Planning to step up your content marketing efforts in 2023? Whether you’re looking to grow your audience, increase your engagement rate, or add value to your customer experience, this post is for you. In this guide, we’ll share which types of content marketing are most relevant today, and how to get started.
But first, it’s worth remembering why you should invest in content marketing.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a subdiscipline within inbound marketing. Its goal is to engage current and potential customers through valuable content that’s educational or entertaining.
By moving beyond a classic promotional message, content marketing allows brands to build richer, stronger, and more resilient relationships with their audiences.
The content in content marketing can take many forms, depending on:
- The platform where it’s posted.
- The audience’s interests and needs.
- Which segment of your audience you’re looking to engage.
- Your brand’s voice & message.
- The industry your brand’s operating in.
As we’ll discuss later in this article, content can be used for many ends throughout your customer journey. It can attract prospects, and it can also remove friction and facilitate conversions when they get closer to the purchasing decision. Additionally, content can be used to build customer loyalty and create a sense of community around your brand.
Now that we’ve agreed on the definition of content marketing, let’s take a look at the most common types of content marketing material.
Most commonly, marketing teams will create:
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Infographics & other types of visual content
- Emails
- Ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, and other lead magnets
- Courses & webinars
- Social media posts
These different types of content can help achieve different goals. And often, a piece of content will be originally created for one format and repurposed into others. For instance, a YouTube video may become a blog post, and that blog post may become a Twitter thread.
Can Content Marketing Drive Growth in 2023?
Taking a look at our definition of content marketing, you may be wondering: Isn’t that what every brand on earth is doing? When you’re browsing social media, searching for answers to everyday questions on Google, or going down a YouTube rabbit hole, you’re bound to find branded content.
Isn’t the internet oversaturated with marketing material? How can your brand stand out? Should you even try to compete?
In the last few years, some marketers asserted that certain types of content marketing were dead, or that they were going to be exhausted and replaced. But in fact, blog posts, newsletters, and branded podcasts have never been so useful. For instance, 47% of customers read 3-5 pieces of blog content before engaging with a company’s sales team.
The mass adoption of content marketing as a digital strategy hasn’t led to saturated audiences. Instead, it has shaped audiences’ expectations. Especially in certain sectors, such as B2B, customers look at brands for updated industry data and actionable advice. So, it’s a good strategy to provide it to them. According to a Gartner report, CMOs have been consistently increasing their content marketing spending since 2020.
Which Types of Content Marketing Should You Invest In?
If you’re a marketing professional at an up-and-coming startup, or you’re simply planning to restructure your content marketing efforts for the new year, you may be wondering which types of content marketing you should invest in.
There isn’t a universal answer to this question. But here’s an interesting way to approach it: Take a look at your conversion funnel, and see where you can use content to help prospects move on to the next step.
We recommend you distribute your investment, so you can use content along different touchpoints. For instance, let’s say your company sells a communication tool for teams.
You could create the following types of content:
- For those in the awareness stage, you could create a video for your Youtube channel, interviewing an expert about how to improve team communication.
- For those in the interest stage, you could create a landing page with a lead magnet.
- For those in the consideration stage, you could create a blog post comparing your tool to a top industry competitor.
- For those in the intent stage, you can offer a free product demo.
- To help close the deal in the evaluation stage, you can send the lead a case study.
- After the purchase, you can share some extra informational content, such as PDF guides and videos, that can help the customer make the most out of your product.
In the next sections, we’ll analyze the 4 leading content marketing formats: Video marketing, blogging, podcasting & email marketing. Should you invest in them? How can you get started? Let’s dive in.
How Video Marketing Will Evolve in 2023
Video content is extremely engaging. It usually outperforms written content, it increases your users’ dwell time on your site, and it makes you more findable.
In 2023, video marketing will evolve in two distinct directions:
- Short-form content will thrive, especially thanks to platforms like TikTok and Instagram’s Reels.
- Videos will become interfaces, with wider adoption of interactive videos.
According to Hubspot’s 2020 Marketing Industry Trends Survey, short-form videos are the most engaging type of content on social media. In fact, 51% of marketers investing in this type of content plan to duplicate their efforts in 2023.
Short-form content lowers your barrier of entry into the world of video marketing. You no longer have to create a 10-minute weekly YouTube video. A 3-minute Instagram Reel or TikTok video can garner the same results.
Interactive video marketing, while still underused, is a great way to complement landing pages and blog posts, giving users the chance to only view recorded content that matches their interests and needs.
Should You Start a Company Podcast?
According to Statista, there are over 79.5 million podcast listeners in the US. Audiences will only grow, reaching 100 million US-based podcast listeners by 2024. No wonder brands like Shopify, Bandcamp, ZipRecruiter, and Sephora jumped on board and launched their own branded podcasts.
Producing a podcast usually demands fewer resources than producing video content. So, it can be a cost-efficient way to engage new audiences. But, is it right for you to start a podcast?
Before you press Rec, ask yourself (and your team) the following questions:
- Do you have a competitive concept for your podcast?
- Do you have the resources to create a strong relationship with your audience?
- Is there someone on your team who can host your podcast?
- Can you seamlessly introduce your podcast to your content marketing efforts?
Let’s take a closer look.
Concept
A strong, well-defined, and engaging concept is key to a successful podcast. Your podcast’s topic should be both relevant to your brand, and interesting to your audience.
Sometimes, choosing the right theme for your podcast will require going beyond your product and into your brand’s vision. For example, a brand selling mattresses could create a podcast about the history of the mattress. Or, it could create a podcast about the need to slow down and rest, in our fast-paced world.
A podcast about mattresses can be a great opportunity to talk to historians and review historical literature. But, it will be a niche topic that will only attract a very specific audience. Meanwhile, a podcast that’s more general and talks about rest and self-care can attract popular guests with established audiences and be useful to many types of people. So, one idea has a wider potential outreach than the other. There are no good or bad ideas, just ideas that move you closer to your goals and ideas that don’t.
Resources
Yes, making a podcast requires fewer tools and fewer people than creating video content. But still, it does require resources. Before moving forward, ask yourself:
- Do you have access to the right recording equipment?
- Do you have the team to run this podcast?
- Do you have someone who can edit the episodes and upload them to distribution platforms?
- Do you have someone who can write the episodes, or at least research and create outlines for them?
- Do you have the time to repurpose your podcast content into videos, social media posts, and other types of content?
Ask yourself these questions before you embark on your podcasting journey. These questions shouldn’t necessarily define whether you’re gonna run a podcast or not. But, they can inform you of which difficulties you’re gonna be dealing with and help you solve them.
Host
Audiences are usually drawn to certain podcasts because they enjoy the topic at hand and because they like the way the hosts approach it. Having the right podcast host is key to your success. Is there someone on your team who has the availability and skill to take on this role?
Schedule
Regardless of the types of content marketing you’re investing in, one thing’s for sure:
Content marketing is long-game. Having a regular posting schedule is extremely important.
Content marketing is about creating a relationship with your audience. And the best way to do it is to simply stick around, post regularly, and become a constant presence in your customers’ social feeds and email inboxes. So if you’re planning to start a podcast, make sure you set a realistic schedule that your team can follow in the long term. That way, you’ll also have time to repurpose your content and invest in diversifying your content production.
Is Social Media Marketing Changing?
The social media landscape has changed a lot in the last couple of years. New platforms emerged and became go-to marketing channels for both B2C and B2B brands. And with these platforms, new formats came about.
It’s always best to stay on top of the latest formats and the latest trends. But don’t hop on trends just for the sake of it. Analyze them and use them strategically, to keep your content efforts fresh.
One of these trends is shoppable content, which first appeared on Instagram, the highest converting social media channel.
Shoppable content is basically content that leads you directly to a transactional page when you tap or click on it. With shoppable content, there is no intermediary between the social media post and the “Buy Now” button. This is especially popular in B2C, but expect to see it in B2B in the near future.
The State of Blogging in 2023
Blog posts are the most popular type of content for inbound campaigns. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of marketers rely on blog posts to provide value to their audience. But, blog posts were one of the first formats to develop on the internet. Why are they still so popular?
The reason is simple: Blogging is cost-efficient, easily scalable, and transversal. And no other format outperforms blogging on these three fronts.
But, what do we mean when we define blogging in these terms? Let’s dive in.
Blogging is Cost-Efficient & Scalable
Blogging requires fewer resources than creating video content. Scaling your blogging efforts just requires more writers and editors. Scaling video production demands writers, editors, animators, voice talent, and more. Additionally, written content is extremely easy to repurpose.
Blogging is Transversal
An Instagram post lives on Instagram. A Twitter thread lives on Twitter. But your blog is hosted on your site, which gives you complete control and ownership of that content.
When it comes to promoting your blog posts, you can use numerous channels to lead your audience to them, you simply write once and promote everywhere. If you’re using your social media channels properly and ranking on Google, your blog content can reach wide and diverse audiences, even organically.
Blogging holds a unique potential while requiring a comparatively low investment. So, if you’re wondering whether you should blog in 2023, the answer is yes.
Is Email Marketing Still Worth It?
With an average ROI of $42 per dollar spent, email has a reputation as a highly-converting marketing channel. Is connecting with potential customers through email content worth it in 2023?
Email is a direct marketing channel that allows you to engage your audience in a way that feels personalized and genuine.
According to SaleCycle, 59% of customers say that emails affect their purchasing behavior. And, as reported by Monetate, 4.24% of email marketing traffic will make a purchase, while only 2.49% of search engine traffic will.
With these stats in mind, introducing email marketing to your marketing mix simply makes sense.
Don’t Let Technical SEO Errors Hurt your Content Marketing
In this post, we shared an overview of the main types of content marketing you should consider for your 2023 campaigns.
Content marketing is a great way to engage your audience, foster brand loyalty and make yourself easier to find organically.
When it comes to inbound marketing, SEO and UX, small technical errors, such as missing title tags or a misplaced “noindex” tag, can considerably undermine your efforts. There are two ways to stay on top of your site’s code changes:
- Manually auditing your content base.
- Automating your technical SEO check-ups with SEORadar.
SEORadar is a disaster prevention tool that detects changes in your website’s source code that could harm your SEO. SEORadar sends automatic notifications, keeping you on top of your codebase. SEORadar’s notifications are actionable and clear, even if you’ve never written a single line of code.
Discover SEORadar. Book a demo, or start a free trial today.
