Content Marketing Defined

Photo source: TopRank Online Marketing on flickr.

Recently, I used to Google Trends to look at search traffic for the term "content marketing." I know that content marketing is becoming popular, but I was not expecting to see that interest has grown fivefold in the last few years:

If you’re not familiar with content marketing, you’re probably wondering, am I missing something? What is content marketing anyway?

Five Definitions of Content Marketing

I'll give you five definitions from different (and trustworthy) sources, so you can have a complete picture of what it is and what it can do for you.

1) Wikipedia

“Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, etc.

Content marketing creates interest in a product through educational or informative material. Successful content marketing relies on providing "consistent, high-quality content that solves people's problems.”

Read the full article at: Wikipedia

2) Content Marketing Institute

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing.” 

Read the full article at: Content Marketing Institute

3) Rebecca Lieb

“Content marketing is a pull, rather than a push, strategy. Content doesn’t interrupt, it attracts.” 

Read the full article by Rebecca Lieb in Advertising Age

4) Fusion Marketing Experience

“Content marketing is an umbrella term covering a set of strategies, techniques and tactics to fulfill business goals by using content across the customer life cycle and the business functions in a consistent, integrated and continuous way. Content marketing is not about advertising campaigns or short- and mid-term marketing strategies. It’s not the same as using content in a systematic way for search engine marketing, PR or other forms of marketing either. Search engine marketing using content is search engine marketing. In the strict sense, content marketing is connected, customer-centric, systematic, strategic and ongoing.

Good content attracts, informs, persuades, serves and engages buyer personas, prospects, customers and other target audiences across the entire lifecycle and relationship with your organization. It responds to the questions and needs of prospective customer during and after their buyer journey in correlation with direct and indirect business goals.” 

Read the full article at: Fusion Marketing Experience

5) Altimeter Group

“Content Marketing is a term that refers to the creation and sharing of content for marketing purposes. In digital channels, it refers to content that resides on properties the brand or marketer owns (e.g. website) or largely controls from a content perspective (social media channels, syndication). Content Marketing differs from advertising in that, unlike advertising, a media buy is never part of the equation.” 

Read the full report at: Alimeter Group

My Take

I like to read many different points of view before making my own, which is why I wanted to share five different definitions. Here are my takeaways from our five leading experts. Content marketing is:

• The art of selling without selling.
• A marketing technique that allows you to inform potential customers before they acquire your products or services.
• A way of attracting potential buyers to your website (or other content assets) without using shameless advertising.
• Any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.

Share Your Thoughts

Are there other definitions you like that you want to share? Use the Comments area below to share your own definition.