Content Marketing in 2023: An Ultimate Guide with Examples

Introduction to Content Marketing

Content marketing is not a modern-age technique or strategy. The first occurrence of content marketing was published in 1732 by Benjamin Franklin for his annual Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Content marketing is not only about creating a blog, videos, photos, infographics, but it is also about telling a story to the targeted world for the sake of marketing. It is a technique to retain and build a solid audience base by consistently providing high-quality and relevant content. That’s why content marketing is considered a long-term strategy rather than short-term success. 

Content Marketing Definition: 

So, what is content marketing? Why do companies or brands spend huge money on producing content? 

As per The Blue Oceans Group– Content marketing is a long-term strategy of creating and delivering high-quality, relevant content to its defined and targeted audience to provide value and retain them for high ROI. 

As per Content Marketing Institute– It is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

As per Neil Patel– Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them consistently.

Content Marketing Type

Let’s understand how these forms of content marketing can build your brand and leverage business: 

Blog Posts

Blogging has a huge market. Brands are using this strategy as one of the handy marketing tools used from the decades to bring sales. 

Blogging is a comprehensive and detailed informing textual content produced to educate the customer about their product or services. It helps not only in retaining your customer but also brings new leads and traffic. 

The length of blog posts is a critical factor in content marketing. Through it varies from sector to sector. But an ideal range of an article is at least 800+ words. Articles having a blog length of more than 3000+ words get the maximum social shares, engagement on the web and rank better on search engines. 

User-Generated Content

User-generated content is any form of content such as video, meme, text, photos, or graphics that are created by users, not by the brands. And then brands share on their marketing platforms and social media channels like websites, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. And when you share with your audience, it boosts your brand and brings credibility in the overall process. 

Content Curation

Many of the brands do not create the content as they believe it is more time-consuming and requires substantial investment. 

So they gather the relevant information related to their niche and share it on their platform. News websites mostly do it. 

E-book/PDF/White Paper/Industry Report

Creating an e-book or research paper not only drives traffic but also increases your user base and backlinks immensely. Most marketers and bloggers make massive money with e-books. 

Two comprehensive industry reports made by  Neil Patel dives 97,000+ backlinks for his website. 

Crazy, right!

He is not the only example of such an achievement. You will see thousands of people in every industry that are generating massive backlinks and driving traffic with these content marketing strategies. 

Case Studies

Many content marketing institutions and agencies prepare case studies to build the user base, drive traffic and then sell. Since case studies are highly educational and serve the purpose of delivering value to the audience as it is based on real-time business. 

Templates

Templates are another form of content marketing. The best example is email marketing companies.  Most of the email marketing companies drive their primary source of revenue through the template. 

Infographics

Most marketers are huge fans of infographics. It is a piece of complete information in graphic format. Marketers love to share it. Readers love to read and download it, search engines appreciate it. 

It is not only an effective way of enhancing the overall blog quality but a crazy source of getting unexpected backlinks and shares. 

Kissmetrics has been able to generate more than 52000 backlinks only in 44 infographics. 

Click to learn how to create an amazing infographic

Videos/Vlog

Video content is the most prominent content marketing type by the brands as well as users. It is super engaging and visible. Videos drive massive sales and become shoppable. More than 65% of consumers make their decision after watching videos. Video content marketing increases the recall value of the audience by 80%. Videos enormously boost the site’s SEO with organic growth.  

Interactive 360 video technology is expanding throughout the world where everyone would vlog.

Videos are encouraging, highly searchable, and easy to trend. 

Podcasts

Podcast marketing is almost for any business or industry to leverage their process and outcome. Podcast marketing can build authority, brand visibility, trust and target a qualified audience.   

Podcast content marketing is super affordable, easy to upload audio files, build a personal connection and client connection with the help of Referral traffic, or increased traffic generation.

Social Media

Social media is an excellent form of marketing of any type of content, whether it is video, audio, infographics, meme, etc. 

People are investing too much of their time on social media. Social media is a successful delivery mechanism that helps businesses in every aspect, whether it is brand awareness, lead generation, conversion, or any other promotional elements. 

If your social media strategy is effective, then you are many steps ahead of your competitor. 

Charts/Graph/Surveys

Charts, graphs, and surveys are the content type that promotes your site and helps in getting the right amount of backlinks. These forms of content are used in making various reports and research papers. Those who can not spend huge money on primary research took some data from the secondary research. And here you go.

These people use your research content in the form of charts, graphs, and surveys and give you credit for the same.

Meme/Cartoons

In the era of social media where everything is digital, memes and cartoons have their own market. People are crazy about memes and creative cartoons. They love to watch, engage, comment and share. These forms of content marketing are the most sharable and trading. Memes usually tend to make a satire on politicians, film stars, and roast someone.

Many brands get popular, build a strong user base and social presence overnight. This content marketing type comes from your creativity, thinking, and research. 

Webinar

A webinar is another fantastic tool for content marketing. It allows businesses to interact, educate and showcase their product and services easily. Since the users or participants are engaged for a long time, it is easy to convert them and bring revenue to the company. 

By doing webinars on a consistent basis, you not only bring sales to the company but also drive traffic, leads, and brand awareness. Hence, a webinar is an incredible way of content marketing for your business. 

Q/A session/ Interview

Q/A session or interview is an exciting type of content marketing from the centuries. It grabs the attention of the audience and brings highly qualified traffic to the site. 

Q/A session or interview type of content marketing strategy is mainly produced by media companies, events companies, or advertising companies. 

Product Reviews

Product review is one of the most popular content marketing tips and strategies that decide the buying behavior of the consumer. Product reviews can make or break any brand of the company. It can bring crazy conversions and revenue to the company, or it can dump the whole brand. 

The great examples of product reviews are the automobile industry, electrical and electronic goods, or any luxury consumable goods. 

You must use it to read the reviews before buying any vehicle, laptop, mobile device, or anything. A great product review can fascinate your attention and decide on your buying habits. 

Photo Collage

Photo Collage is one of the best strategies of content marketing that is widely used by Storytellers, travelers, photographers, fashion, and designers. Many photographers establish their identities with the help of photo collages. 

Collages can easily give the idea to the consumers about the whole business. It fits them like gloves. 

Great Content Marketing Examples

Coca-Cola

No one should miss the strategy of advertising when it comes to content marketing excellence. It has a very touchy feeling with sensation in consumers in the global market. 

Coca-Cola follows a very personalized and conversational content marketing model. Start with brand stories creating liquid and linked ideas provoking conversations. Then, consistently act and react to these conversations.

The perfect example of creating brand value through content excellence is “Liquid and Linked Idea”, ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign, “Open Happiness” tagline, “Share A Coke” and more.

Nike

Nike uses social media like Facebook and Instagram very beautifully. Nike is not only rocking on social media with high-quality content in the form of photos and videos, but they are leveraging in collaboration with influencers as well. 

Their SEO strategy is also fascinating. Semrush shows Nike has 60M monthly users that land on their website with engagement rate of 7 minutes. The average user is browsing at most five pages when he lands on the Nike site.  

Burberry

Burberry’s most outstanding content marketing campaign was Burberry Kisses, blending mobile technology with the human wish to connect with others.

McDonald

McDonald’s runs an excellent series of content writing campaigns. “Hands Full”, “Your total is one big family hug”, “Ring your mum and tell her you to love her” drove huge consumers to their stores.  

Called ‘Search It’, the ad saw actress Mindy Kaling urging viewers to do a Google search for “that place where Coke tastes so good.”

In 2015, McDonald faced a rumor about their chicken nuggets and beef. McDonald’s used influencer marketing to dispel myths about the way its chicken nuggets are made. YouTube star Raphael Gomes created and ran a campaign on ‘What’s in McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets?’ with the #GoodToKnow hashtag. This way, they broke the psychology and wrong perception of their consumers. 

Grammarly

In a short time, Grammarly has achieved an enormous user base. It has more than 7 Million daily users. With an excellent and powerful content marketing strategy, Grammarly is doing it. They have added a Call To Action (CTA) labeled “Get Grammarly” on the top right corner of their website. It leads you to the download page for their plug-in. Grammarly’s target audience positioning tactics have an immense role in their success. 

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of Content Marketing

• First of all, brands to content marketing for awareness and branding. To measure brand awareness, you can track its performance from traffic, social media followers and engagement, subscribers, and mentions by the news site, customers or partners. If the influences and partners are giving the backlink for your website, then it is a positive signal of brand visibility.

• The 2nd best way of measuring KPI of content marketing is from customer engagements such as like, comment, share, mention etc. 

• Another KPI factor is revenue. If your conversion rate and shopping cart abandonment rate, daily sales and footfall on-site are high, then your content is doing great in the market. 

• Brand loyalty, retention, promoters, referrals, word of mouth, rapport, trust, new partnerships and strategic alliances are other critically important measures of KPI for content marketing. 

Content Marketing Strategy and Tips that Actually Works

• If you are a content marketing agency or institute, then promote these contents through the .com domain. In a study of Search Metrics, 84% of top-ranking pages have .com in their domain name.  
• Never forget to promote your content through email marketing as it is the best promotion channel. In email marketing, you own your audience and establish a direct relation. Email marketing is the primary revenue source of more than 80% of businesses. 
• If your content type is textual, then do not write thin content. You should write at least 1200+ words to deliver value and information to your audience. The comprehensive blog post has a high value not only in the eyes of the audience but also in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. You will rank better for your targeted keyword and drive more traffic, leads and finally conversions. 
• Devote your 40% time on creating content, and 60% time in marketing, if you want to do well in business. 
• Best content marketing strategy is to build an email list. To achieve it, you need to bring more subscribers. One of the most appropriate techniques to make an email list is offering free online courses, mini video courses, free consultancy, free samples or trials. You can also give free pdfs, a checklist to download. HubSpot and Udemy are the best examples of such content marketing techniques. 
• Creating quality content is not enough in a super-competitive world. You should take advantage of Paid Ads and promote your content to reach out to a better audience. When it comes to Paid Ads, many marketers start promoting their content on LinkedIn. And nothing is wrong in it. Linkedin is an excellent platform for B2B marketing, where brands make strategy and do promotion. But one should not ignore the other amazing platforms such s Facebook Ads and Instagram. Nike is an excellent example of great content marketing through social media channels like Facebook and Instagram. 

Content Marketing for B2B

• Content Marketing b2b has few limits and advantages that make it more particular. 
• You have a small targeted audience with a long buying cycle in Business to Business (B2B).
• For b2b audiences, relations are more important than a product. They are less personal and more value-driven.
• B2B audience focuses more on efficiency, expertise and lead generation. 

So, content marketing for b2b audiences is more challenging than B2C, B2G or any other. 

In North America, 86% of the businesses were involved in creating brand awareness, 79% were educating their audience, and 75% of the businesses are building trust and authority. Out of these B2B marketing goals, 45% of the brands were able to build the subscriber base, 53% of the businesses generated sales, and 63% were able to build trust and credibility. [CMI & MarketingProfs]

This study also explains the critically important factors by b2b marketers and their content marketing challenges and programs. These issues are as follows;

• Highest Performing Content (by types and goals)
• Creating content Around the Niche and Requirements (from the sales funnel to fact-checking)
• Organic and Paid Content Distribution Channels (including social media platforms)
• Content Marketing Organizational Structures (from teams to budget)
• Content Marketing Outsourcing
• Technological Aspects
• Metrics, KPI, and ROI

Key Takeaways of Content Marketing (Important Checklist): 

Make Editorial Calendar for your Content Marketing Strategy: 

Making proper strategy, goals, and mapping down all the information in detail is the first step to getting success. It is the best content marketing strategy but unfortunately is, only 39% of the brands are following it. 

Competitors’ Analysis

Before creating content for your brand. Do know well about your competitors’. The in-depth research and study will help to understand your competitors’ tactics. After analysis, create content with a competitive edge that is better than your competitor. 

User Experience Analysis

If your site is not mobile-friendly, has slow page load speed, shows more ads and pop-ups, and misleading information, then it will hurt your site’s ranking and brand visibility badly. So keep analysis on the technical front of your brand and track users’ experience on a regular interval. 

Do well with Topic Research and Find the Best Content Topics

People waste their energy, time, money, and resources to produce content that can not drive a result. Choosing the right content that can drive high-quality traffic and leads is the key to success. 

To have the appropriate content ideas and have the right content you can choose Semrush. 

Take Exclusive 14-Day Free Trial With Semrush Pro Now!!

The overall Semrush Content Marketing Toolkit is impressive! Well if I need to choose the best one – I would say it is a “Topic Research Tool”. As great content starts with a great idea where exploring features like popular topics, keyword difficulty, topic efficiency, cards, and a mind map has been on top of my head to get an excellent idea to start with a #content creation.

Produce content that can Match with Customer Journey at every stage

Do proper tracking with the preference and choice of your customer. Some People would like to know about your product and services in video content format. Some would like to know in creative, memes, emails, and in other forms, whereas some may prefer in-text blog format. 

So, you have to be ready and know about your audience’s journey. Reevaluate your marketing strategy and then act accordingly. 

Closely Monitor Your Sales Team

All your research and analysis will go in vain if you are not closely monitoring your sales team, as they bring conversions. So, tell your sales team about the customer’s behavior and needs. 

Talk with Your Customer Support to Identify Client Problems

Your customers are always their problems and requirements to the customer support staff. If you will speak with your customer support staff and identify the issues, then you can make better content marketing strategies that can help your customers. If you can identify the core interest of your audience, then you can drive very high-quality leads. 

Leverage User-Generated Content

The fans or your lovable audience do mention your brand in their content. So, why not utilize the best user-generated content for your own benefit. 

Post-Short-Videos on Facebook and Instagram

Video is a future of content marketing and emerging day by day. Every day, more than 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook. Users can recall 80% of video ads they have viewed in the past month. 

So you can use Facebook and Instagram as one of the best tools to leverage video content marketing. 

Use YouTube to Drive Huge Traffic and Boost SEO

YouTube dominates the primary type of video content marketing such as vlogs, video interviews, presentations, tutorial videos, product reviews, demos, video testimonials, recordings, live streaming, and more. 

YouTube receives more than 5 Billion views each day on videos. After watching the video, 65% of the audience does visit your site. So that’s the robust market of YouTube. 

Establish Your Brand with Infographics and Illustrations

Research shows that the human brain processes image sixty thousand times faster than text content. Also, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is in a visual format. Hence, create free infographics and illustrations to hook your brand. 

Create an eBook

You can summarise your blogs in the form of an e-book and offer them for free or paid. It will lead to higher sign-up and conversions. 

When I say summarize, it doesn’t mean you copied and pasted. Make it in a sequential and structured way that can appeal to the audience and bring value to them. 

Update Outdated Blog Posts and Delete Zombie Pages

As 51% of traffic comes from SEO only. Google loves new content and prefers to rank them higher. So, do not try to spend your time and resources on producing original content only. 

Keep updating outdated content on your site and rank better on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It will also require less time, energy, and money to update your content. 

Also, delete all Zombie pages from your site. Zombie pages are those dead pages that do not drive any traffic or leads. 

The statistics of Proven.com achieved a traffic increase of 88.3% after the deletion of 40 thousand Zombie Pages from their website. 

Tips and Methods of Optimizing your Existing Outdated Content

Use SEO-Friendly URL extensions- As per the study of Matt Cutt, the first 4-5 words in a URL have more importance.

Optimize your title well- Your title tag should not increase by more than 60 characters. Do mention the target keyword in the title to correctly optimize it. 

Use Visual Media- You can update your existing content by adding infographics, images, pictures, videos, and gifs. Optimize image file names and ALT tags as Google and other search engines can not read photos without ALT. 

Improve Loading Speed- For better user experience, use premium hosting service and use responsive code to adapt to different mobile devices. 

Optimize your Page for Social Sharing- Google is not the only search engine. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are also massive companies with robust ecosystems and market share. 

Load your Outdated Content LSI or Synonyms keywords- Optimize your content with focus keywords. Do not overload as it may send signals to the search engines as spam. So load your content with LSI keywords or similar keywords. 

Other Important Factors

You can publish research, reports, case studies, guides based on statistical analysis. It brings more credibility and trust in the eyes of the audience. 

You should collaborate with other brands and content marketing agencies in a joint marketing promotion to leverage any opportunity. It is a win-win situation for both parties.

To shout out and make a strong presence, get involved with the micro-influencers. 

Metrics to Monitor Content Marketing Effectiveness

• Traffic and user behaviour signals, 
• Social Media Engagement, 
• Backlinks, 
• Search Queries, 
• Organic Positions

Content Marketing Distribution by Device

If the CTR of any web page is less than 5%, that means there are so many things to improve. We have mentioned the most sensational keywords that can improve the CTR of your site or web page amazingly. 

How to
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Why
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List-Related Numbers

In 2020, the research of content marketing institution like CMI, Semrush, and more revealed the most popular topics that searched on Google and other engines are;

• Strategy
• SEO
• Agency
• B2B
• Tools
• Examples
• Visual content
• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing
• Jobs 

If we talk only in the context of “Content Marketing”, the top 20 Google Search Keywords are as follows;

1. Content marketing strategy 
2. Content marketing institute 
3. Content marketing agency 
4. Content marketing examples
5. Content marketing definition
6. Content marketing plan
7. Content marketing world
8. B2b content marketing
9. Content marketing manager
10. Seo content marketing 
11. Content marketing services
12. Content marketing tools
13. Content marketing companies
14. Content marketing jobs
15. Content marketing platform
16. Content marketing blog 
17. Types of content marketing 
18. Video content marketing
19. Content calendar examples 
20. Content marketing conference

If we talk in the context of top 20 queries about Content Marketing Asked on Google search engine, then the topics are as follows;

1. What is content marketing
2. What is content strategy
3. Why is content marketing important
4. Why content marketing
5. What is a content marketing strategy
6. What is content marketing in SEO
7. How to create a content marketing strategy
8. How content marketing drives sales
9. How to do keyword research for content marketing
10. How to write content marketing
11. What is b2b content marketing
12. What does a content marketer do
13. What is visual content marketing
14. What does content marketing mean
15. How content marketing is changing the game
16. How to develop a content marketing strategy
17. How much do content marketers make
18. How to create content for affiliate marketing
19. What is good content marketing
20. How to write effective email marketing content

Author’s Closing Keynote on Content Marketing: 

As an avid reader, you can see the role and relevance of content marketing. We discussed the types of content marketing, trends and the statistics of content marketing. We also mapped out the content marketing strategy that is working in marketing. If you want to skyrocket your business with content marketing, but are not able to identify the right keyword and content ideas, then you can use a content marketing toolkit by Semrush. It is the best content marketing tool that will give you a boost in your traffic and sales. 

Personally, I also use only Semrush to get the best insights about content ideas and the right keyword that actually converts. 

Now it’s your turn. 

Let us know in the comment box, which is your favorite content type and which content strategy you are using for your business?

You can also drop your suggestion or proven method if I missed out on something.