What is Content Marketing? A Comprehensive Guide to Getting Started

Content marketing is everywhere. It is how you bring awareness about your business and finally get potential customers to purchase your product or service. In fact, every customer interaction online has some strategic content marketing process behind it - whether it's through blogs, videos, or emails. 

There is much about this type of digital marketing we are going to unfold here. From how it becomes an essential component of business processes to how you can get started with it and potentially grow your expertise that positively affects your career. 

What is Content Marketing? 

Content marketing refers to the strategic content creation process for social media, email, mobile, and website. It aims to build brand awareness and trust among the target audience through high-quality content production covering blogs, social media posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts.  

Once you know the target audience, you can narrow down your content marketing efforts and analyse the performance of each. Here you have to figure out the distribution channels and the content format. 

Written Format - Blogging is an essential aspect of a content strategy. According to Find Stack, 68.52% of bloggers say that blogs bring credibility to a website. They bring organic traffic once you follow SEO guidelines. If you are new to blogging, do check our blog post on how to write blogs that rank on Google. And do learn more about SEO (search engine optimisation) along the way. 

Video Format - Video content is another great source for increasing organic traffic. According to a report by What’s New In Publishing, 82% of web traffic will have come from videos three years back. Another stat you do not want to ignore is that 84% of consumers are convinced to buy a product after watching a brand video (Think with Google). In 2025, 89 per cent of businesses use video content marketing (Wyzowl). 

Video format also works great for social media marketing. Facebook live streaming draws attention 6 times more than any live streaming platform. 

Audio Format - Podcasts are indeed the next big thing after video content. With more and more users shifting to voice search with smart speakers, voice search SEO is becoming important for content marketers. 

List of Popular Forms of Content Marketing 

Here is an essential list of different types of content. 

1. Blogs
2. Whitepapers
3. Case Studies
4. Emails
5. Infographics
6. Ebooks
7. Videos
8. Social media posts
9. Checklists
10. Podcasts

Here are some stats to begin with. 

1. Educational content ensures that consumers are 131% more likely to make a purchase (Spotlight Conductor)
2. 81% of marketers consider content as the main business strategy (Content Marketing Institute)
3. More than 60% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2021). In 2025, now, short form videos and influencer collaborations are most going to be used (HubSpot). 

Considering these, some of the major benefits of content marketing are the following. 

Audience Engagement & Trust  - When the information you put out through blogs, videos or social media posts is valuable to your target audience, they will engage with your brand. 

With content marketing, you are informing the audience about your product or service. You are not asking them to buy. In a way, they will reach you and have the upper hand in deciding whether the informative content is beneficial for them. This determines their loyalty towards your brand offerings. 

Brand Awareness Through Authority - With regular content publishing you will increase visibility on search engines and social media. And the content your target audience consumes online is free and shareable. 

The more you publish high-quality content for a specific niche, the more authority you achieve. Google gives importance to authority when it comes to ranking on search engines. 

Lead Generation - Whoever in the target audience consumes your content are more likely to buy your service or product in the near future. According to Review42, 72% of businesses claim that content marketing increases leads. 

How does content marketing work, you ask?

First let's break down how the authoritative Content Marketing Institute (CMI) defines the term to learn the elements within it.  

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Content marketers use one or a combination of various digital channels to share valuable information first so that the target audience makes an informed decision to buy. 

Experts in the field claim content marketing is all about good storytelling. But storytelling only works when marketers are able to help across all the customer touchpoints. Relevant content is useful when it comes to brand differentiation. 

These touchpoints begin right from when the potential customer comes in touch with a brand to the stage after buying. 

This is where the terms ‘valuable’, ‘relevant’ and ‘consistent’ in the above CMI definition becomes important. 

With such efforts, modern businesses increase their profits and improve brand loyalty in the competitive online space. That's why content marketing is a long-term goal that any brand needs to invest in. 

Experts use a content marketing funnel to guide potential customers from awareness to conversion. The way the content is presented to the prospects differs from one stage to another. The measurements of content performance also differ across the different phases.

Understanding the Basic Content Marketing Funnel 

Content marketing funnels can be different for marketers too. Many go for the TOFU, MOFU and BOFU models, while others may include more steps. Let’s look at them one by one. 

TOFU - Also called the top of the funnel, it is the first stage when the potential customer is still not sure if they want to buy the product or service. So as a content marketer, you have to give them the reason to engage with your content. For instance, your content may answer a query your target audience is looking for. 

Now this stage is crucial for letting your audience know how your product or services solves their issues. But you know, not every type of content will work. 

At this stage, content marketers put out articles, blogs, ebooks, and so on. According to SEMRush, 72% of marketers say that ‘how-to’ blogs are important at this stage. Here content performance is measured by organic traffic mostly. The more organic traffic your website gets, the more authority you will have. 

MOFU - This stage is called the middle of the funnel. Here the number of potential customers who will make a purchase from you will decrease. So the strategy here should be about engaging the remaining prospects. Since they already know what your business sells, you have to nurture and sustain that customer relationship.  

As a rule of thumb, experts suggest offering content that is both engaging and product-related. Case studies, product articles, etc help, but 72% of marketers consider using email marketing as a tactic at this stage (SEMRush). 

BOFU - The bottom of the funnel is the last stage of content marketing efforts for many businesses in the industry. It is again where the number of prospects decrease and very few remain. 

It is more important to offer your content that emphasises the benefits of the product and how it stands out among competitors. This is also known as the conversion stage. Again, email marketing is a content strategy that personalises communication with the buyer. Apart from that, case studies, user-generated content, etc work. 

At the crux of it, content marketing is about offering value to your prospects only. They together form the target market. Because not everyone with internet access will buy your product. 

You have to segregate your potential customers to identify them to create a content strategy. 

First learn about customer segmentation, and then read more about what makes content marketing different from content strategy.

In general, your target market comprises individuals who

1. Are from a specific age group 
2. Have a defined buying behaviour (refer to behavioural segmentation)
3. Belong to a particular geographical location 
4. Hang out in specific social media channels. 

All these factors determine the target audience for content marketers. To identify them, you have to ask a few important questions including

1. Who are they?
2. What are their pain points and can you solve them?
3. What type of content does your target audience prefer?

And when you have to find your target audience, here are some steps to follow. 

1. Send surveys through Google Forms (or others) on relevant channels including emails, website, social media, etc. 
2. Interview your existing customers and take their feedback
3. Use Google Analytics 4 to understand your demographics
4. Analyse your followers on social media
5. Research your competitors and see what their customers prefer about them

Alright, so you may have gone beyond in creating the best content for your audience. But you also have to check how your content improves the business profits. In short, your content marketing efforts must be quantifiable. 

Cathy McPhillips, the Vice President of Marketing at CMI, created a chart explaining the metrics against every goal of content marketing. 

1. Brand Awareness - The common metric for this goal is website traffic.
2. Engagement - To measure this goal, you have to measure the number of views of your pages on your website. 
3. Lead Generation - You have to calculate the number of email and blog subscriptions. If you have a YouTube channel, you have to measure the number of subscribers. The conversion rates of prospects to customers will be a key metric here. 
4. Sales - Find out where your sales are taking place - online or offline. 
5. Customer Loyalty - You can calculate the ratio of your current customers who still enjoy the content you create. 
6. Upselling - Calculate the sales numbers for the new product or service your brand has put out in the market. 

There is also a common formula for calculating content marketing ROI. According to SEMRush, it is

Content Marketing ROI = Return - Investment / Investment x 100

The investment here, according to the experts from SEMRush, is the sum of all the budget for content marketing. 

1. Start with beginner content marketing courses online. You can go the paid route to acquire certificates or free. 
2. Look into free courses on content marketing, ideally through HubSpot Academy and SEMrush Academy.
3. Keep yourself updated with the best content marketing resources. Read articles or use resources of MarketingProfs which are also free. 
4. Focus on building the right skills, one at a time. Maybe learn content writing best practices first, move to SEO, focus on user experience, and then learn how to analyse data using digital marketing tools. 

1. Research
2. Content creation and editing
3. Copywriting
4. Video production
5. Graphic design
6. SEO
7. Data analysis with tools such as Google Analytics
8. Updated with marketing trends
9. Generative AI

1. Content Marketing Certification on HubSpot Academy 
2. Advanced Content Marketing Certification Training Course on Simplilearn 
3. The Strategy of Content Marketing on Coursera 
4. Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises on Udemy 
5. Brand & Content Marketing on Coursera