brands to drive brand awareness.
White papers are also an opportunity for a brand to prove expertise in a particular subject since white papers cover topics more comprehensively than articles and blog posts.
Prospects are more likely to sign up to your mailing list to access a white paper covering a niche they’re interested in than when it’s just a blog.
But similar to the different types of content marketing highlighted here, the quality of your content determines how successful your white paper will be.
Tips for White Papers
When putting together white papers, be sure to keep these things in mind.
- Ensure you craft a compelling white paper by dissecting a topic comprehensively.
- It should be more than six pages and maintain a professional, well-written tone.
- Be sure to incorporate exciting visuals to make complex points easy to understand.
- Since white papers are more extended than articles, including a table of content alongside a summary will go a long way in encouraging the reader to read through the content.
9. How-to Guides
How-to guides, sometimes called ultimate guides, refer to a type of content in digital marketing that comprehensively details how to perform a particular task.
These guides are essential in marketing because they allow brands to address customer problems and enhance their website’s SEO performance by optimizing keywords and links.
How-to-guides are flexible and can be presented as articles, whitepapers, ebooks, or even videos, giving marketers the freedom to choose the medium with the most impact.
Tips for How-to Guides
There are two main ways to use how-to-guide content.
You can create technical guides that offer detailed information on how to sign up for your services or use your product, or you can create organic content relating to your industry and weave in promotional messages to encourage user action.
To benefit even more from this content marketing strategy, include visuals, choose more precise topics to differentiate yourself from the competition, and since the point is to offer an ultimate guide, ensure your how-to guide is as detailed as possible.
10. Webinars
A webinar, known in full as a web seminar or webcast, is an interactive online event typically delivered using specialized software.
Webinars are often convenient for your business and participants since they can be held at any time and place.
You can use webinars to demonstrate how products and services work or as an opportunity to go in-depth on a particular topic in your industry.
Webinars are also beneficial to other types of content marketing since they can expand further on already published content.
For instance, you may introduce a complicated topic through a blog post and break it down later through a planned webinar, allowing interested prospects to learn more about it.
Webinars are also interactive, meaning you can engage directly with the consumers through immediate feedback, live polls, Q&As, and chat rooms.
These features allow brands to form personal relationships with individual prospects enhancing chances of conversions and referrals.
11. Podcasts
A podcast is a prerecorded audio program, often offered on-demand, and is typically available for download via PC and other devices.
Even though they started slow, podcasts are more popular now.
About 78% of Americans are well-versed with this type of content, while over 57% report listening to at least one podcast.
This increasing popularity is attributed to the growing consumer adoption of intelligent and interactive speakers such as Alexa.
Since podcasts are subscription-based, they allow brands to deliver their content directly to an interested audience.
Also, because most of those who listen to podcasts are often educated and affluent, podcasts will allow you to focus your marketing efforts on high-value prospects who are most likely to convert if your content addresses and solves their problems.
Podcasts also allow brands to dive deeper into topics close to their audience, creating a community of loyal customers from their active listeners.
Content Marketing Tips for Podcasts
Here are some tips for incorporating podcasts into your marketing strategy.
When using podcasts for content marketing, find organic ways to tailor your message so it doesn’t come off as simply a sales pitch and turn off prospects.
Consider reading your ads instead of dynamically inserting them. Find a subtle but captivating way to incorporate your ads without compromising your brand’s core message.
Remember podcast listeners have a deep connection with their host, and leveraging this could help increase conversions in the long run.
12. Infographics
Even though written content has a vast array of benefits, consumers are bombarded by thousands of words everywhere they turn.
Choosing to include infographics in your content marketing strategy offers your customers a break from the endless blocks of words they find on the internet. Besides, the human brain is wired to process visual data faster and more efficiently than written data.
This means sharing your content in the form of visually-attractive infographics boosts the chances of capturing the attention of your target audience.
Infographics also allow you to break down complex topics into easily digestible bits making the consumer more likely to read through to the end.
You may even include infographics into other forms of content on your site, such as blog posts. Additionally, you may blend infographics in your how-to or FAQ videos to add a unique effect.
Even better, infographics are linkable, meaning more opportunities for backlinking, and consequently, better rankings on SERPs.
Tips for Creating Infographics
To make the most of infographics in content marketing, ensure you use visually-appealing elements such as bright colors, charts, and bold figures.
Also, keep your infographics concise to make complicated topics and figures easy to digest, even for the average reader.
Lastly, remember to optimize your infographics with appropriate tags and filenames to increase visibility for search engines in image data.
Types of Content Marketing: Getting Started
A few years ago, blog posts were the primary type of content in digital marketing.
However, the emergence of social media and a rapidly evolving marketing world has seen many other types of content pop up in recent years.
Knowing the different types of content marketing and when to use them will significantly improve your marketing efforts, exposure, and overall success.
Although we highlighted a few of our favorite types of content marketing to help you get started, our experienced content marketing agency is always ready to help you with any type of content marketing.
Which type of content are you ready to incorporate into your content marketing strategy?Let’s chat about your content marketing strategies today!
