Content marketing: the guide of 2024

In this guide, I’ll take you through the world of content marketing . Among other things, I will explain how this strategy is used in practice and give you a detailed example of it. I also tell you what the pros and cons of content marketing are, how to determine who your target audience is, how to approach them and what a content calendar is. After reading this guide, you will have all the information you need to get started with your content marketing on your own.

Content marketing explained

This chapter explains what content marketing means and who it is of interest to. Also covered are the different forms of content marketing, as well as the strategies you can employ for your business.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is providing high-quality and relevant information to your target audience. This means that the focus is by no means always directly on product sales.

Good content marketing does not make short-term improvements to your goals, but results in long-term effects. This means you need to offer new content regularly to maintain your target audience’s interest.

Content marketing is focused on researching and understanding and what the target audience needs. You then implement this knowledge by offering valuable information. For this, you develop a strategy in which you use different online and offline channels to do this.

What are the goals of content marketing?

Content marketing can help you achieve the following goals:

• Bringing a product or service to the attention of the target audience.
• Increase awareness of your company or brand.
• Promote functionalities of a product or service to existing users. That way you can realize an upsell.
• Becoming a thought leader within the niche in which you operate.
• Promote brand preference, loyalty and word of mouth.
• Increase traffic to your website, social media platforms and any physical store.

In practice, these goals often serve larger macro objectives. Think of an increase in quality leads and growing sales numbers of products in your web shop. With these macro goals, you ultimately realize increased sales/profits.

Who is content marketing of interest to?

The size of your business, your operations, the industry you operate in, the manufacturer and/or services you offer: content marketing is of interest to everyone when you want to achieve one or more of the goals described above. Nor does the way you have handled your marketing so far play any part in this.

Do you want to achieve search engine optimization (SEO) success with your website? Even then, a good content strategy is essential. Through carefully crafted content that both appeals to the target audience and performs in the search engines, you improve your SEO. Such content answers the search engine user’s question.

Content marketing is particularly interesting because every business has a wide range of possible channels to choose from. These I describe below.

What forms of content marketing are there?

Content marketing comes in different forms and can be used in various ways and through various channels. With a holistic marketing strategy, you deploy multiple channels, with the channels benefiting from each other in different ways. However, it is important to maintain focus in the process. Below I give you some examples:

Blog posts

Blogs are important for content marketing because they help build your awareness and engagement with your target audience. Platforms like WordPress make it easy for you to quickly create a new blog. The impact of blogs depends on a few factors:

• The quality of the content you publish;
• The connection between content content and the demand/intention of the target audience;
• the method of publishing.

The more comprehensive and current a blog post is, the more likely it is to produce a desired result. The ideal length of a blog post depends on:

• The level of competition in Google;
• The topic about which you are writing the blog;
• the intent of the seeker: how much depth does the reader need?

A guideline is that articles should be a minimum of 400 words. My longer guides (including this one) often exceed 3,000 words.

Infographics

When you want to convey many complex ideas, a blog may fall short. You can often use visual elements to better shape a concept. This is where an infographic comes in handy.

Infographics are visual presentations of ideas. They use pictures, graphs and figures instead of text. Infographics offer an efficient and clear way to explain comprehensive topics to the audience.

Research shows that infographics generate up to 54% more readers than text-only blogs. In addition, nearly three-quarters of readers read an infographic in its entirety, while only 66% of blog readers complete the entire text(1).

Images

Using imagery increases the value of your content marketing. People usually don’t have time to read long texts. Instead, they want to be provided with information quickly. Images are a perfect tool in that case.

Research shows that people are better able to remember material presented to them in a classroom when images are used in the process(2). It has also been shown that tweets with images receive 200% more responses than text-only posts(3). So all in all, that’s reason enough to incorporate images into your strategy.

Videos

The popularity of broadband Internet and the emerging YouTube era have made videos an integral part of the Internet. The skyrocketing popularity of TikTok also contributes to this. More and more content is focused on videos. Despite the somewhat more complicated production, it often produces the best results.

Of all Internet users, 81% say they use YouTube, which is by far the most of any social media platform(4). The platform is technically the second largest search engine after Google. As many as more than 70% of B2B DMUs (decision makers within a business company) use the platform to research new products or services(5).

Videos actually inspire more confidence in the viewer than text alone. Research shows that of the companies that produce quality video content, a whopping 89% recoup their investment. Moreover, it gets them more purchases(6). So seriously consider using videos in your content strategy.

Podcasts

With a podcast within your content strategy, you can communicate your company’s message to an audience in an accessible way. Podcasts are audio clips and stories that you can listen to on-demand anytime, anywhere. Successful podcast use leads, among other things, to building a loyal group of followers and brand ambassadors and a stronger position as a thought leader.

With the subscription model of podcasts, your audience automatically receives notification when there are new episodes. This does not require additional marketing efforts. Listeners are also encouraged to actively participate in the discussion. That feedback is valuable for the development of podcast offerings.

While a blog is more interesting for SEO purposes, it is important to note that people today listen to podcasts for an average of 116 minutes a week. Moreover, at least 23% of listeners listen to a podcast daily to weekly. An increase in these figures was seen again this year(7).

Podcasts integrate easily into the company’s social media strategy. For example, to enhance blog posts with audio clips. Audio also helps better convey the emotion behind a message. This is partly why podcasting is a popular and effective content marketing tool.

Newsletters and emails

Getting attention from your audience is a challenge with a fairly high success rate. Maintaining that attention over the long term, on the other hand, is a lot harder. Newsletters and email lists help keep your company’s name in front of your target audience. Even if not every email is opened, incoming mail creates brand recognition. That’s how you stay top of mind.

Want to get more subscribers to actually open your emails? Then fun, relevant and informative content is essential. The exact content you offer depends on your customers’ goals and interests. If your company is active with content, a newsletter is a great way to keep readers informed of new developments. Therefore, find the best way to continually stay in touch with your audience.

Other forms of content marketing

Beyond the forms of content marketing mentioned above, there are many other types. You can think of, among other things:

• e-books;
• social media posts;
• checklists;
• webinars;
• white papers;
• case studies;
• testimonials and reviews;
• collaboration with influencers;
• guides and short tutorials;
• courses;
• quizzes;
• interactive events;
• memes.

The pros and cons of content marketing for SEO

Advantages	Cons
Increased visibility – Large-scale content marketing can increase your brand’s online presence and visibility.	High cost – Developing, producing and distributing high-quality content on a large scale can be expensive.
Better SEO – Quality and relevant content can improve SEO rankings.	Time-consuming – Creating content, especially on a large scale, can take a lot of time and resources.
Increased engagement – Interesting and valuable content can increase audience engagement.	Difficult to measure ROI – It can be difficult to measure the direct impact of content marketing on sales.
Build trust – By providing valuable and useful content, your brand can build trust with your target audience.	Risk of oversaturation – There is a risk of oversaturation if too much content is published, which can lead to audience fatigue.
Show leadership – High-quality content can position your brand as a leader in your industry.	Inconsistency – With large-scale campaigns, it can be challenging to maintain content quality and consistency.
Long-term strategy – Content marketing is a long-term strategy that can contribute to sustainable growth.	Changing algorithms – SEO algorithms are constantly changing, which can affect the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

What type of content marketing fits my business?

Which type of content marketing will be successful for your business depends on a few things. The following steps will help you easily determine which of the above strategies suits you best.

Determine your target audience

It is important to research what type of content best meets the needs of your target audience. Of course, chances are your target audience uses multiple forms of media. You then adjust your strategy accordingly. With multiple channels, you are betting on a cross-channel marketing strategy. Also, always consider how much time, money and energy you want to spend. Some forms of content are cheaper and faster to produce than others. For example, compare blogs to video productions.

Research what content the target audience is consuming now

The way a target audience consumes content can vary enormously. Largely, this is determined by age. For example, more than 80 percent of the population under 49 view content through some form of social media. In this regard, each age group has a preference for a particular channel. Reading an e-book or taking a course is more likely to resonate with an older audience(8).

There are many factors that determine how your target audience primarily views, reads, listens or experiences their content. It is important to get this right before you develop your content marketing.

Learn how the target audience thinks and where to find them

As already mentioned, each age group has its own preference for the platform on which it consumes content. As many as 95% of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 report using YouTube(9). This makes this platform extremely suitable for reaching a large, young audience with videos.

For short videos aimed at a slightly younger audience, you’re often better off using TikTok. On that platform, the vast majority of the audience is between 18 and 24 years old(9). A blog, on the other hand, is better placed on your own website, while images have greater reach on Instagram. So it is important to determine which content can have maximum impact on which platform.

Get smart about content

By repurposing existing content with a different format and sharing it through a different channel, you save yourself a lot of time. For example, you can convert a blog to a YouTube video or TikTok post. You do this by setting up the core content multi-purpose. That way, you don’t have to start from scratch with each new piece of content.

In this way, double profits are created. First, you deal effectively with the production time you need per content. Second, by using multiple platforms, you also obtain greater reach.

Maintain focus

It seems attractive to quickly expand into multiple types of content marketing. However, remember that any content form still needs sufficient attention to be ultimately successful. Are you going to expand your channels? Then always keep a close eye on your holistic content marketing and avoid losing focus on your existing channels.

Content marketing in practice

Behind every successful content strategy is a person or team that has carefully developed the entire process for the purpose. Bol.com is an example of a party with a successful content strategy. I’ll tell you a little more about it below.

Content marketing from Bol.com

Bol.com has become one of the most well-known and profitable online stores in the Netherlands and Belgium. It owes this position in part to its unique marketing strategy. The company was even named Best Marketing Company in the Netherlands in 2018 with this strategy. Many companies take inspiration from Bol.com’s success story.

Abundance of content

Bol.com has raised the bar of a content strategy to the next level. One way it has done this is through the various forms of content available on their website. This content includes product descriptions, customer reviews and the questions and answers about the product. This abundance of content is increasing traffic. New customers are attracted every day. While not directly related to Bol.com’s unique marketing strategy, it is worth mentioning.

Along with the times

Another feature of Bol.com’s strategy is responding to contemporary and high-profile events online or in the media. Bol.com responds to these events with funny tweets or Facebook posts. By combining this with the offerings on the website, Bol.com manages to appeal to an even larger audience.

Humor has an effect

Bol.com manages to humorously introduce people to their company and product range with bold advertisements. An example is the Facebook post with the image of a hand holding a vibrator accompanied by the text, “The delivery guy is not the only one coming tomorrow” (10). In a very short time, the ad was viewed tens of thousands of times on social media and shared frequently.

Each of these messages is well thought out. After all, the joke has to work. Some posts succeed to such an extent that they immediately go viral and get shared a lot by followers in a short period of time. This results in an even larger audience learning about the company. Together with Bol.com’s qualities in supply and service, this leads to achieving the most important goal: increased traffic and sales.

The pros and cons of content marketing

Content marketing is a great tool to boost your company’s marketing strategy. Yet you must also consider possible drawbacks. In this chapter, I weigh the biggest advantages and disadvantages.

The benefits of content marketing

Because a content strategy brings a lot of benefits, it is worth investing in it. Below I tell you what the main pluses are:

Content marketing has a long shelf life

Investing in content marketing means investing in a marketing strategy with a long-term vision. You can think of a blog, video or infographic that fits the audience’s interests. The increase in new and repeat customers this will bring you far outweighs the time and money you invest.

Content marketing is multi-purpose

Do you come up with a piece of content and work it out for one platform? With some adjustments and a little extra investment, you can convert this content to another platform with a new audience. For example, convert a case study to a series of YouTube videos on the same topic. You save valuable time because content doesn’t have to be built from scratch every time. In addition, your content is also employable at many points in the customer journey.

Connecting with your target audience

Compared to general marketing, with content marketing you are much more focused on the needs of the target audience. You create content that actually interests them and even spurs them to action. Compare this to a commercial on television. This requires high costs while reaching a large group of people who have no interest in your company, product or service.

Becoming a forerunner within your industry

With good content that matches the interests and needs of the target audience, you grow to be an expert in the market. You also call this a thought leader position. With your expertise, you exude authority and confidence in the marketplace about your product and service. As a result, customers return to you.

Good content forms the basis of other channels

The content you create for your content marketing strategy acts as the foundation for the other channels within your marketing strategy. For example, consider a quality SEO article that you use as a landing page for an SEA campaign.

The disadvantages of content marketing

In addition to the above benefits, it is important to be aware of the pitfalls. After all, content marketing requires commitment, while success is not right around the corner. A few things to keep in mind I have noted below for you:

Content marketing is time-consuming

Before you can get started creating and sharing content, you need to research what your target audience needs. Besides, a single blog or video will not earn you instant attention. Good content marketing requires planning ahead for the long term. Moreover, you must be consistent in the material you create.

Investment is necessary

While this strategy can pay off much more than expensive regular advertising campaigns, it does not mean that there are no costs associated with it at all. Texts are not written by themselves and videos are not produced by themselves. Over an extended period of time, you need to invest money regularly in the right equipment and personnel.

Content marketing requires expertise

You don’t just set up a content strategy on a free Sunday afternoon. You need to know well what interests your target audience and how you can respond to it with the right content. For that, a thorough investigation is needed. Producing the content, in turn, also requires individuals with the right skills. Are you not and do not have your own marketing experience, marketer or content producer? Then it’s best to outsource content marketing to an expert.

Results are not immediately visible

The fruits of your content marketing will only be seen after a longer period of time. When investing in paid advertising, you can pretty easily find out what results this campaign is producing. With content marketing, it’s a little harder to conclude that. There are many variables that affect the formula for success. Making the right choices and planning successfully for the long term are therefore a real challenge.

Defining and approaching the target audience (for B2B and B2C)

Before you get started with a strategy, you need to identify your target audience. Knowing what this target audience is looking for is a prerequisite for successfully responding to their needs. In addition, there are differences between the type of customer, distinguishing between B2B and B2C.

Unfortunately, there is no general rule for identifying your target audience. Still, there are several tools that can be helpful in identifying your target audience.

What channels can you use to determine your target audience?

Depending on the strategy you want to implement, there are different channels you can use to find out your target audience. Below I have listed some examples.

SEO

Ahrefs, SEMrush and MOZ are useful tools for an SEO strategy. The extensive database of these programs provides insight into the keywords used to find a specific site. The tools also tell you how your competitors score on this. With this valuable information, you can then create a strategy to rank higher in Google. You won’t have to spend money on paid advertising (SEA) first.

SEA

With Google Ads and Google Analytics, among others, you map how traffic comes to your site. Also, these tools show which keywords produce the best advertising opportunities. By determining your target audience through this means, you can then quickly reach a new group of customers.

Social Media

There are several tools on the market for identifying a target audience on social media channels. Every social media platform has its methods for analyzing traffic. There are also programs such as Brandwatch or Hootsuite. These integrate information from all these channels into a single view. Some even have built-in tools to establish strategies.

How do you determine your target audience for B2B?

To determine your target audience in a Business to Business (B2B) environment, or business customers, conduct a target audience analysis. With the help of a buyer persona, you put yourself in the shoes of the target audience in order to identify the most important characteristics.

A buyer must become interested in your company, product or service. After all, if not, he or she might as well purchase from a competitor.

With a target audience analysis and the creation of a buyer persona, you will know the following criteria, among others:

• geographical position;
• function of the decision maker who falls within your target audience;
• demographics (what kind of business, industry, size, revenue, budget);
• the important values, vision and image the company appropriates;
• behavior related to Internet traffic and making decisions and investments.

Such an analysis is time-consuming, but essential to the success of a future content strategy. Once you have determined your B2B target audience? Then you approach those next.

How do you approach the target audience?

B2B customers can be reached in a variety of ways. Google Ads today is able to distinguish between B2B and B2C visitors on your website. This has made it easier to target ads to the right kind of customer.

One way to reach new customers is to load e-mail addresses from your current customer base through Google and other social media channels. This method is fully compliant with AVG legislation. Loading email addresses creates new data, which your marketing strategy uses to reach customers who have similarities to your current customer base.

Software makes it possible to analyze traffic on your Web site and filter it by type of customer. Leadinfo is an example of this. Among other things, this tool shows you which pages are being visited and which product or service is getting attention. With this knowledge, you can actively target visitors with a tailored message. You do that through one of their contact options.

In the approach, your company, product or service should have a positive impact on your business customer’s career, status and future. How to convey this, I discuss below.

What are the characteristics of a tone of voice for B2B?

With a content strategy, it is important that you appeal to your target audience. Therefore, think carefully about how you come across to them. Indeed, this has an effect on bond building, trust and recognition. In addition, the tone of voice also depends on the goal you have in mind with your strategy and through which medium you want to reach the target audience. The way you want to address a business audience has a number of characteristics. It is important to take this into account when determining your tone of voice:

• As a B2B company, you want to build a personal relationship with your customer.
• With expertise and knowledge, you can achieve a relationship of trust with customers. It also contributes to achieving an influential position in your industry.
• You focus on customer loyalty so they keep coming back.
• When a corporate client is a large company, multiple departments will eventually make the decision. Therefore, be aware that you may have multiple points of contact.
• You want to be flexible in your offerings so that multiple options are available to the customer. Sometimes this can mean providing them with a customized product or service.
• High value, effectiveness and expertise are reasons for a customer to want to purchase a product or service from you.
• A business customer wants your product or service to recoup their investment and benefit from it.

How do you determine a B2C target audience?

To create a successful content marketing strategy, it is important to determine and get to know the target audience. Just as is true for a B2B market, this also increases your chances of success in a B2C market.

Besides through audience analysis and buyer persona, you can use keyword research to learn more about the search terms your target audience uses. The same goes for the information your target audience is looking for (specifically for SEO). In doing so, it is also important to examine what continues to motivate or keep a potential customer from taking the next step in the funnel throughout the customer journey.

Engage with your target audience by conducting multiple in-depth interviews. This allows you to identify what his or her needs, goals, and behaviors are. This information is essential for creating your brand persona.

Also look critically at the content you already offer. Which pages and posts on social media are frequently viewed and interacted with? Look at competitors in the same industry who interact a lot with the target audience. After all, they already know which strategy best suits the target audience. Of course, the idea is to find your own unique angle. Simply copying an existing successful strategy is not advisable.

The purpose of this information gathering is to determine who you will be creating content for and what content they need. About this, I am happy to explain a little more.

How do you approach this target audience?

Unlike a relationship with a business customer, with customers in the consumer market, you will want to respond to more impulsive decisions. Less precise reasoning underlies such decisions. Customers decide whether or not to make a purchase based on their needs. The right strategy knows how to communicate to customers why they need a specific product and what it can bring them.

Based on your previous analysis, you know what concerns your customer. You also have insight into the channels people use to look for this. Using social media is a good example of how a content strategy can get your message directly to the right audience. Audience analysis helps you determine which way to share your message and which social media channel will be most successful.

What are the characteristics of a tone of voice for B2C?

Determining the tone of voice is important because you want to address your target audience in the right way. The way you communicate also depends on the purpose and through which medium you do it. As I mentioned briefly, the consumer market is based more on emotion and impulsiveness. Therefore, convince your customer and offer a solution. Furthermore, in a tone of voice for B2C, you want to convey your product’s values, mission and differentiators.

By considering the above, you will make the right choices regarding how the message should come across. For example, do you want to appear humorous or more serious to the client? Does enthusiasm splash out from the content or do you prefer to keep it formal and limit yourself to the facts? Do you take a playful approach to language or stick to ABN? Do you use the form of address “you” or “your”? All of these decisions are determined by the previous research.

Get started with a content calendar

A content calendar is a schedule of specific time period. This calendar indicates what, when, where, how and for whom your company will publish content. This can be different for each platform, such as social media, your own website and emails. The content calendar provides a clear overview of what you will post when. That way you won’t skip important events and activities. You can think about holidays, for example.

Why is a content calendar important?

A content calendar is crucial for effective content marketing. Why is that so? Because it provides structure, defines your hoist and is focused on specific goals for each type of content. Creating content, however, is not enough. After all, you also have to distribute it in the right way. You plan this whole process ahead with a content calendar.

Organizations that do not use a content calendar deliver new content based on daily events and news. A lack of continuity lurks in the process. Social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram are then not regularly updated. Without a content calendar, you won’t take full advantage of search engine and social media algorithms. Your ROI will lag behind as a result.

Different types of media

In content creation, there is a difference between owned, earned and paid media. An effective content strategy requires a combination of these three approaches. For maximum effect, you want to use a healthy combination of these three types of media in your content calendar. A brief explanation of the three types of media follows below:

Owned media

These are primarily all the social media channels you own with your business (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.). Your website with its written content and emails you send to customer base also fall under owned media. This content is internally recyclable. This means that you can deploy certain pieces of text on multiple types of channels without requiring additional investment. For example, think of a blog that you convert to a tweet or a post or Facebook.

Earned media

This is a practical yet challenging way to distribute content. Earned media is content that resonates well with audiences. As a result, this form of media manages to generate a lot of organic traffic. This is reflected in many likes and comments on social media. This increases the likelihood that traditional media will also share this content and that it will get attention from bloggers and influencers. However, of course, you cannot enforce that. So you cannot determine in advance the extent to which your efforts will have an effect. Are you achieving what you have in mind? Then you can reach a large audience in one fell swoop without having to invest in expensive advertisements.

Paid media

Almost all social media channels and search engines offer you the opportunity to advertise. With paid media, you can bring your product or service to the attention of the target audience with a small budget.

The benefits of a content calendar

Implementing a content calendar brings a lot of benefits. I list them for you below:

• A content calendar gives you a clear overview of what to create and share in the coming time as part of your content strategy.
• You maintain structure and proceed efficiently.
• You know exactly what deadlines there are for delivering and sharing your content. This makes it easier for you to work ahead.
• Planning allows your strategy to capitalize on key events with which you appeal to your audience.
• Consistency has a positive effect on your reach.

With a content calendar, the marketing strategy gets the attention it deserves. This increases the likelihood that your content strategy will succeed.

Easily create a content calendar

It only takes a few steps to put together a content calendar:

1. What are you going to write?
2. How regularly will you write?
3. When do you publish the content?
4. What channels do you deploy for this purpose?
5. Measuring data and monitoring performance
6. Refining based on data and performance
7. Decision making and optimization
8. Report to the marketing manager and determine next steps together. Here you have a choice between
   • Intensify channels
   • Scaling down channels
   • Add channels
   • Refinement based on message/market fit (does your message connect with your target audience?)
9. Repeating steps 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
10. Continuously conduct the surveys below, gather feedback and base choices on them.
    • Qualitative audience research
    • Quantitative audience research
    • Research events within the market and include them in the content calendar

Conclusion

Content marketing is a broad, effective way to target your audience with quality content. It also helps increase your brand awareness and bind customers to your brand or company. The success you achieve with your content strategy depends on how consistently you apply it and how much time and budget you invest in it. In any case, with my guide you will have all the necessary information to get started and maximize your chances of a successful strategy.

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