What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a comprehensive strategy that engages prospects, pulling them in instead of pushing your products on them. It’s a tool that educates, entertains, and engages your target audience across all channels: social media, email, and your website. And as with the best forms of advertising, readers enjoy it when it's done right.

The consistent creation of high-quality content is one of the most potent marketing tools at your company's disposal. Because content marketing is scalable and can be used across various departments in your company, it is considered one of the most versatile marketing tactics. Content marketing is a game changer for goals as varied as lead nurturing, brand management, sales enablement, recruitment, and more.

But before you start churning out content as fast as you can, look again at the elements that make successful content so effective: quality and consistency. Having a strategy is what ensures that those two boxes are checked.

How Content Fits Into Your Marketing Ecosystem

To get people talking and thinking about your brand, you need content for all of your marketing assets. Imagine the engagement power that comes from writing the articles you share rather than using other people’s content.

This is where a cohesive content marketing strategy offers real value. Original content can serve as marketing material that you can distribute in every channel in order to spark conversations around your brand and your message.

Content holds many engagement and lead generation advantages: high-quality leads, effective lead nurturing, increased sales, more brand advocates, and better customer lifetime value. In one study, 68% of marketers cited lead scoring on the basis of content and engagement as the best revenue driver among their content marketing efforts.

Engagement should be your ultimate goal with any marketing initiative. And when you produce and share brand-written content, you start conversations with your audience.

Content Across Your Company

Across your company, several initiatives beyond just your marketing team's efforts will benefit from a cohesive content marketing strategy.

Sales: When you create sales enablement content that addresses your prospects' most commonly asked questions, you arm your sales team with more tools to break down barriers, answer the most common prospect questions, and streamline lead conversations. Having content at the ready makes your salespeople's lives easier.

Training: The same content you use to educate your prospects can be tailored to educate your employees. You want the language to be consistent whether a customer is talking to frontline customer support or a back-office accounting team member, so why not use similar content?

Recruitment: Guest-contributed articles and a well-populated blog can give potential hires an idea of your company culture and what you stand for. This can not only help draw candidates to you, but it can also make interviews more interesting because candidates will have a better sense of your company and more to talk about.

Sharing Marketing Budget

If done correctly, content marketing can benefit almost every area of your company, so it’s important to identify which departments it can serve. If HR needs assistance creating employer branding or sales needs help developing sales enablement content, it might make sense to share the cost of content creation with those departments.

By splitting the cost and creating content that other departments can also use, you minimize the need to spend on additional tactics. Not only do multiple departments get to benefit, but you get to accomplish your goals less expensively. Ultimately, investing in content is a win-win for your entire business.