Content marketing – what is it?

Content marketing is now a widely used internet marketing strategy. It allows gaining valuable organic traffic from search engines and building a positive brand image. It enables you to reach new potential customers, provides material for your company’s social media and public relations activities, but most importantly, it increases conversions and sales in online shops.

Content marketing is a field that requires creativity, knowledge and accuracy, where success sometimes depends on a small detail. The following guide is designed to introduce you to the essence of Content Marketing: its history, areas, channels, methods, formats, tools, applications and the potential benefits it brings.

From this article you will learn:

• What is Content Marketing?
• What role does Content Marketing play in brand building?
• What is the history of Content Marketing?

After reading this article you will learn:

• What types of content are included in Content Marketing?

In this article you will find the answers to the questions:

• How do you measure the effects of Content Marketing?
• How much does Content Marketing cost?
• What are some examples of Content Marketing activities?

Chapter 1

Content Marketing Definition

Like a song whispered in the ear, it is a metaphor for the dialogue between a brand and its audience. It gently weaves threads of understanding, feeding the mind with valuable information, opening the heart to trust and drawing the soul to its melody.

It is an art and a science at the same time, through which brands can establish deep relationships with their audiences by telling stories that resonate with their lives and aspirations.

Imagine being at a party where everyone wants something from you – to sell, to persuade, to acquire. And then you meet a person who tells a fascinating story from which wisdom flows, and values you appreciate. He is not trying to sell you anything, he is simply sharing his world, his experiences, his vision. Interested, curious, you start listening and, before you know it, you have built a relationship with her. This is how content marketing works. It is a subtle but powerful tool that instead of imposing, engages, instead of boasting, educates, and instead of pushy selling, builds relationships.

Content marketing, unlike the usual advertising schemes, is based on building a relationship with the customer and interacting with them. Both parties should be involved and, by definition, both should benefit in some way.

The content should be tailored to the target group, be of real value to them (useful) and build a long-term relationship between the brand and the user, who in time should become a customer.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent content, with the aim of attracting and engaging a clearly defined audience and ultimately getting them to take an action that will benefit the business.

This is because properly planned, written and optimised content is now crucial for effective search engine marketing.

However, this is not the only potential benefit it can provide us with. Content marketing, in addition to gaining organic traffic:

• increases the chances of conversions and sales,
• expands your mailing list,
• allows you to reach new potential customers,
• builds brand awareness and brand image as an expert in its field,
• builds a dedicated community around the brand,
• builds trust in the brand,
• provides “fuel” for social media and public relations activities.
• supports SEO activities and influences the positioning of pages in search results

Content marketing is nowadays basically an indispensable part of the advertising efforts of any company that wants to have an online presence and gain customers through it.

Entrepreneurs of the time, such as John Deere, the Michelin brothers or (the less recognisable) Frank Woodwark of Jell-o, began to create and distribute content – in the form of magazines or books – to their customers that promoted their products and explained how to use them.

Content marketing was then successfully applied throughout the twentieth century, although no one called it that yet (until 1996!). Examples can be multiplied: “The Guinness Book of World Records”, “Soap Opera”, G.I. Joe comics, LEGO magazine or the entire “Star Wars” franchise.

Off-line content marketing is still going strong today, but in what follows we will focus strictly on its online variety.

Find out interesting facts about content marketing:

• From a value of $334.5 billion in 2021, the global content marketing market is projected to grow to $416.23 billion by 2027 (Technavio, 2022)^[3].
• 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing (HubSpot, 2021).
• More than 9 out of 10 organisations worldwide use content marketing (Statista, 2020).
• Another study shows that content marketing is part of the marketing strategies of 97% of organisations (Semrush, 2022).
• 79% of organisations have between 1 and 10 people responsible for content creation (Parse.ly, 2022).
• A 52 per cent increase in the number of content creators was observed between 2021 and 2022 (Parse.ly, 2022).
• Creating brand awareness is the main goal of content marketing, according to 88 per cent of organisations (Parse.ly, 2022).
• Increasing brand awareness is the main goal of content marketing for 2022 (Semrush, 2022).
• The majority of marketers (62%) watch the number of page impressions to understand how well their content is performing in the market (Parse.ly, 2022).
• More than half of content marketers use engagement via email, social media engagement, website engagement and conversions as performance indicators (Parse.ly, 2022).
• 54% of organisations have allocated up to 50% of their marketing budget to content marketing (Semrush, 2022).
• Spending on content marketing reached up to $10,000 for 37% of organisations (Statista, 2020).
• Half of organisations reported that their content budget had increased in 2022 (Parse.ly, 2022).
• Content marketing is more likely to spend 100% of its budget compared to other areas of digital marketing (Search Engine Journal, 2022)^[7].
• Organisations spend more on content creators than on content management and analytics tools (Parse.ly, 2022).
• The three most expensive keywords in the content marketing industry are ‘content marketing funnel’, ‘content marketing agency near me’ and ‘content marketing Pittsburgh’ (Semrush, 2022)^[8].

Chapter 4

Types of Content in Content Marketing

The Internet gives us unlimited possibilities for creating and publishing content. We are able to put basically any type of branded content on the web – the important thing is that it fulfills strategic objectives

Which type of content will best execute your strategy depends on many factors. When deciding, consider not only your audience (in the form of personas) and what engages them most powerfully, but also evaluate your resources realistically.

It is much easier to create a 500-word blog post than a 5,000-word report, but do they enhance your brand image to the same extent?

Paradoxically: perhaps.

It’s worth experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

Text – the written word is the primary (and most common) form of content in content marketing – especially when used for website positioning purposes. Despite competition in the form of audio and video files, text remains indispensable in corporate communication (and more!) – because it allows complex ideas to be communicated conveniently and quickly. Its creation does not require any additional tools (apart from any text editor and CMS). However, appropriate copywriting skills and knowledge of marketing text writing techniques will prove indispensable.

Description (functional text) – category and product descriptions in online shops as well as other functional texts (e.g. “about the company”) do not exist solely for SEO reasons, contrary to popular opinion. A well-written description not only provides a potential buyer with all the necessary information, but also encourages them to buy.

On-page articles – the content we can publish on a company blog can take countless forms – we are basically only limited by strategy and creativity. On the blog, we can publish e.g:

• expert articles (knowledge base),
• news (news),
• forecasts and predictions
• guides
• reviews
• comparisons
• analyses
• interviews,
• case studies,
• toplists,
• Q&A and F.A.Q.

Maintaining a blog is particularly important if you care about search engine traffic – a significant proportion of queries on Google are informative. With the help of blog texts, we are then able to provide the necessary information and present our brand at the same time. OkDork^[1] analysed more than 100 million articles and came up with some interesting conclusions. One of the most interesting pieces of information turned out to be that of preferred text length. Here’s a graph that illustrates the number of shares versus the number of words by 4 popular media. So from the research, it appears that long texts receive more interest. This is most likely due to the value they bring with them. Short texts, unfortunately, are often not very useful and lack professionalism. Long texts, on the other hand, are exhaustive and give the interested party a complete answer to their question. There is therefore a greater chance that the recipient will want to share such a text with others.

E-book / white paper – a white paper, in content marketing terms, is a comprehensive, labour-intensive, industry-specific, expert content that provides more value than shorter forms – implicitly for the recipient, but also for the publisher. Comprehensive approaches to a topic, original research and analysis, trend forecasting, ‘state of’ reports, breakdowns of figures – this type of information requires a more thorough approach and is ideally suited to the creation of an e-book. The image effects are obvious – if a brand has the knowledge and resources needed to create such content, it means it is a trusted source of knowledge in its field. An e-book can be used in many different ways. The most popular is to build a newsletter base, but there are also uses for Social Media Marketing, PPC, Influencer Marketing or PR activities.

Newsletters – Creating texts for mailings is a thankful task – after all, we are writing for an audience that wants to interact with our brand. At the same time, the specifics of this form of content marketing should not be forgotten: an effective newsletter should move quickly to the point, use storytelling elements and induce action.

Graphics and infographics – The role of visual content marketing is growing as attention spans become shorter and shorter^[2] of the audience (which in turn is related to the amount of information being taken in). Graphics, images and icons are assimilated by our brains much better than text. They catch the eye with their interesting form and persuasive effect, so they are an ideal content marketing tool. They are commonly used in Social Media Marketing, but are also important for SEO. Infographics are particularly noteworthy, i.e. larger graphic forms that often supplement, or present by means of an image, the content of the article they accompany. This is an ideal compromise between an attractive form and in-depth content.

Videos – corporate content in the form of videos has been growing in popularity in recent years. This is, of course, related to the development of mobile technology, the change in the way users consume content, the acceleration of data speeds and the emergence of social media platforms where this is the default type of published posts, such as TikTok. The production and appropriate distribution of video content usually involves more cost and effort than other forms of content marketing, but the benefits it can potentially bring to a brand are also considerable. Video is effective in capturing the attention of the viewer, it allows even complex issues to be presented in a simple way and is memorable for a long time. It is a versatile format into which content types such as, for example, a review, a tutorial, an interview or an analysis can be easily inserted.

Podcasts – on the one hand, a lower ‘entry threshold’ than video content and, on the other, almost as much potential to engage the user have also meant that content in audio form has entered the marketing repertoire on a permanent basis. At present, the most common form of audio content is podcasting – online broadcasts (on websites and streaming services). Their main advantage is that they make it possible to reach our audiences with our content at places and moments not directly associated with content consumption, e.g. while driving or training.

Interactive content – Various types of interactive website elements, such as calculators, games and quizzes, graphs, timelines, maps and virtual tours or simply useful online tools – are also types of content that we can use in Content Marketing. They require much more attention and involvement from the user, thus allowing the brand to build a strong and long-lasting relationship with them. Interactive content can also result in natural links.

Recycling (repurposing) content – Remember that any content format is just the ultimate ‘wrapper’ for reliable, helpful and interesting information. What we say should be more important than how we say it. However, there is no denying that different formats will work with different effectiveness in different distribution channels. Therefore, it can be a good idea to recycle content (repurposing): reusing the same content in different formats – after some adaptation for the target medium, of course. An example of this would be, for example, transcribing a podcast into text form, presenting the main points of an article in an infographic or converting a set of graphics into a video animation.

Chapter 5

Measuring the effects of content marketing activities

Content marketing affects various areas of a brand’s business – from brand recognition to sales of services and products.

This makes accurate measurement of its effects sometimes complex and multi-component. This does not mean that it is impossible!

It’s important to get the statistics you measure right for your goals and expectations. Below you will find the ones used most often.

In the case of content activities aimed mainly at page positioning, we can measure:

• website visibility, result displays (using GSC and external tools),
• organic traffic (GSC and GA),
• CTR and Bounce Rate,
• natural links generated,
• external metrics (MOZ DA, Ahrefs UR and DR, others).

Awareness and engagement will be measured to some extent by SEO metrics, but it is also worth monitoring:

• number of brand mentions online,
• number of direct hits to the website,
• average time spent on the site,
• blog comments,
• number of social media followers,
• number of interactions (comments, likes, shares) on social media.

The most important group of metrics, showing the direct impact of Content Marketing on a company’s bizensch performance.

• contact form completions,
• newsletter sign-ups and related statistics,
• micro-conversions,
• number and value of sales!
• Upselling and cross-selling.

Chapter 6

Cost of Content Marketing activities

Content Marketing costs can vary significantly depending on the volume scope of activities, the types of content implemented and the type of promotional activities.

You will have to reckon with different expenses if you work with an agency and different (not necessarily lower!) if you want to operate in-house.

The first expenses will already be incurred at the strategy and preparation stage. The tools needed to create the strategy alone represent a monthly cost of several dozen to several hundred zlotys (in the case of the lowest packages), but the largest expense will be associated with the time spent by a qualified team. Depending on the industry and the scope of the strategy, this may be as much as several dozen thousand zlotys.

The main expense, of course, will be the content creation itself. The cost of writing a meaningful blog text may be small: from several hundred to a thousand PLN. However, prices will increase with the degree of difficulty of the topic. We will also have to pay more for more complex forms. For example, the creation of an e-book will cost at least several thousand zloty.

The work of a graphic designer and the purchase of photographs will also be necessary – this is another several hundred zloty spent on each creation.

In the case of multimedia content (audio and video) or interactive content, the costs are bound to increase significantly, but it is difficult to talk about specific amounts here – it all depends on the assumptions and ambitions of a given brand.

Example cost of content marketing activities in the Cyrek Digital agency:

In search of inspiration, you can browse through some examples of successful and interesting content marketing projects (of various types).

Cyrek Digital – examples of content marketing campaigns we have carried out:

• E-commerce report – how e-commerce has changed after the outbreak of the 2020 pandemic – the report was widely reported in the national media
• Trend on Recommerce. Is second-hand stuff the future of online commerce? [REPORT] – we extensively covered the changing trend of recommerce based on the data and analysis collected

RocketJobs – RocketJobs has an interesting blog, but their campaign about generation Z deserves special attention – it is an example of engaged content marketing, the publication of which resonated online

OLX – OLX is an interesting example of video marketing activities. You probably remember the spots with ‘Fishing Fanatic’, but you can find more funny (and not only) content on their YouTube channel.

Greenpeace – the ‘To the last tree’ campaign used the Minecraft game map as a vehicle for a socially relevant message. A great example of creativity in content marketing!

Allegro – the home-grown giant of online sales has many memorable campaigns to its credit – from ‘Polish Legends’ to the iconic and eagerly awaited ‘Christmas Ads’ every year. The latter are a prime example of the use of emotion in marketing

Blendtec – Blendtec, the blender manufacturer, has its own unique approach to corporate content. For more than a dozen years, they have simply tested what can be blended. The results of their experiments are shared by the brand on their YT channel.

Spotify – The streaming giant makes interesting use of the data it aggregates to create annual summaries of in-app activity, or ‘Wrapped’, for each user. The accessible format makes it easy to share your most-listened-to tracks and favourite genres on social media and thus strongly increases the reach of the brand.