Content marketing still reigns. So how do you win the ultimate crown?

In recent years, content marketing has become the cornerstone of marketing strategies and building brands. As airwaves and digital screens get more and more crowded, organizations increasingly look to building content that can breakthrough, engage audiences, and ultimately, acquire new customers and advocates. In fact, over 60% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales (Hubspot, 2022).

And there is good evidence that becoming a content marketing leader improves your GTM strategy and drives clear business outcomes for your brand:

• Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%). (Source: Aberdeen)
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. (Source:DemandMetric)
• Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%). (Source: Aberdeen)

But how do you become a content marketing leader?

Content marketing is all about providing useful, relevant, and inspiring content to your target audiences to build a relationship with them and, over time, motivate them to become customers and ultimately brand evangelists. Content marketing is critical for improving brand awareness, fostering trust, boosting company revenue, and establishing yourself as a definitive industry leader.

For content to “do its job,” it has to be useful, relevant, and inspiring in the context of:

1. What your target audience is trying to achieve (e.g., business outcomes, value drivers)  
2. The category you participate in—or are trying to create
3. Helping to bridge a story to your company’s value proposition or the benefit the customer will receive by giving you their business 

Common mistakes include:

• Focusing too much on YOU rather than what is useful, relevant, or inspiring to the customer. A full-on sales pitch, especially when a customer is first learning about your brand, doesn’t create a connection or build trust.
• Fixating on unrelated categories or trends to “capture the zeitgeist” of a moment or trend.  While it may make for cool or interesting content, it can make it difficult to connect the content back to your brand’s core purpose and value.
• Thinking about the channel first, and then the story (e.g., I need something for social, let’s post an infographic or run ads!). You should first identify the value and dialogue you want to create through content and craft your narrative. Only then should you think about what form that content should take for which channel and how those different touchpoints should connect to build an integrated story. A channel-first approach can lead to inconsistent versions of stories and disconnected narratives. And the data shows that consistent brands have 10-20% higher revenue (Source: Marq).

To avoid these (and other) mistakes, the answer is quite similar to many other marketing challenges. Think of your customer first. What are their value drivers? What would be helpful to them as they look to achieve their goals? What’s top of mind or keeping them up at night? What unique value can you provide, and how does that show up in your current POV and content?

Recognizing that those things can (and will) shift over time, you’ll want to see content as both a story and a conversation. It can unfold over multiple touchpoints and lengths of time, with many learnings along the way. It should draw people in with surprising or unique viewpoints while creating opportunities for engagement—and even co-creation—with your customers. 

What do you think are the keys to content marketing success?