Content Marketing Guide for Marketers

Content marketing is a double-edged sword. It has the potential to let an SMB punch way above its weight but also- if not done right- can suck resources with no tangible outcomes. With this content marketing buyer's guide for 2018, Small and Medium B2B companies hoping to either kick-start their Content Marketing strategy, or those wanting to take their ad-hoc content marketing efforts to scale and measurability can get the big picture on the core components of Content Marketing and understand the business impact of each component.
The growing e-commerce space has opened up a world of stiff competition albeit online. If a consumer wants to, he can switch brands as easily as changing his clothes. There is no dearth of choice today. This has slowly spread to every other sector too.
Content marketing involves sharing of valuable and relevant content to a specific audience using different methods. In turn, this can help increase brand loyalty.
In a time where competition is all around, offering consumers a particular product along with an added informational benefit is what can help retain them longer. Everyone wants and yearns for that 'added benefit' in today's market.
The type of content used for content marketing should usually strive to be factual, honest and relevant to the audience, for them to like, share, or comment on it online.
Most marketers today, aim to do just that by building interesting blogs or videos to share with their audience.
Some common types of modern-day content marketing
In the past, brands used different styles of content marketing, though these weren't necessarily categorized accordingly.
With online marketing and digitization, the gradual shift has been towards generating a combination of rich blogs, social media posts across different platforms, infographics, mailers, videos, podcasts and more.
Out of these, the most common method seems to be blogs, because it can cover a host of relevant and interesting topics on the company's website and then distributed to the consumers and run through affiliate networks to reach a larger universe.