The value of content for marketing is that it can fuel and support any and every strategy you adopt to help achieve your business goals. Jayson Demers, Founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, cites several core
marketing functions that content helps drive:
- Attracting new traffic
- Building your reputation
- Encouraging trust and faith in your brand
- Influencing conversions and
- Even creating a separate stream of revenue.
Good marketing strategies incorporate these fundamental elements:
- Target customers—knowledge of them and the jobs they use your products/services to accomplish
- Your value proposition and competitive differentiation
- The channels your customers use
- Their journey through your sales funnel [Link to Journeys section]
Whether your sales funnel has four phases like the classic A-I-D-A model or any other variation, it’s easy to see how different types of content critically support the marketing strategies for each phase.
For example, one of your likely marketing strategies is to create awareness for your company and its offerings, which is typically aligned with the top of the funnel. Content types that best support this strategy include:
- Video and display ads
- Social media posts
- Customer story snippets
- Trends blog articles
- Interviews
Another marketing strategy—this one focused on the middle of the funnel—might be to educate your target audience, potentially about different solutions for their problems, how changes in the industry
affect them, the most important characteristics of a solutions provider, etc. Content that best supports this strategy includes:
- Website
- Webinars and event presentations
- Guides
- White papers
- Blog articles, videos and podcasts
A likely marketing strategy aimed at the bottom of the funnel is to help enable your sales team or conversion process. Several types of content support this, including:
- Pitch decks
- Emails
- One sheets and other shareable collateral
- Case studies and customer testimonials
- Product description cheat sheets
- Competitor comparison charts
Content is indispensable when executing marketing strategies throughout the phases of your customer’s journey.