Content Marketing: The Complete and Useful Guide [2021]

More than 90% of Internet users search on the Internet before buying a product (Source: HubSpot). Content marketing is today the main factor in a digital marketing strategy. Google loves content and this trend is not about to stop.

However, there is another reality: the web is starting to saturate with content. An example: every second, 8 hours of video is uploaded on youtube…

So, how to stand out and succeed in your content marketing strategy?

To help you, we prepared this complete guide for you. Definition, strategy to adopt, statistics, follow-up… you will know everything.

Let’s go.

What is content marketing?

Content Marketing is a method of creating and distributing useful content in various formats (text, video, audio) to a specific audience.

A content marketing strategy has mainly 2 objectives:

• Develop the notoriety of a brand or a company
• Initiate action on behalf of customers (purchase, registration…)

Therefore, content marketing can be used at various stages of a customer’s life:

• Attract
• Convert
• Conclude
• Building loyalty

Content marketing is one of the main pillars of inbound marketing: attracting customers through content.

Why content marketing?

Content marketing helps to achieve many marketing objectives such as increasing awareness, conversion rate and loyalty.

How to succeed in your market

A content strategy allows you to prove your expertise and turn a stranger into a customer, thanks to targeted and adapted content.

Therefore, content marketing will allow a company to attract traffic to its website, convince the visitor to convert (purchase…) and then retain him.

It will enable the company to become a key player in its market by responding to all of its customers’ issues and supporting them throughout their lifecycle.

Improve your SEO

To have good visibility in the results of search engines such as Google or Bing, it is essential to produce quality content.

Content is one of the 3 main ranking factors (along with technical optimization and notoriety) of the Google algorithm.

Succeeding with social networks strategy

Useful and entertaining content makes it possible to stand out on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin…

A company can fully leverage its digital strategy on social media. Some brands generate huge revenue solely through social media content.

The key statistics of content marketing

Here are some figures that should convince you to adopt a content marketing strategy:

Content marketing in B2B

• 98% of marketing professionals consider a content marketing strategy to be indispensable (Source)
• Content Marketing is 62% less expensive than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times more leads. (Source)

Content marketing in B2C

• 71% of consumers read blog content before making a purchase, and 40% consult 3 to 5 different contents before contacting a seller (Source).
• 70% of consumers hear about a business through articles rather than advertising. (Source).
• 1440 posts are published on WordPress every 60 seconds (Smart Insights)

What are the different types of content?

The contents can be divided into 3 categories:

The text contents

• Blog posts
• White Papers
• Guides
• E-books (guides, case studies, checklist, to-do list…)
• Emails
• Pdf Reports
• Infographics
• Book excerpts…

Video content

• Video recordings: YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion…
• Webin