What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan for creating and deploying media to increase brand awareness. Different types of content marketing assets include online articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, whitepapers, social media, web pages, and other formats.

Unlike some traditional advertising approaches, content marketing usually does not usually explicitly promote a product or service or deliver direct sales pitches or offers. Rather, a successful content marketing strategy depends upon delivering information and stories that the intended audience is likely to find valuable. This can in turn boost interest in that company’s products or services. A consumer food business, for example, might create recurring blog posts or videos with recipes and meal-planning tips in order to attract gourmands. The same principles also apply to B2B content marketing, along with a stronger focus on increasing ROI. Content marketing ROI can be measured by tracking metrics and statistics that connect back to a company’s particular goals.

People are bombarded daily with marketing and advertising messages, especially in the digital age. Moreover, people are increasingly adept at tuning out or altogether blocking such messages, especially if they perceive them as irrelevant. An effective content marketing strategy helps get past that barrier by delivering information that people find informative or even entertaining. It’s a critical means of relationship-building in the digital age, both with prospective and existing customers. Instead of associating a brand with a particular sales pitch or tagline, people can connect it with the value they find in the content related to that brand.