photo credit: JMC Photos

Content marketing is a word that is getting more and more attention lately. Wikipedia defines it as:

“Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action.”

However, it’s not new.

We’ve had reports, articles, magazines, newsletters, websites, white papers, research reports, seminars, events, roundtables and such like for a long time now.

But, what is new is all of the new technology and channels that we can use to create and share content so that it helps us better connect with our customers at different stages of their customer journey.

However, it can be confusing and I often get asked:

‘What sort of content should I be producing, where and for what?’

To which I reply:

“It depends.”

Well, it does. It depends on who your customers are, where they are on their customer journey and what they need right now.

Then, recently, I found this great infographic called The Content Grid v2 from Eloqua and Jess3 (If you click on the image you’ll be able to see a bigger image):

What I really like is how it marries business objectives and a customer or prospects goals to content that can be created. I also like how it provides a useful set of signposts towards what is possible.

I don’t think you need to be doing all of it but it’s a great checklist against what you, or I, are currently doing and what we could be doing. It’s also a great way of generating new ideas about new forms of content to help your marketing.

A useful tool indeed and one that just gave me a lot to think about in terms of creating content for the benefit of my customers and their customers.

What did you think? Are you generating the right type of content for your customers?