What is Content Marketing and How Can It Help Me?

You might not have heard of content marketing before, but today content is everywhere and it’s being used in marketing like never before.  It comes at us in all directions in the form of movies, blogs, videos, social media marketing, visual content such as infographics, presentations, podcasting, research papers, lead magnets and more!

The reason?  Because content is also big business.

In 2022:

• Disney expects to pay £33 billion on content.
• Netflix is slowing down their content spending to a “mere” £17 billion this year.
• Amazon is estimated to be spending around £15 billion this year on content.  The new Lord of the Rings series is reported to be costing them around $465million just on the first series alone.

Of course, each of these shows will be heavily marketed across their own streaming platforms.  They will also be marketed across their digital marketing platforms too such as on YouTube, via email marketing, their websites, targeted advertising and social media networks.

Just watch how Disney recently promoted Deadpool 3 and the fact that Hugh Jackman is returning as Wolverine – it’s already had millions of views, went viral and they have created an insane amount of anticipation in about 1 minute 20 seconds for their target audience:

Within this article, there are also loads of tactics you can use to increase interest, curiosity and intrigue about your business, products and services too!  You don’t need a huge budget to compete online, just a bit of patience and you can outwit your competition.

As you’ll find out, content is only set to increase.  Did you know, that digital marketers now recommend that content marketing is set to 20%-30% of your overall marketing budget and that in reality, it should increase slightly year on year?  This is because we all consume content more than ever across so many different devices and from anywhere we like.  Marketers’ new job role is to keep us interested in them at all times.  To keep them top of mind through the noise.

If any of this scares you don’t worry!  You don’t have to be a high-flying corporate business to make the most of your content marketing efforts.  Some of these companies actually get this form of marketing terribly wrong, you just need to be aware of how it can work for you so you get the most out of each piece of content you write, post and publish.  This is essential today for any effective digital marketing strategy to be successful.

Key Insights and Content Marketing Trends

Here are some key insights you might not be aware of:

• 82% of companies actively use content marketing in some capacity even if they don’t realise it.
• 78% of consumers are more willing to buy from a brand and 77% will choose a brand over a competitor after having a positive experience with them on social media.
• According to 29% of marketers, content marketing has been extremely or very effective for their company during the past 12 months (between July 2020 and July 2021), with 74% of the marketers surveyed stating the value offered by their content as the main contributing element.
• According to a report by Social Films, ‘6 out of 10 people prefer watching online videos to television’ in the UK.
• 35% of content marketers would create more video marketing content if they had more resources available.
• 56% of marketers say that targeted content is an essential strategic element of a successful lead nurturing program.
• 30% of companies say their content strategy is based on a mix of business goals, competitor analysis, audience needs, digital data and AI insights.
• Companies that have a blog on their website will achieve 67% more leads online than other businesses.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is about getting the attention of your target audience through a content strategy and providing them with a high-level value of content, consistently, but without directly promoting the brand.  To keep track, your content can also be aligned with what is known as a content marketing campaign.

So in other words, traditional marketing promotes your brand and services and shouts all about you, but with content marketing, you are helping people understand your business and services and how you can solve problems for them.

Does this sound completely counterintuitive?

Let’s say you want to buy a new TV. Unless you work for Samsung, you’re going to want to get the best TV you can afford and within your budget, right? So like most people, you might go to Google and start doing some “research” about the best TVs out there and all their given features and at what price they come in.

All of a sudden you’re no longer looking at how the TV looks but are researching QLED vs OLED, HD vs 4K, a refresh of 60 Hz vs 120Hz, and matt display to absorb glare vs standard screens.

You’re now starting to think about increasing your budget because you realise the differences and value these features and new technology add and the benefits they could bring you.

You now want to be the most informed.

And as you’ve been researching, you’ve been coming across content.

Content that’s created to target people who right now are just ….. like …. you.

Someone, who is looking for a new TV and just doesn’t know where to start.

Now here’s where the long-term strategy works for “the brand” and for any business.

Let’s say you are now faced with a choice between three different TVs but they’re both of the same specifications. One is £1200, another is £999 and one seems a ridiculous steal and too good to be true at £849.

Which one do you choose?

It’s more than likely you will choose the one that probably feels like you are getting the best quality and one that covers your fears if anything were to go wrong. In essence, the brand and business which you trust with your money. All of this “feeling” will have come from past experiences, content such as adverts and brand loyalty.

Who Uses Content Marketing?

This form of marketing is used all over, by big companies, medium and small. Here are some companies you might recognise that use content marketing:

• Microsoft
• Apple
• Netflix
• Disney
• Amazon
• John Lewis
• Compare the Market (Compare the Meerkat)
• Rolex
• CocaCola
• Aldi
• Tescos
• Redbull
• Lucozade
• Spotify
• Content Marketing Institute
• Volvo
• Starbucks
• HelpScout
• BuzzSumo
• Canva
• Dyson
• Dove
• McDonald’s
• IKEA

Any many, many others. Why do they do it? Because it works.

Great Examples of Content Marketing

Below is a small collection of real-world marketing examples to show you how different content types are being used today:

Apple

This example shows how their product is being used in the direst of circumstances. It highlights the power of Apple’s product and technology directly connected to a situation many could potentially find themselves in even though it’s highly unlikely to ever happen. But what if it did….it captures your attention brilliantly.  It’s what is known as content shock.

Lucozade

The story behind Anthony Joshua and how boxing helped turn his life around. For that you need energy and it seems all you need is Lucozade to do just that.

CocaCola

This content even has its own famous jingle, “Holidays Are Coming”. Each year your Christmas is connected to Coke. Even the colour of Santa Claus’ red clothing is a direct result of CocaCola. Once you see this appearing on the TV or in online adverts, you know Christmas is only just around the corner.  You might just buy a Coke during this time too as it’s back on your mind too. There are even tours of the CocaCola lorry across the country at Christmas now as well. Genius!

John Lewis

This has become such a thing that everyone talks about the John Lewis Christmas advert. This is a brilliant strategy from John Lewis as Christmas and John Lewis become linked.

Canva Design School and Learning Centre

Canva does a great job at creating a learning centre to show its customers how to use its product and get the most from it. The key part, how simple everything is. You can see it in action here.

HelpScout

HelpScout provides easy-to-use customer support software to keep teams and customers connected. They provide lots of content on how to best serve your customers. Check out their blog for ideas here.

Netflix

Netflix hits all areas of digital including social media, SEO and email marketing. They used Twitter extensively to build their brand out from simply renting DVDs into the streaming behemoth they are today. Of course, they have since branched out, but it was content that helped them get there. Above is an example of how they continue to use it today.

Benefits of Content Marketing

One of the best things about content marketing is that almost anyone can do it, no matter how large or small your organisation is. You can quickly set up a marketing channel and start posting away gaining followers and awareness within a matter of minutes.

There is obviously more to it than this, but if you do it right, you will reap the following benefits such as:

Higher Quality Sales Lead Generation

When people are looking for a product or service they will do their research (just like the TV example above), and more than likely use a search engine to find out more. This means if they land on your website they already have an interest in something you have to offer which means you will create a higher and better quality of lead online.

By creating valuable content (not doing so is one of the biggest website mistakes you can make today) you will hopefully capture people’s interest and in turn, they should start making increased enquiries about your business or service. You can of course repurpose your content across all channels. So a blog post may get reused on a social media post in a shorter format. A video may be made to create a wider context or you might simple just create a leaflet based on a blog. Whatever you do, content can be a key driver in creating interest, and intrigue and supporting them on their customer journey with you and potential buying cycle.

Improve Your Website’s Organic Search Engine Optimisation

Content is at the core of search engine optimisation (SEO) and organic traffic to your website. Even one of the biggest recent updates from Google has been coined the “Helpful Content Update” where people are now encouraged to create user-first content first, not content specifically just for search engine rankings.

The more specific, consistent and targeted your content is for your keywords, the higher you will rank up the Google search engine, and the better your business will perform online. Content helps you get there and means you don’t have to keep paying Pay Per Click fees and in the process, your business will become more visible to all.

Increased Brand Awareness

If you wish to raise the profile of your brand, then you can do so with storytelling, high standards and content consistency. Customers will then begin to rate you based on your high-quality content and associate this with your business or service. After all, if you know what you’re doing and you’re great at it, why would people not want to know more about you and from you?

By creating high-quality content (even if it doesn’t rank highly in a search engine), you are communicating the standards for your business and how you can help your customers further.

Better Conversations with Clients and Employees

Content can be used to get attention, convey an emotion or make a point. It’s a way for your to better relate with your target audience. Imagine going to a meeting and having nothing to talk about? By keeping on top of content in your industry, helping others where you can and sharing your thoughts, you are communicating at a better level and keeping everyone on the same page.

The funny thing about content marketing is that even if you do a bad job, it can still get people talking about you, which is the whole point of marketing right? Heineken got it all “wrong” with this advert, but it got people talking about them all the same about wider issue:

Improved Customer Support

Writing great support content about your product or services will also help your SEO (unless it’s behind a secure login) and also enable customers to better support themselves too. This could also reduce support requests and speed up the response times of your support team.

No longer will a customer have to wait for a callback or email, but find their answer from your content such as a user guide, help desk or whitepaper.

You Will Build Trust

The best transactions in business happen when there is complete trust that payment will be made. If you think about it, it’s confidence and trust which drives capitalism (but that’s for another day). Your content can help build trust with your customers and prospects because after all, if you’re helping, supporting and promoting assets which help them support them, then you will be trusted more.

The more a customer knows about you, where they are buying it from, and whether you can deliver on your services will build greater trust and understanding. Even simply showing people how you work and why you do things the way you do, or why there is a delay, can all go far in building a relationship with customers.

All businesses are made up of people, we are not run by robots just yet despite the hype. Life happens and we’re only human after all.

Types of Content Marketing Channels You Can Use

You can use content marketing across a whole host of digital platforms and offline material.

These include the following content channels:

• Your Blog: You can use this for press releases, customer stories, support, advice and more all to support your search engine optimisation for your website.
• Video: You can create adverts, commercials, how-to videos, story videos and more to support your video marketing efforts.
• Email Marketing: To support your content distribution you can use and repurpose your website content, videos and more direct to your customer’s inboxes. Email marketing still remains the most potent digital marketing channel offering the best ROI when it’s done right.  Your email list is highly valuable.
• Ebooks and White Papers: By releasing helpful guides and insights you can help inform visitors to your business and potentially use this for capturing email addresses to keep in touch. You can also keep the documents up to date and repurpose them in the future too.
• Podcasting: Podcasting is on the rise. A microphone, some conversation and you’re away. By providing helpful content in an audio format you are offering a different way for people to engage with you. In providing a voice, they also get to hear you.
• Presentations and Webinars: You can provide insights via online presentations and webinars. This can be done over video conferencing such as via Zoom, or you can automate the process with a short online video and interactive slides.
• Quizzes, Online Games and Offers: You can use online quizzes to see how much your customers and prospects know about a subject. This can be made fun or serious but it’s a great way to create engaging content, especially with a little competition on top too. By using content you can also drive desire for any offers you offer online too – think how much the advertising now goes up around Black Friday deals.
• Online Courses: You can use your content in the form of an online course too. Perhaps you want to educate customers on how to become more productive, or how to fix an issue. Why not devise a quick short, personalised course to walk them through the steps at their own time and pace?
• Social Media Marketing: Of course, all your content can be posted across all your social media platforms to support distribution and your SEO efforts. This is a great way to build conversations with people interested in your businesses and organisation and what you have to offer.
• Checklists: These work great as a lead magnet. Checklists work as prompts to make sure nothing gets missed. If you can provide a checklist for a problem or for people to remain consistent it can go a great way in helping people get things done.
• Infographics: This form of content sharing is on the rise, especially across social media. Simply create a helpful graphic on how to achieve something, or fill it with really helpful information. People can reference it and store it and keep it for when they need it. It can also be a great attention grabber too!
• Offline Print: Of course, your content doesn’t have to just be digital. It could also be offline too in the form of brochures, leaflets and posters. Try to keep this content as evergreen as possible and you can pass across content which is tangible. Sometimes things look better in print.

If all of this seems overwhelming, the best place to start is your blog. If you use your website blog as your anchor, you can then use the content from it in other forms of content that you promote. Essentially, you do the work once with the blog, then reap the benefits long-term time after time. Doing one channel really well is better than doing 5 channels poorly.

How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy That Works Day in and Day Out

Before you can start your content creation, you need to devise a strategy. This means everything then has a purpose so that your content remains on point with your business and overall goals online and offline.

It’s best to bring all the departments together singing from the same hymn sheet.

Start with Your Why

Ask yourself the question of why. Ask yourself why are you helping someone. Why is this piece of content relevant? Why do we need to promote this? Why should people want to hear from us? Why is this helpful?

For example, are you looking to increase your audience? Are you looking to increase your email marketing list? Are you trying to get someone to buy? Are you trying to reduce client support calls?

Once you put your content in context it helps frame and focuses your end result or goal.

For example, did you know it takes 7 pieces of content online from you now on average before someone will engage with you? This can help frame how you wish to use your content marketing channels best too.

Once you have defined your goals, you can begin building up a content library of what you have now, what you need to create and where you want each piece to get you.  This can also include content mapping across your customer’s buying journey.

You can also research your current website traffic rates and how you are performing in Google via Google Analytics and the Google Search Console which are helpful user-friendly tools.

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Once you know why you are creating content and what content works best for you, you need to create a plan. This could be in the form of a content calendar, a long list of topics, segmented content per area of business or simply a mindmap (or content map) of what you have so far and the gaps you need to fill.

Your plan should include:

• Keyword research (including any long-tail keywords search volumes and competitiveness).
• Google trend data.
• Curated industry content.
• Key events throughout the year.
• Key business dates and deliverables.
• Media and news related to you.

To get the maximum benefit, your content plan should be supplemented by what people are searching for and trends online through keyword research.

This doesn’t mean capturing the latest viral trend, but the trends over time relating to potential keywords for your content. There’s no point in creating content that no one is looking for (unless it’s to educate existing clients therefore you can email them a direct link). You also want to make sure you remain current and don’t post anything incentive either or at the wrong time.

Next, you need to assign the content to someone who will create it by a set date and time to enable you to promote it across your channels.  There’s no point posting about Halloween at Christmas, it will be too late to pick up on the online trend and unless you’re having a laugh, no one will care by then either (unless you’re having a really, really scary Christmas!).

Deliver Your Content Plan and Keep Improving

The key part of effective content marketing is to deliver on your plan. Get everyone engaged. If you set dates and times, make sure you meet them. If you keep your content as evergreen as possible, it also means that you can reuse your content across all your channels and throughout the year.

You may find that events happen each year for example. In this case, create one core article on it with the related date and keep improving on this article year after year. That way, the content doesn’t disappear from Google and only keeps climbing (as long as you keep it clean and don’t break Google’s rules). It also means you do the work once and then adapts to keep it current. Many do a lot of work for an event and then never reuse it again. That’s a lot of wasted effort and can create more work when it doesn’t need to.

Don’t forget to review your content marketing strategy and plans. Take note of how people are engaging in your platforms. Are you seeing greater engagement on Facebook or Twitter? Are your product photos performing better on Instagram or as snackable videos on TikTok? Is your email marketing design still working and creating clicks through to your site?

Make sure you are getting as much out of each channel as possible and re-evaluate and tweak things to increase performance.

What Successful Content Marketing Looks Like

It can be difficult to define whether your content marketing is working. Some, want to see immediate results, but content marketing can take time to bed in. It might be working better than you think and may in fact be the catalyst to conversations now happening which are increasing brand awareness and ultimately long-term sales.

Here are some pointers as to whether your content marketing is working:

• Your audience is engaging with your content more through likes and shares and is communicating with you. You might for example have increased downloads for an eBook or white paper.
• Products are being purchased online as a direct result of the online content on your website.
• Your website traffic is up, or people are spending longer on your site. Sometimes hits can be deceptive as people might be landing but leaving straight away.  You want to keep the real people not the bots.
• Your bounce rate on your website is decreasing meaning your site is more engaging to your visitors.
• Your keywords are increasing and your website is climbing the rankings or is now at the top.
• People continue to read your email marketing newsletters and dip back into old editions too.
• Leads have increased.
• You are getting more repeat sales.
• You’re receiving more correspondence through your website, social channels, referral traffic or phone network.
• People are talking about you more and word of mouth has increased.
• People know more about you and you are providing a consistent brand image across all your channels.
• Registrations are up in your community, on marketing lists or in your membership areas.
• You get fewer support calls or tickets than usual.
• You have a higher conversion rate from purchases or feeding through to contact you.
• You are creating new content and improving on existing content and sharing curated content – effectively working smarter not harder.
• Your entire organisation is kept better informed overall.
• Your key metrics are all up along with your KPI’s.
• Sales are up.

As you can see, there’s not one clear performance metric that dictates whether it’s working or not but a combination of key areas. The good thing is that your content can always be improved so you can adapt as the market changes. It can work to your advantage in so many ways.

If you’re not seeing any increase in any of the items listed above, then you simply go back to the content you have created and ask the question why each content exists, tweak your strategy and set new goals.  Content marketing success comes from continuous improvements over time and an understanding of what works and what doesn’t.  You can sometimes learn a lot more from something that doesn’t work than if you hit the jackpot everytime.

Content Marketing Tactics Big Businesses Use That You Can Too

So now you know a little more about content marketing and what it can do for you. What are the sort of tactics you can implement in your organisation?

Break Your Audience into Segments

To ensure you create relevant content for your target audience, you can look to segment your audience and provide information to them based on their interest, support requirements, interests, locations and more. This helps keep the information more relevant and of use.  You can also ask people what they would like to know more about and involve them right from the start of their buying process.

Provide Valuable Facts, Trends and Data

Keep your audiences up to date with the latest trends and data. By spotting trends you will be able to better inform your audience about things they may not know. This means you can assist them with any decisions they need to make as a result.

Discover What People Want to Know

Depending on your goals, you need to know what people want to know. Even if you don’t write the content yourself and curate it, by providing the information people need from your organisation, you can better serve them. You can find this from keyword research, Google trends and more.  This can help you develop consistent content.

You might love space, but your clients all love the sea, therefore information about Space X is of little use or need to them.

Send a Frequent Email Newsletter

You’ve worked hard at creating some interesting information, so remember to send it to your target audience. Don’t just let it stand still. Keep it moving and in the hands of as many people as are interested. You could even use it as a weekly check-in with a link directly to your blog post. You will be helping somebody as long as you have done your research of course.

Keep Your Compelling Content Fresh, Relevant and Exciting

If you need some content ideas, then audiences are generally looking for:

• Something that makes them laugh.
• Some form of entertainment.
• Something which inspires them.
• Something that makes them that little bit more educated.

If you stick to these, then you are on to a winner.

Build Dedicated Landing Pages on Your Website

By doing a keyword lookup, you can find out what people are searching for online. Once you have decided on the keywords you wish to rank for, you then create a landing page for each key piece of information.

For example, let’s say you provide a bed and breakfast in the town of Dartmouth in the UK.

A quick keyword lookup shows that people are searching for “bed and breakfast dartmouth“.

Therefore, on your website, you will need to make sure you have a /bed-breakfast-dartmouth (it’s up to you if you wish to keep the and) in your website URL which will act as your landing page. You then need to fully optimise this page to increase your SEO ranking and conversion rate so that they book your property over others in the area.

See What Competitors Are Up To

If you’re really stuck for ideas, check out what your competitors are up to. They will give you some ideas and telltale signs by providing you insights into what’s keeping people interested in them.

Curate Your Content from Other Sources

If your goal is to keep your customers the best informed, then this doesn’t mean you have to do all the hard work yourselves. As long as you credit the author, you can promote other people’s content such as news stories, tips and tricks. You’re still then providing fresh content and keeping people in the loop.

Keep Testing and Improving Don’t Give Up

This form of marketing is a long-term goal. You won’t see a result overnight (or at least it’s unlikely – you might via social). You have to build what I like to call the noise. The key then is to stand out from the noise so you rise above.

The good news is that everyone can create content and target the interests of their customers, clients and even employees. When you find something that works, stick at it. If something’s not quite working, you simply improve it or remove it. Your data will lead the way especially given the amount of data available in Google Analytics about how people use your website and interact with your content.

Here at OJE Technology we even have content trackers which can instantly report on how your content pieces are performing, whether they are being recirculated and which pieces are ranking – all in real-time.  All of this provides key metrics on content strategy so that our clients are better informed than others and respond and react accordingly.

Common Content Marketing Concerns and Mistakes

There are many that think content marketing doesn’t work and that it’s a waste of time. Okay, maybe, but if the content didn’t work, then none of us would read the news or watch TV. Content works. Figuring out the right content at the right time takes practice and maybe some help too.

What Content Marketing Is NOT

It’s not all just about the content.

It’s about the right content.

Sure, people can get it wrong, but as we mentioned above if you provide sailing boats, don’t go informing people about the latest Saturn V rocket launching at Cape Canaveral. It just won’t work as it’s not the target market. You want to build your audience and help them with their business or problems and find the right fit for them. It’s strategic content to provide solutions to problems your readers need.

Take this very blog content you’re reading for example.

Talking to clients I realised some had never heard of content marketing and yet very quickly I showed them how content marketing would be perfect for them (which quickly worked by the way) and I decided the fastest way to help others was to inform others about what content marketing can do for them and how it’s the growing trend in business marketing today.

It All Takes Too Long

Yes, initially it can take some time. But you have to start somewhere rather than never. If you already have in place some forms of marketing channels such as email marketing, then you can quickly reach your clients and then aim to build the list up. If you have 1 million social media followers and you post an offer sure you might get a 10% take-up. If you have some articles on a blog, but they’re not optimised, you can at least begin to optimise them better and take it from there. Most businesses will have some form of marketing channels, but very few will have optimised them to work better for them across the business.

However, if you literally have nothing then you need to get going today. You can literally begin by starting your research and strategy in under an hour and in 3-6 months you will be seriously glad you did. It’s a snowball effect. Once the snowball is rolling it doesn’t stop until you do. You will experience marginal gains week in week out, month in and month out. You’ll also learn lots more about your industry and how to better serve your customers too.

It All Costs Too Much in Time and Money

But then so does that £1000 advert you took out in the Times Newspaper which was never been seen again.

With the right strategy in place, your content marketing will rocket you from ground zero to Mars. It all depends on your budget and resources. Someone like Disney for example as you now know spends billions on content and marketing that content. Small businesses however can make seriously large gains by spending time optimising their website for billions less and generating targeted leads around common interests. It’s all a matter of perspective.  The best thing too is that content allows you to compete equally online!  If you’re not making the most of your content, then your competitors will be.

The more time you put in, the more you will get out of it. Most give up, which is where your competitors then gain the advantage.

If you keep your content “evergreen” and not time linked through relevance, you can keep using it again and again which means it’s an asset working for you at least from an SEO perspective to grow your organic traffic.

Why Do I Need To Do It?

If you have a website, then content needs to be discussed. Unless you don’t want anyone to visit your website. This should all come from your chief marketing officer. Anyone in marketing these days knows the importance of content around your product and services. If they’re not optimising that content and using it to the best of their advantage, then you are missing out on a huge chunk of potential customers.

Your content needs to trickle all the way down from the most interested right now to those who might be interested one day. It doesn’t happen overnight but everyone needs to be made aware of how important the information you provide is. Believe me, your competitors already are.

What If I Get It Wrong?

It’s hard to get it wrong but mistakes do happen. The recent passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth brought out some of the worst content marketing seen in recent years. They got their tone wrong and it was quite frankly in places disrespectful. Sometimes it’s just better to say nothing.

That said, the biggest mistake people and companies make with their content is to just promote themselves and not provide anything of value. Each platform you use is home to a community of different individuals. So adverts for example are not content marketing they are just adverts … you need to do things differently across all channels and provide content that people would like to share with others.

When creating content, think to yourself “how does this help my audience?”. Would I want to share my content with others?

If you do that, you can’t go wrong. The most impressive brands like Disney, Amazon and Apple, know that they don’t need to talk about themselves but about what their products do for their customers and how they’re helping make the world a better place.

How Will Content Help Me Tomorrow? Just Look At Disney

Every business needs to be planning for its future. According to current trends, we are using the Internet more than ever, consuming video and picture content more than ever and even children have already begun resorting to emojis in conversation and being captivated by fun and entertaining content at scale.

As people begin to use their devices in more and more interactive ways, your content becomes ever more important.

The future of content marketing is more human interaction. You’ll see companies using their employees to contact customers via social networks. You will see brands hiring comedians. More and more brand marketers will be creating their own videos and even sponsored videos from entertainment companies.

If you’re not convinced then take a look at the Walt Disney Company.

They have built an entire corporation around content and timeless stories. From Mickey Mouse to Snowhite, the Lion King, Frozen, The Pirates of the Caribbean and Pinocchio just to name a few. From this are merchandise, rides, books, streaming services, hotels, cruise ships and even apps and VR experiences.  It didn’t stop there, their acquisition of Lucas Films, Marvel and 20th Century Fox meant an even bigger content catalogue leading to big hits such as the Mandalorian and the Avengers franchise (just to name a few).

Recent movie remakes have broken previous box office records building further on their history of content, yet they’re the same stories, just retold. It’s all repurposed at a massive scale. Their content is their biggest asset and it can be yours too.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has shown that no matter how big or large your business or organisation is that you can use content to your advantage.

Some of the key takeaways are:

• Content can be your biggest asset.
• Build your content strategy to reap rewards and stick to it.
• Be consistent with your content creation.
• Content enables you to compete equally with everyone online no matter how large or small.
• Keep your content relevant to your target audience and do your keyword research.
• Content marketing can bring rewards instantly and in the long term depending on the channel.
• Keep testing, improving and optimising your content.
• If you’re not sure where to start, use your blog as your anchor and grow from there.
• Get everyone involved with your content ideas and keep it fun.