The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote a business online. Unlike other digital advertising methods, which interrupt or annoy potential customers with off-topic sales pitches, it focuses on providing valuable content that answers prospective customers’ questions and solves their problems.¹

When executed well, content marketing helps brands connect with their target audiences, build trust and position themselves as thought leaders.¹ It also saves money. The marketing advisory firm Demand Metric reports that content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional marketing while costing 62% less.²

With about eight out of 10 marketers actively using content marketing, mastering this approach is no longer an option if you are interested in a career in marketing; it’s a necessity to stay competitive.³ This post explores how to develop an effective content marketing strategy and best practices to employ when producing content in digital marketing.

A content marketing strategy is a plan for producing and sharing content. It shows who you create that content for, what type you generate and the channels you’ll use to distribute it via digital marketing.⁴ With a solid strategy, the chances of content marketing success are higher than without one. A 2023 study revealed that of content marketers with a plan, 64% have prosperous campaigns. For those without a strategy, only 19% succeed; the other 81% fail to reach their goals.⁵

Creating a roadmap in content digital marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. You can develop a successful content marketing strategy in three simple steps:

Why are you creating content in digital marketing? Your aim might be to establish yourself as a trusted expert in your area or to increase unpaid traffic from search engines by a certain percentage in a particular time frame. Whatever your goals are, they should be clear, specific, and achievable. Focus on what you want to achieve will shape your content marketing efforts, including how you measure performance.⁶

For whom are you creating content? Since most brands serve specific market segments that need their products, identifying your target audience as a content marketer shouldn’t be difficult. Simply check your company’s buyer persona—a fictional representation of your organization’s ideal buyers.⁴

The buyer persona will reveal critical information about the people you want to reach, including:⁷

• Demographics such as education level, geographic location, age, ethnicity, and household income
• Psychographics such as beliefs, values, fears, and aspirations
• Challenges they face that a brand’s products or services can help them overcome

Once you know who your target audience is, you can focus on researching the browsing, spending, and membership habits of those potential customers. Learn where and how they spend their time online, what goods and services they find worth spending money on, what motivates them to become loyal to a brand, and more.

With in-depth knowledge of your audience, you can create engaging web marketing content that only targets people who matter to your company—prospects who are most likely to become paying customers. Be sure to reach out to them on the social media platforms where they spend their time, instead of wasting time and money on irrelevant distribution channels.⁴

Once you know where your audience consumes content online, determining the most suitable content type for your campaign should be easy. For example, if your potential customers are searching for solutions on Google, you’ll want to write value-packed articles and implement search engine optimization strategies. But if they are mostly on TikTok, YouTube, or Rumble, you need to create videos.⁴

You have multiple options when selecting content types for your marketing campaigns, including:⁸

• Blog posts and articles
• Infographics
• Webinars
• Video content
• Social media content
• Podcasts
• Ebooks and white papers
• User-generated content

Your business' most suitable content types depend on its audience, goals, and available resources. However, a well-rounded content strategy includes a mix of diverse formats to cater to people with varied learning preferences.⁸

You can implement several tactics to get the most out of your efforts in content marketing. They include these:

Publishing high-quality content frequently is an effective way to keep your brand presence active and maintain audience engagement.⁹ The frequency of producing and sharing useful information varies with content type and distribution platform.

For instance, according to social media tool Hootsuite, it’s a best practice to publish social media posts once or twice daily on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. The goal is to increase the chances of being seen on your target audience’s feed without raising spamming concerns in your social media marketing.⁹

If your content production efforts focus on video marketing or audio podcasts, consider rolling out one weekly episode—a schedule that notable brands such as Forrester follow.¹⁰ When blogging, HubSpot advises marketers with small blogs to post new articles once or twice monthly. Large blogs can publish fresh web marketing content three to four times per week.¹¹

Keeping up with trends helps you take advantage of the latest technologies and stay ahead. The rise of TikTok made short-form vertical video a key tool for businesses who want to gain brand recognition with a contemporary audience.¹² Meanwhile, while podcasts still have widespread appeal, more and more platforms are offering live audio spaces, which have also been growing in popularity.¹³ It's important to meet your target audience where they are, instead of getting stuck on what worked last year or the year before.

Partner with influencers, such as famous bloggers and social media personalities. When they promote your relevant content to their loyal fans, they can introduce your company to a new audience. Influencer marketing, as a result, can increase brand awareness.¹⁴

Because people are likely to trust recommendations from influencers over information coming directly from a company, working with popular representatives can add credibility to your content marketing campaign.¹⁵ However, it’s important to be careful in choosing your partners: You want to collaborate with people whose followers match most or all the traits of your ideal customer.¹⁴

Content repurposing involves reusing existing content in different formats or publishing it on various platforms. For example, you can turn a YouTube video into blog content, an email newsletter, or a LinkedIn post. That way, you don’t have to create content from scratch for different platforms, which makes the production of content in digital marketing more efficient.¹⁶

Marketing tools and strategies are constantly changing, so up-to-the-moment expertise is essential for a successful career. The comprehensive curriculum in SCU's Online Master of Science in Marketing program will hone your expertise in crucial areas, including content marketing, marketing strategy, marketing technology, social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, marketing analytics, and more.

Built for working professionals and led by a faculty of industry experts, the flexible online program provides networking opportunities that will expand your professional connections as you gain insights into industry trends and best practices.

Don’t wait to take the next step up. Schedule a call with an admissions outreach advisor today.