Unless you’ve been on a long hiatus from marketing, you’ll have heard a lot of content-related buzzwords being bandied around the office. A speedy bit of research on Google’s blog search reveals that your peers aren’t the only people wondering what to do next with content.

You’ll have also probably noticed some new job titles creeping into common currency too. Has your company hired a content strategist yet, perhaps a content engineer or even a destination content lead? Some would go as far as to say if you’re not content marketing…you’re not marketing.

What is content marketing?

According to Wikipedia, content marketing is “an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Essentially, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects but without directly pitching your product or service. Instead, you are offering information that will deliver benefits to your audience. This could be in the form of information or advice that aims to make the reader better informed, or adds value in some other way.

What is the value of content marketing?

At the essence of any content marketing strategy is the knowledge that those businesses that deliver consistent, long-term information to customers, clients and buyers will ultimately be rewarded with their business and loyalty. And they will. Why else would marketing departments at the world’s most powerful and immense corporations, including Coca-Cola, be investing in advanced content strategies?

To summarise the value of content marketing:

It’s sharing-friendly

The exponential rise in companies engaging in content marketing in 2012 could be attributed to its link building benefits. When content is so useful, so utterly unmissable that people have to hit the share button, this can greatly improve a brand’s visibility online.

It builds credibility

When you consistently demonstrate to your target audience that you possess the authoritative voice within your sector, they learn to trust your brand. Trust is one of the pivotal ingredients to marketing success. In fact, prioritising building credibility over making sales is one of the most effective ways to approach content marketing.

What’s the next big thing in content marketing?

Many companies have experienced success with the tried and trusted forms of content marketing, such as white papers, ebooks, blogs and newsletters.

Of late, we have noticed a significant rise in the usage of infographics. Maybe it’s something to do with time-strapped audiences hungry to digest complex information as quickly as possible.  Or maybe appealing visuals just make a welcome distraction from text-based content. Either way, infographics are becoming an important element of the content marketing plan and corporate blog strategy.

Brands are also starting to combine the popularity of infographics and video with animated infographics, as demonstrated in this effort by Crush for Hellman’s Canada .

Smart marketers are wising up to the power of personalisation. This is essentially what Amazon has been doing so well for years with personalised recommendations – it means taking the step beyond distributing uniform generic information to personalise the content individual visitors to your site see, thus making the experience more useful and targeted.

As consumers become better informed and want more power in the buying process, it make sense to hand them that power and let them feel more in control of the purchase process. Try tailoring your site content to individual users and watch your traffic and leads increase.

Is content marketing the only way to drive traffic?

There is, arguably, still a place for advertising. But it is becoming increasingly difficult for brands to get heard through the noise, particularly as consumers become increasingly wise to ways to bypass interruptive advertising.

And we would never dispute the value of relationships and reputation in the marketplace. There is undoubtedly still room for fantastic word of mouth to drive traffic and to generate significant amounts of quality links and leads.

But given that 80% of decision makers prefer to get company information via a series of informative articles versus an advert (Source: Roper Public Affairs), can you now afford not to connect with your target demographic in a more meaningful way through content?