Content marketing: strategies and trends for tomorrow's success

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic online marketing method that focuses on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and engage a defined target audience. The main goal is to ultimately drive profitable customer actions.

Incidentally, the term content marketing was coined by Joe Pulizzi, who founded the Content Marketing Institute in 2010.

The importance of content marketing in 2023

The importance of content marketing in 2023 cannot be overestimated. In a digital landscape flooded with information, content marketing has proven to be a crucial tool for differentiation and building brand trust.

According to a study by HubSpot, 70% of marketers plan to intensify their content strategy in 2023. This shows how important content marketing has become for companies to reach and engage their target groups.

With the increasing personalisation and segmentation of target groups, content marketing has evolved from a nice-to-have option to a necessity. It enables brands to deliver relevant and valuable content that drives engagement, increases brand awareness and ultimately boosts sales.

The basics of content marketing

Content marketing in practice

In practice, content marketing means that organisations create and share content that is informative, educational, entertaining or useful, rather than directly promoting their products or services. This content can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, email newsletters, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, webinars and more.

The term content marketing emphasises the importance of high-quality content that provides value to the audience. It's not about inundating people with advertising messages, but providing them with something useful that sparks their interest and trust.

The idea behind content marketing

The idea is that if companies consistently deliver helpful content, they can build a strong relationship with their target audience. This can lead to customers having more trust in the company over time, which can ultimately lead to higher sales, loyalty and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

What makes content marketing so effective?

Content marketing is particularly effective for a variety of reasons. Let's take a look at the most important ones:

1. Content marketing is customer-centric: Unlike traditional marketing techniques that focus on the product or service, content marketing puts the customer at the centre. Companies deliver content that meets the needs and interests of their target group. They build relationships by providing useful and engaging content rather than just pushing to sell products or services.
2. Content marketing helps build trust and credibility: when companies provide valuable content that demonstrates their expertise, they gain the trust of their target audience. People are more likely to buy from brands they trust and perceive as credible and reliable.
3. Content marketing increases visibility and brand awareness: By creating and distributing high-quality content, companies can increase their visibility online and improve their brand awareness. Content marketing can also help improve search engine rankings, as Google and other search engines favour high-quality content.
4. Content marketing supports other marketing methods: Content marketing supports and reinforces other marketing strategies. For example, it can improve the success of social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO) and email marketing by providing high-quality content that can be shared and distributed on these platforms.
5. Content marketing promotes customer loyalty: By providing useful and interesting content on a regular basis, companies can build a strong relationship with their customers that fosters loyalty and facilitates repeat business.
6. Content marketing is cost effective: Compared to traditional marketing methods, content marketing can be more cost effective. Content creation can take time and resources, but it is often less costly than paid advertising campaigns and can provide greater long-term benefits.

What types of content marketing are there?

Content marketing is characterised by its variety of options that can be used in different contexts and for different target groups:

1. Blogging: Blogging is one of the most well-known forms of content marketing. Companies regularly create content marketing content in the form of blog posts on topics that are relevant to their target group. Blogs are great for improving SEO, demonstrating a brand's expertise and building an audience.
2. Social media content: This includes content created on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Social media content can take a variety of formats, including text posts, images, videos, infographics and more.
3. Video content: Videos are a very engaging format for content marketing. They can be shared on websites, social media and platforms such as YouTube. Videos can include product demonstrations, interviews, tutorials, webinars and much more.
4. Email marketing: This involves sending content directly to the email addresses of the target audience. This can include newsletters, personalised messages, promotional offers and more.
5. Search engine optimisation (SEO) content: This content is created specifically to rank well in search engine results. You can use keywords and other SEO strategies to increase visibility in search engines like Google.
6. E-books and whitepapers: These longer, more detailed pieces of content are often used to provide in-depth information on a topic. They are often used to generate leads by offering them in exchange for contact information.
7. Infographics: Infographics are visual representations of information or data. They are often popular on social media and in blog posts.
8. Webinars and podcasts: These formats are ideal for discussing topics in depth and bringing in experts or guests. They often offer an interactive component that allows the audience to ask questions or participate in other ways.
9. Case studies: Case studies tell the story of how a customer or group of customers solved a problem using a company's product or service. They are a great way to demonstrate the benefits and value of an offering.

The benefits of content marketing for your brand

Increased brand awareness

Content marketing allows companies to create and share content that is relevant and valuable to their target audience. By providing useful information, companies can be perceived as experts in their field, which can lead to them gaining awareness and building trust with their target audience.

Improved customer loyalty

By providing valuable and engaging content, companies can build and maintain a relationship with their target audience. This can help improve customer loyalty, as customers are more likely to do business with brands they know and trust.

Higher rankings in search engines

Search engines like Google reward high-quality, relevant and up-to-date content. By providing such content, companies can improve their SEO and achieve higher rankings in search engine results, which can lead to more visibility and increased website traffic.

Increased website traffic

As mentioned above, improving SEO through high-quality content leads to higher rankings in search engine results. This can lead to increased website traffic as people are more inclined to click on the first search results.

Improved customer loyalty

By providing content that meets customers' needs and interests, companies can strengthen their relationship with their customers. This can make customers more likely to engage with the brand and become more loyal. Furthermore, through content marketing, companies can also gain a deeper understanding of their customers, which in turn allows them to better tailor their products or services to their customers' needs.

Content marketing strategy (development, implementation + checklist)

It is important to note that content marketing is a long-term strategy. While the results may not be immediately visible, a well-executed content marketing strategy can provide significant benefits over time.

What is a content marketing strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a plan designed to create and distribute relevant and valuable content to target and engage a specific audience. This plan includes defining goals, determining the target audience, the type of content to be created and the channels through which the content will be distributed. The goal is to increase brand awareness, promote customer loyalty and ultimately achieve business goals such as increased sales and customer growth.

Developing a content marketing strategy + checklist to download

Developing an effective content marketing strategy requires careful planning and execution. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you do just that:

1. Define your goals: Ask yourself what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads or improve customer loyalty? Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-limited (SMART).
2. Determine your target group: Who are your ideal customers? What demographics do they represent and what are their interests and needs? Create detailed buyer personas to better understand your target audience and tailor your content to them.
3. Conduct a content audit: Review your existing content and evaluate its effectiveness. What works well and what could be improved? The findings from this analysis can help you to optimise your strategy.
4. Decide on content types: Based on your target audience and goals, what type of content will you create? Blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, social media posts and e-books are just some of the many possibilities.
5. Create a content calendar: A content calendar helps you to organise your content creation and publishing. Plan when and where each piece of content should be published and who is responsible for it.
6. Create and distribute your content: Now it's time to create and distribute your content. Pay attention to quality and relevance for your target group. Use different channels for distribution, such as your website, social media, email newsletters, etc.
7. Measure the results and optimise your strategy: Use analytics tools to measure the success of your content. Keep an eye on the metrics that align with your goals and adjust your strategy accordingly. Here are three examples of analytics tools you can use:
   1. Google Analytics: This is a widely used analytics tool that allows you to monitor the performance of your website and blog posts. You can use it to measure aspects such as page views, average time on site, bounce rate and more. You can also see where visitors are coming to your website from, which helps you understand which marketing channels are most effective.
   2. YouTube Analytics: If you publish video content on YouTube, YouTube Analytics is an indispensable tool. It provides insights into viewing time, number of views, viewer demographics, interaction rate and much more. It also helps you understand which videos are best received and which topics or video formats you should pursue in the future.
   3. Social media analysis tools: Each major social media platform offers its own analytics tools. For example, Facebook offers Insights, Twitter has Twitter Analytics, and Instagram has Instagram Insights. These tools can help you to measure and optimise your performance on the respective platforms. For example, they can show you which posts receive the most likes, shares or comments, at what times your target group is most active and what type of content works best.
8. Be patient and consistent: content marketing is not a sprint, but a marathon. It may take some time before you see the results you want, so it's important to be patient and consistently deliver high-quality content.

Checklist for creating and executing a content marketing strategy

Download content marketing strategy checklist now

The key components of a content marketing strategy

An effective content marketing strategy consists of several key components that work together to achieve the organisation's goals. Here are the most important components:

1. Goal setting: Before you start creating content, you need to set clear goals for your content marketing strategy. These goals could be to increase brand awareness, generate leads, increase website traffic or improve customer retention. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART).
2. Target group analysis: To create effective content, you need to know your target group inside out. This means that you need to understand their needs, interests, challenges and behaviours. This can be achieved through market research, customer surveys and analysing customer data.
3. Content creation: Based on your goals and your target group analysis, you need to create high-quality content that appeals to your target group and gets them to take the desired action. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books, webinars and more.
4. Content distribution: Once you've created your content, you need to distribute it on the right channels to reach your target audience. This can be through social media, email marketing, SEO, paid advertising and more.
5. Measurement and analysis: Finally, you need to measure and analyse the performance of your content to understand what's working and what's not. This can be achieved by using analytics tools and monitoring metrics such as page views, social shares, conversion rates and more.
6. Optimisation: Based on your analysis and insights, you should constantly optimise and adjust your strategy to achieve better results.

Content marketing techniques

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a classic content marketing technique. It aims to attract customers by providing helpful, relevant content and experiences. It is a method based on creating valuable experiences that have a positive impact on people and your organisation. Unlike traditional outbound marketing, where companies try to find customers with generic messages, inbound marketing focuses on customers finding the company.

The key elements of inbound marketing are detailed below:

1. Content creation and distribution: inbound marketing begins with the creation of valuable, informative content. This can be blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, videos, infographics, podcasts or a range of other formats. Once the content has been created, it is distributed on various platforms to reach as many potential customers as possible.
2. Lifecycle marketing: Inbound marketing takes into account where potential customers are in the buying cycle and adapts marketing messages accordingly. The three phases of lifecycle marketing are: Awareness, Consideration and Decision.
3. Personalisation: As a customer interacts with your company, their specific needs and interests become clearer. Inbound marketing uses this information to personalise content and better tailor it to the individual customer.
4. Multi-channel approach: Inbound marketing takes place where the customers are. This means it works across multiple channels, including search engines, social media, email and on your website.
5. Integration: Content marketing, SEO, social media and PR all need to work together to create a cohesive and effective inbound strategy.
6. Analysis: Every aspect of an inbound marketing strategy should be monitored and analysed. This allows companies to understand what is working and what is not and adjust their strategy accordingly.

What is pull marketing?

Pull marketing is a method in which companies try to get customers to actively search for their products or services. Unlike push marketing, where products and services are actively marketed to customers, pull marketing focuses on attracting customers and building trust until they make a purchase decision on their own.

There are various strategies and tactics that can be used as part of pull marketing. Here are some examples:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): SEO is a method of increasing a website's visibility in search engine results, encouraging more users to visit the site and potentially purchase a product or service.
2. Content creation: Creating valuable and relevant content can help encourage customers to search for and engage with a brand. This can be done through blogging, podcasts, videos, infographics and other types of content.
3. Social media marketing: By utilising social media platforms, companies can build a community and encourage interactions that can lead to customers searching for their products or services.
4. Branding: A strong brand can lead to customers searching for a particular brand's products or services. This can be achieved through a number of tactics, including consistency in design and messaging, excellent customer service and creating a unique selling proposition.
5. Influencer marketing: By working with influencers who have a large and engaged following, businesses can promote their products or services to a wider audience, which can lead to more people searching for them.

Outbound marketing

Outbound marketing, also known as "traditional marketing", refers to any marketing strategy in which a company actively reaches out to potential customers. In contrast to inbound marketing, in which customers independently seek contact with the company, outbound marketing techniques approach customers directly. Communication is therefore primarily initiated by the company.

Outbound marketing encompasses a variety of techniques and strategies, including

1. Television and radio advertising: these are traditional marketing channels that can reach a wide target audience. They allow a brand message to be sent to a large audience in a short space of time.
2. Print advertising: This includes adverts in magazines and newspapers, brochures, flyers, posters, direct mail and more. These forms of advertising are physical and can be targeted to specific demographics.
3. Cold calling: This can include telephone sales, door-to-door sales or email spam. In this technique, the company approaches potential customers directly, often without any prior interaction or relationship.
4. Telemarketing: This involves direct contact with potential customers over the telephone. This can include both the sale of products and customer service.
5. Online advertising: This includes display adverts, pay-per-click ads, sponsored social media posts and more. These techniques can be used to reach a broad or specific audience online.

Although outbound marketing is often seen as intrusive or disruptive, it can still be effective, especially when it comes to creating brand awareness or reaching a broad audience. However, one challenge is capturing people's attention in a world increasingly saturated with advertising. Outbound marketing is also known as push marketing.

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What is push marketing?

Push marketing is a strategy in which companies actively "push" or promote their products or services to customers instead of waiting for customers to come to them. The idea is to grab customers' attention and encourage them to make a purchase. Push marketing can be seen as more direct and aggressive than pull marketing.

There are various techniques and strategies that can be used as part of push marketing. Here are some examples:

1. Direct selling: this can be face-to-face selling, telemarketing or even door-to-door selling. It is a direct interaction with the customer in an attempt to persuade them to buy.
2. Direct mail and emails: These are personalised messages sent directly to the customer, often with a special offer or call to action.
3. Advertising: This can include traditional advertising such as television, radio or print advertising as well as digital advertising such as online adverts, social media advertising and more.
4. Trade promotion: This includes tactics such as product demonstrations, point-of-sale displays, sales promotions and more to draw customers' attention to a product and encourage them to buy.
5. Public relations and events: This could include holding product launches, press conferences or other events to attract attention and pique customer interest.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote and market a product or service. It includes both publishing good content on a company's profiles, interacting with followers, running social media advertising campaigns and analysing the results.

Here are some key aspects of social media marketing:

1. Content creation and publishing: Companies regularly create and publish content on their social media channels. This can include text, photos, videos, infographics, webinars and more. The content should generally be informative, interesting and valuable to the target audience to drive engagement and increase reach.
2. Interaction and engagement: Social media is not just a one-way communication channel. Companies interact with their followers through comments, messages and reviews to build relationships and drive engagement. This can also include responding to customer enquiries and complaints.
3. Advertising: Social media platforms offer powerful advertising tools that allow businesses to deliver targeted adverts to specific demographics based on factors such as age, location, interests and more. Businesses can utilise both organic and paid strategies to increase their reach and achieve their goals.
4. Analysis and optimisation: Companies use social media analytics tools to measure the success of their social media activities. They can collect data on metrics such as reach, engagement, click-through rate, conversions and more. This data can then be used to optimise social media strategy and inform future content and campaigns.

Social media marketing offers businesses a unique opportunity to build a direct and personal relationship with their customers. Through effective strategies, companies can increase brand awareness, attract new customers, drive engagement and ultimately increase sales.

Email marketing and newsletter marketing

Email and newsletter marketing are digital marketing strategies that utilise email to promote a company, its products or services, build or maintain relationships with customers and encourage customer loyalty.

Here are some key concepts of email and newsletter marketing:

1. Email list building: companies collect email addresses from customers and prospects, often through a form on their website or through other marketing activities. This list is then used to send marketing emails to these individuals.
2. Newsletters: These are regular emails sent to a list of subscribers. They usually contain news, updates, offers or other content that is relevant to the recipients. Newsletters are used to build and maintain relationships by providing valuable information to subscribers on a regular basis.
3. Promotional emails: These emails are specifically designed to promote products or services, special offers or sales. They aim to persuade the recipient to take a specific action, such as buying a product.
4. Automated email campaigns: Also known as email automation or drip campaigns, this is where emails are automatically sent to specific people on the email list based on certain triggers or timing. For example, a new subscriber could automatically receive a welcome email, or a customer could receive an email when they abandon an item in their basket.
5. Email analytics: Equally important is measuring the performance of email campaigns by analysing metrics such as open rate, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate and conversion rate. This data can then be used to optimise future email campaigns.

Content marketing tools

Content audit

Content audits are an important part of any content marketing strategy as they help to assess the performance of existing content and identify areas for improvement.

According to a recent survey by Semrush (2023), 70% of companies that report great success in content marketing, regardless of company size, stated that they actually measure the ROI of content marketing.

In the overall survey, 54% of all companies use this practice.

The data in the chart represents the percentages of responses to the question of whether content marketing ROI is measured.

The survey also found the following:

The organisations we surveyed have seen improvements in some key areas following a content review, such as 53% in engagement rates and 49% in rankings and traffic.

The data in the chart represents the improvement in content marketing results after conducting a content audit. The values are shown in comparison to the results without a content audit (value 100).

Here are three of the latest and most popular tools that can be used for content audits:

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is a sophisticated SEO tool specifically designed to facilitate content optimisation. It offers a number of features that are particularly useful in a content audit, including the "Audit" and "SERP Analyser" functions.

• Audit feature: The audit feature of Surfer SEO allows you to perform a detailed analysis of your website or a specific piece of content. You can use this feature to see how well your content performs compared to the top ranking pages for a specific keyword. The audit function analyses various aspects of your content, including word count, keyword density, use of related keywords, headline structure and much more. Based on this analysis, Surfer SEO then provides specific recommendations on how you can improve your content to improve SEO performance. These recommendations can help you identify areas where your content may be falling short and give you a clear action plan for improvement.
• SERP Analyzer feature: The SERP Analyzer feature of Surfer SEO allows you to analyse the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a specific keyword. This feature provides detailed data about the top-ranking pages, including their word count, keyword density, backlink profile and more. You can use this information to understand what these pages have in common and how you can adjust your own content to rank better. In addition, the SERP analyser also shows the SERP features that are available for your keyword, such as featured snippets, people-also-ask-boxes and local packs. This can help you identify additional opportunities to improve your visibility in the SERPs.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that crawls your entire website and collects data for a content audit. It can provide information about URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, H1 tags and much more. You can also see which pages have broken links or missing images. Screaming Frog also offers integration with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, so you can get additional data about the traffic and performance of your pages.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another powerful SEO tool that can be used for content audits. With Ahrefs, you can perform a comprehensive analysis of your backlinks to see which pages are getting the most links and which websites those links are coming from. You can also see which keywords your pages rank for and how they compare to your competitors. Ahrefs also offers a content gap feature that shows you which keywords your competitors are ranking for but you are not, which can help you identify new content opportunities.

These tools offer a variety of features that can help you conduct a thorough content audit and gain valuable insights into the performance of your content.

Tools for creating text content

Text content such as blog articles are still an important part of content marketing - even though some have declared them dead.

In this section, we'll look at three of the latest and hottest tools for creating optimised text content: Surfer SEO, SEMrush and TermLabs. Each of these tools offers unique features and capabilities that can take your content marketing strategy to the next level. Let's take a closer look.

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is a powerful SEO tool designed specifically for content optimisation. One of its standout features is the Content Editor. With this tool, you can create SEO-friendly content that targets specific keywords. You simply enter the keyword you want to rank for and the content editor will generate a list of keywords and phrases you should use in your content to improve your SEO.

In addition, the editor also gives recommendations on word count, number of headings and keyword density. It's a great tool to make sure your content is optimised for SEO.

One of the latest features of Surfer SEO is "Write with Surfer AI". This feature automatically generates content based on the keywords you enter. It uses artificial intelligence to create high-quality, SEO-optimised content based on your chosen keyword.

SEMrush

SEMrush is another comprehensive SEO tool that offers a variety of features for content creation. One of these features is the SEO Writing Assistant. This tool analyses your content and gives you real-time recommendations to improve your SEO, readability and originality. It also helps you find the right keyword placement and gives you suggestions for additional keywords you could use.

In addition, SEMrush also offers a content marketing platform that helps you plan, create and analyse your content strategy.

TermLabs

TermLabs is a powerful SEO and content marketing tool specifically designed to optimise copy for both users and search engines. It offers a range of features, including a WDF*IDF analysis that shows the relevance and weighting of a word compared to other similar content. The Text Wizard provides important SEO metrics that help with text optimisation.

The Question Finder can be used to research relevant questions for a specific keyword, which helps with the creation of target group-specific content.

The Meta Tag Keyword Finder provides inspiration for text creation by displaying relevant keywords.

In addition, the Term Coverage function enables existing articles to be analysed and thematic gaps to be identified to ensure that the new text offers added value for users.

TermLabs is currently focussed on the German market and therefore only offers German keywords in its database.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI text generator that allows you to write texts, albeit with limitations. Find out more in our article Writing texts with ChatGPT.

Tools for the distribution of content

The following tools each offer unique functions and options for distributing content. Choosing the right tool depends on the company's specific needs and goals as well as its content marketing strategy.

HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing platform that offers a variety of content distribution tools. With HubSpot, companies can create and publish blog posts, schedule and publish social media posts, create and send email newsletters and much more. HubSpot also offers extensive analytics features that allow companies to measure the performance of their content across different channels.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media management tool that allows companies to schedule and publish their social media posts. With Buffer, companies can schedule their posts for different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest from a single dashboard. Buffer also offers analytics features that allow businesses to track the performance of their social media posts.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a comprehensive online marketing platform designed specifically for creating and distributing email marketing campaigns. With GetResponse, companies can create engaging emails with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

In addition, it offers features such as autoresponders, contact list segmentation and A/B testing.

GetResponse also offers landing page creation and webinar hosting, making it a versatile tool for content distribution.

Tools for analysing content

The following tools each offer different features and capabilities and can help you analyse and optimise your content to achieve your content marketing goals. These tools are examples of many others such as Ahrefs, Moz, Sprout Social, HubSpot, Crazy Egg and many more.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most commonly used analytics tools and provides a wealth of information about the performance of your website and content. With Google Analytics, you can see how many people visit your website, how long they stay, which pages they visit and much more.

You can also see which content has the most views, the longest dwell time and the highest bounce rate. In addition, Google Analytics provides information about the demographics of your users, their interests and their behaviour, which can be very helpful for target group analysis.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a comprehensive SEO tool that also offers powerful content analysis features. With SEMrush, you can see which keywords in your content rank best, which backlinks you receive and how you compare to your competitors.

You can also perform a detailed analysis of your social media performance and see which content performs best on different platforms.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a specialised content analysis tool that helps you understand which content is shared and liked the most in your industry or on specific topics. You can see which content performs best on social media, which influencers are most influential in your industry and which topics are currently trending. This can help you create content that is likely to be well received and shared.

Content marketing trends

Some of the key content marketing trends include the increasing personalisation of content, the use of interactive content to increase user engagement, the rise of video content, optimisation for voice search, the integration of artificial intelligence and the use of user-generated content. These trends reflect the changing preferences and behaviours of consumers and offer companies new opportunities to reach and engage their target audiences.

Personalisation

The personalisation of content will become even more important. Consumers increasingly expect the content they consume to be tailored to their specific interests and needs. Companies that are able to deliver highly personalised content will have a competitive advantage as they can build a stronger bond with their customers and improve their conversion rates.

Interactive content

Interactive content, such as quizzes, surveys and interactive infographics, are becoming increasingly popular as they can increase user engagement and increase time spent on the website. They not only provide users with valuable information, but also an entertaining and engaging experience that can help increase brand awareness and loyalty.

Video content

Video content is another important trend. With the increasing popularity of platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram Reels, videos are capturing users' attention and can convey complex information in an easy-to-understand and engaging way. Companies that utilise video content effectively can expand their reach and spread their brand message more effectively.

Optimising voice search

With the rise of voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, optimisation for voice search is becoming increasingly important. Companies need to design their content to respond to natural voice queries in order to be visible in voice search results. This can include creating FAQ pages, using long-tail keywords and optimising for local search queries.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play an increasingly important role in content marketing. AI can help to create, personalise and distribute content, and can also help to analyse data and predict trends. Companies that use AI effectively can increase their efficiency, gain better insights and improve their content marketing strategy.

User-generated content

User-generated content, such as customer reviews, testimonials and social media posts, is an effective way to build trust and credibility. It provides consumers with authentic and compelling evidence of the value of a product or service. Companies will increasingly integrate user-generated content into their content marketing strategies to strengthen customer loyalty and increase brand awareness.

Examples of successful content marketing campaigns

The OBI content marketing campaign

A good example of content marketing from German-speaking countries is OBI's content marketing campaign "Wir alle sprechen DIY" ("We all speak DIY"). In this campaign, video instructions for DIY projects that are popular with the community were translated into various relevant languages.

These instructions cover a wide range of topics, such as laying laminate flooring, painting walls, applying woodchip wallpaper, building a fireplace, sanding parquet flooring, laying click vinyl, replacing and connecting the sink insert and properly maintaining and venting a radiator.

The videos are available in the most widely spoken languages in Germany and Austria, including Turkish, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Ukrainian, English, Italian and Romanian. With this initiative, OBI wants to break down language barriers in DIY projects and enable inspiring projects for everyone, regardless of origin, age or gender.

IKEA's content marketing

IKEA has launched a campaign called "Everyday Experiments". In this campaign, design and technology experiments were conducted to show how home life can be improved through technology. The experiments were presented on the company's website and the best ones were retained

Coca-Cola's content marketing campaign

Coca-Cola created one of the most recognisable and successful content marketing campaigns with its "Share a Coke" campaign. The campaign personalised Coca-Cola labels with people's names, creating an emotional connection with customers and making them feel part of the Coca-Cola brand.

Dr Oetker's success in content marketing

Dr Oetker has built a very successful content marketing strategy by publishing recipes and baking instructions. This content provides real value to customers and has helped the company build a strong online presence.

Conclusion

In 2024, content marketing will prove to be a crucial tool for differentiation and building brand trust in a digital landscape that is flooded with information. According to a study by HubSpot, 70% of marketers plan to intensify their content strategy. This shows how important content marketing has become for companies to reach and engage their target groups.

With the increasing personalisation and segmentation of target groups, content marketing has evolved from a nice-to-have option to a necessity. It allows brands to deliver relevant and valuable content that drives engagement, increases brand awareness and ultimately sales.

Final thoughts on the future of content marketing

The future of content marketing looks promising, with trends such as video content, voice search optimisation, artificial intelligence and user-generated content.

• Video content captures users' attention and can convey complex information in an easy-to-understand and engaging way.
• Optimisation for voice search is becoming increasingly important as more and more people use voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant.
• Artificial intelligence can help create, personalise and distribute content, and can also help analyse data and predict trends.
• User-generated content, such as customer reviews and social media posts, is an effective way to build trust and credibility.

Given the importance and potential of content marketing, companies should capitalise on this opportunity and invest in an effective content marketing strategy. It's not just about creating content, but also about personalising, distributing and analysing content to get the best results.

Companies that invest in content marketing can expand their reach, increase their brand awareness, build trust with their target audiences and ultimately increase their sales.

Do you need support in creating and/or implementing your content marketing strategy? Then feel free to contact us. Send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. call us on +43 1 353 2 353 or send us your enquiry using our contact form.

Frequently asked questions about content marketing

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic online marketing method that focuses on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content to attract and engage a defined target audience. The main goal is to ultimately drive profitable customer actions.

What are examples of content marketing?

Some examples of content marketing are the campaigns of IKEA and Coca-Cola. IKEA launched a campaign called "Everyday Experiments" in which design and technology experiments were conducted to show how home life can be improved through technology. Coca-Cola launched one of the most well-known and successful content marketing campaigns with its "Share a Coke" campaign, in which Coca-Cola labels were personalised with people's names.

What do you do in content marketing?

In content marketing, organisations create and share content that is informative, educational, entertaining or useful, rather than directly promoting their products or services. This content can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, email newsletters, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, webinars and more.

Why do content marketing?

Content marketing is particularly effective for several reasons. It is customer-centred, helps build trust and credibility, increases visibility and brand awareness, supports other marketing methods, promotes customer loyalty and is cost-efficient.

Is content marketing only online?

Whilst content marketing is often associated with online content, it is not exclusive to the internet. It can also be done offline, for example through print magazines, brochures or events. The key is that the content is valuable, relevant and engaging for the target audience, regardless of the medium.

What types of content marketing are there?

There are different types of content marketing that can be used in different contexts and for different target groups. These include blogging, social media content and video content.

How can content marketing improve search engine rankings?

By creating and distributing high-quality content, companies can increase their visibility online and improve their brand awareness. Content marketing can also help improve search engine rankings, as Google and other search engines favour high-quality content.