What you need to know about content marketing

1. What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a popular marketing philosophy based on the principle that in your relationship with potential customers, you must provide value before you can extract value. This is done through content that the target group perceives as useful, inspiring or entertaining.

There are a number of definitions of content marketing, but this one is fairly comprehensive:

"Content marketing is a marketing philosophy of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, relate to, and engage a clearly defined target audience - with the goal of stimulating profitable customer behavior."

Note: Content marketing is not limited to traditional digital formats such as blogging, podcasting, video or social media - it can also include printed magazines, webinars, conferences and concerts.

2. Why content marketing?

Content marketing works because it's marketing on buyers' terms: You create the content that your target audience wants and seeks out, and let them find and consume it through Google or social media searches.

Content marketing is about providing value - and it does so in several ways: by educating, informing, entertaining or inspiring. Content marketing can be an article that answers questions your target audience has during their buying process, or an instructional video that turns your customers into smarter consumers/users of your products or services.

Where traditional advertising is perceived as a nuisance(because it's often irrelevant and untargeted), content marketing is the opposite: a helpful guest.

Michelin

What do car tires and gourmet restaurants have in common? In 1898, two French brothers, André and Edouard Michelin, invented the modern car tire. There were fewer than 3,000 cars in France at the time. To increase the demand for cars, and therefore tires, Michelin established a magazine to help drivers find their way, get their car serviced and find a hotel to sleep in.

The first Michelin Guide was printed in an edition of 35,000, with the "prophetic" words of André Michelin: "This guide was born with the century, and will last as long as the century does." The guide was eventually published in several other countries and was free until 1920. In 1936, the criteria for the famous stars were defined as follows: One star meant "a very good restaurant in its category", two stars meant "exceptionally good cooking, worth a detour" and three stars meant "incredibly good cuisine, worth a journey of its own".

Today, the guide is published in 14 different editions in 23 countries, contains a total of more than 45,000 hotels and restaurants in Europe and has become a product and a brand in its own right.

John Deere

In 1895, John Deere launched "The Furrow" magazine, which taught farmers how to use modern farming technology to increase their yields. At the time, John Deere was selling and manufacturing steel plows (the tractor wouldn't arrive until 20 years later), but the magazine still didn't contain product advertising - just useful content. This helped John Deere build a responsive audience that trusted them and would be more likely to choose them as a supplier of agricultural technology. Today, The Furrow is published in 14 languages in 115 countries and is the number one agricultural magazine in the world.

Jyske Bank

Jyske Bank launched its own online TV channel in 2008, Jyske Bank TV. The bank calls itself "The only TV company in the world with its own bank". The channel has daily broadcasts with several regular program items, including interviews with Europe's leading business thinkers, experts, authors and celebrities.

Blendtec

In 2007, Blendtec launched the video series Will It Blend? on YouTube, where they demonstrate how good their mixers are by mixing everything imaginable. The episode in which founder Tom Dickinson mixes an iPad has been viewed almost 19 million times since it was posted in 2010.

Red Bull

Red Bull has built its success on content marketing. They don't talk about their products, but sponsor athletes in motor and extreme sports and create content around this. In 2012, Red Bull conducted and broadcast the Stratos Mission. Felix Baumgartner was lifted into the stratosphere in a hot air balloon and jumped from a height of 39,000 meters. He reached a record speed of 1,357 km/h and broke the sound barrier. The stunt was streamed LIVE to over 8 million viewers via YouTube. Red Bull calls itself "a publishing empire that also happens to sell a beverage." Established in 2007, Red Bull Media House has over 500 employees and produces all types of content, such as films, TV, games, apps and its own music channels.

4. What results can you expect from content marketing?

Content marketing that is produced from a strategic starting point for a specific target group can contribute to the following business goals (the list is not exhaustive)

Generate leads and sales
Build brand awareness and preference
Build customer satisfaction
Drive recruitment and employer branding
Save on customer service costs

If sales growth is the goal, content marketing can help to:

Increase traffic to your website
Convert traffic into qualified leads
Convert those leads into sales

You can read more about the characteristics of quality content here.

5. How to create a content marketing strategy?

To implement a successful content marketing initiative, you need to have a strategy in place. We have divided this work into eight parts:

What do we want to achieve?
Generate leads? Build a position as a thought leader? Engage customers and prospects? Raise awareness of the company, products and/or services? Influence potential customers' buying criteria?
Who do we want to influence?
We need to know as much as possible about our target groups. Here we use the personas tool - which allows us to create fictitious people who represent our most important target groups. (Download a template for creating your own personas here.)
What does the customer journey(s) look like?
We need to be able to describe the stages of the customer journey(s) to our personas.
What should we tell them?
Mapping content and prioritizing where in the customer journey we want to influence. Here are some tips on how to create content adapted to the different phases of the customer journey.
Whichcontent niche should we focus on?
Is there a topic we can be best in class on?
Which channels should we use?
Paid, owned or earned media?
What is ourcontent concept?
A guiding foundation for internal and external use.
The activity plan
What do we have? What do we need? What should be done when and who is responsible?

6. Content marketing vs. inbound marketing

What both types of marketing have in common is that content is a key element:

Content marketing (CM) is a broad term that encompasses marketing through the use of content, regardless of whether it is digital or analog. By definition, content can range from concerts and conferences to print magazines or online concepts. CM can support multiple business objectives, such as branding and demand generation. For lead generation and sales, inbound is often used (see next point).
Inbound marketing (IM) is exclusively digital. Typical measures in an IM strategy are blogging, social media, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing and the web. IM is very cost-effective if the company has lead generation and sales as its main marketing goals.

7. Should you use an agency or do it yourself?

The short answer is that you can do both. In fact, you should never outsource your entire content initiative, but leverage the expertise you already have in-house. Ask yourself the following questions:

Do we have an internal champion who can drive the project?
Whether you hire an agency or insource the work, you need someone in-house who owns the project. Often this is the marketing manager or a content manager. He or she becomes the project manager internally and the link to the agency and an important success factor.
Do we have the expertise we need to create a solid content marketing strategy?
A study by the Content Marketing Institute from 2015 shows that companies that have a documented strategy are 50 percent more effective in their marketing than those that do not. In the group that prepares the strategy, you should have one or more people who have experience of establishing strategy, implementing and running content initiatives, as well as deep knowledge of customer journey thinking and knowledge of your target groups. An agency will be able to contribute a methodical approach and accumulated expertise from many similar projects, contributing to a more efficient and high-quality process.
Do we have the resources with the time and ability to produce content?
Let's say you want to start with a company/professional blog to generate leads for your sales department. Ideally, your own engineers or subject matter experts will write their own articles, as they are the ones with the technical and product expertise. We often find that it's the experts who are most pressed for time, and not everyone is equally adept at writing. An agency can assist at the level needed, either by writing everything from scratch based on interviews with your subject matter experts, or by refining the raw text you produce.
Do we have the budget to hire help for what we don't have in-house?
If you're going to involve an agency in your content marketing initiative, you should at least be able to set aside a few hundred thousand in your marketing budget. If you choose an inbound strategy and enter into a retainer agreement with an agency, you should expect to invest between NOK 500,000 and NOK 1 million annually.

8. How to find the best agency?

There are many agencies offering content marketing services, but before you land on one, you should ask the following questions:

Do they take their own medicine?
Can they show good results?
Do they understand our business?
Do they have the skills and procedures to ensure GDPR compliance?
Do they have satisfied customers - references we can contact?
Are they a partner we can grow with?
Is the software they use ideal for us, and do they have documented expertise in it?
Do they have a track record and finances that indicate they will be here tomorrow?
Do they have a realistic price level?
Do they have experience from similar customers?

If you want to start with content marketing with an inbound methodology, Markedspartner is an agency that fulfills these points. We have increased traffic to our websites 11-fold since we launched our own content marketing concept in 2015 and were able to stop outreach sales and cold-calling the same year. We are Norway's largest professional environment for inbound marketing with over 45 employees.