What Content Marketing Types Should You Be Creating?

There are many content marketing types out there, and each type has its own intended purpose and audience which makes choosing the right types for your business tricky. Read on to find out about the different types of content marketing and how each one may help different businesses reach their goals and target customers at various points in their journey.

What Types of Content Marketing Are There?

1. Blog posts

Blogging as a company allows you to talk about engaging topics and interesting industry news or company updates, which in turn enables you to show the personality and voice of your brand while offering expertise, advice, and new ideas.

Another important reason to produce long-form content is that you can include your keywords, increase internal linking and improve your on-page SEO, and hopefully rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). But don’t over-use keywords – this practice is known as keyword stuffing and not only will your content not read well, but it can also cause a webpage to be penalised as search engines will think it is spam. Ultimately, you should ensure that, above anything else, your content is useful.

2. FAQs

Do people keep emailing and asking which house plant is best for a bathroom? Do people ask if you deliver to Northern Ireland? Do people ask if they need any special tools to put together that piece of garden machinery?

If you’re an online retailer you likely get asked the same questions over and over again about the products or services you offer – and that’s why some FAQ content can be an asset to your site. You needn’t write one great big list of FAQs; instead, it may be best to group them into categories and place them on the corresponding pages of your website. 

This kind of content might make the sale happen and help provide the customer with a better web experience by answering all their questions. It could also free up time for your customer services team, too.

3. Videos

Consumers like videos because they are easy to digest, entertaining and engaging, and video has the potential to provide a great return on investment (ROI) for many business types. 

A key advantage of video is that it is very accessible, both to watch and to produce, and it can be shared and viewed by millions in minutes if your content is extremely effective. 

Find out more about video content creation on IGTV.

4. Product descriptions

If you're an online retailer, one of the most important types of content on your website will be your product descriptions. Product descriptions are of course a vital tool in persuading your customers to purchase from you, so they should be more than a picture and a couple of lines describing what the product is. 

We talk more about what makes a good product description here: SEO Best Practises For Retail Product Pages.

5. Email marketing

Sending well put together emails to different customer segments is an efficient and cost-effective form of content marketing, whether you are providing company updates, offers, new blog articles or a flash sale mailshot. Just think, it will cost you very little to send out an email to thousands of people, but if just one takes an interest in a high-value item or service, your ROI could be significant.

Our three-part series How Email Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Customers' eCommerce Journey is worth a read, if you’d like to know more.

Here I have provided some insight into just five key types of content for your digital marketing strategy, but if you’d like to find out more about each of types listed above and find out other valuable content types to align your content with user intent, check out our Ultimate Guide To Content Marketing.

The Types of Content Marketing To Use For Each Buying Stage

I explained what content marketing is as well as its purpose in our previous article “What Is Content Marketing?”, and to put it plainly, the four most important purposes of content are:

• To entertain
• To inspire
• To educate
• To convince

These content marketing purposes can be useful for different customers at different times. We’ve all heard of ‘the buyer’s journey’, with the ultimate aim being to lead consumers all the way through the process to purchase -  and ideally beyond, to brand advocacy and repeat purchase – but where does content marketing fit in with this?

By focusing on each buying stage, you can understand which content types to use to reach your customers when they are in that phase of their decision-making process. The stages of the buying journey are awareness; consideration; intent and purchase; and repurchase and renewal.

1. Awareness

The goal of the initial awareness stage is to attract prospective consumers. You want the people consuming your content to have a genuine interest and intent to buy into your product or service. Finding a reliable, trustworthy source of information when researching a purchase can be difficult for your prospects. Therefore, in order to educate people and help them to discover and understand your business, your content needs to be memorable, shareable and optimised for search engines.

Some content ideas for this stage include:

• Blog posts providing “top tips” and “how-tos”
• Educational blog posts or videos about your product or service
• Free downloadable guides
• Infographics and whitepapers

2. Consideration

The consideration stage content should be tailored to help prospects research the best solution to their problem and evaluate your particular offering. Some content ideas for this stage include:

• Case studies
• Testimonials or reviews
• Ultimate guides and buying guides
• Demo videos
• Webinars
• Newsletters
• eBooks
• FAQs

3. Intent and purchase

These stages can sometimes be combined and referred to as the “decision stage”. Whatever you call it, the content to aid this stage should help your leads to buy your offering and teach them how to make the most of it. 

Some content ideas for this stage include:

• ROI calculators
• In-depth how-to articles, particularly covering how to use your product, how to make the most of it, and how to fix or troubleshoot it
• Help and support documentation
• Emails promoting special offers

4. Repurchase and renewal

This stage is important if you want your consumers to purchase from you again, renew a contract or become an advocate. The types of content to utilise here would be:

• Surveys and feedback forms
• Contests, giveaways, special offers and coupons
• Newsletters
• Targeted emails
   

The Ultimate Goal of Content Marketing

Every business wants to lead its consumers through the buying stages, creating valuable content that works seamlessly through each stage. Each buyer needs to go through the entire buying cycle for any purchase, therefore it is important that you don’t stop creating consistent and high-quality content. Even if a customer is only at the awareness stage, the content you provide for them could influence their final decision when it’s time to buy.

Getting to grips with deciding upon and creating content can be a challenge, so if you need help with sculpting and building upon your content marketing strategy, contact SilverDisc today!