What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the development and publication of various types of media to help cultivate a target audience, such as prospective customers for a product or service. It is also used to build brand equity and cultivate loyal, long-term relationships with these audiences. Content marketing spans a wide range of digital formats, including blog posts, webinars, videos, and infographics.

Unlike some other forms of marketing and advertising, content marketing rarely pitches a company’s products or services directly. Rather, it creates interest around a brand and its offerings by distributing content that a target audience is likely to find both relevant and valuable. For example, a consumer retail business specializing in kitchen and household goods might create a website that publishes recipes and time-saving cleaning tips.

A complete content marketing strategy usually includes a social media component. This is because a company’s content marketing ROI is amplified when people share the material on social platforms. In fact, social shares are one of the key content marketing statistics businesses use to measure their digital performance.

Content marketing is an immensely valuable method of communicating with the modern consumer, who is always online and overwhelmed with digital noise. Popular video platforms provide a good example. A viewer can bypass or ignore a non-native ad, but they will watch a high-quality branded video that interests or entertains them. By delivering valuable, relevant content that an audience actually cares about—versus what they might perceive as “just another ad”—brand marketers can build meaningful, long-term relationships that foster loyalty and trust.