Companies intent on scaling their content operations are always looking for ways to make every piece of content go further. Creative teams take available assets and remix them into text, audio, visual, and multimedia content that engages the maximum number of customers and prospects.
Some content types provide excellent ROI year in and year out. They aren’t subject to the whims of an algorithm or the limited reach of traditional marketing methods. These digital marketing assets keep prospects engaged and prepare them to become customers.
Today we’re sharing our top 15 content marketing pieces that you should use in every campaign and how a modular approach to content operations can help you scale those experiences. These cover a range of needs and learning styles, so you can reach customers using the method that works best for them.
Click the links to read about different types of content, or read on to see all 15.
Each of these content categories is excellent for building omnichannel customer experiences but that doesn’t mean every single asset has to be a net new build. Modular content is the process of creating, managing and distributing content in its smallest, reusable form to speed up time-to-market across brands, channels, regions and customer segments. To fully unlock their potential, savvy marketers are turning to modular content to drive the engaging experiences your customers have come to expect, which requires that your digital assets are easy to find, and totally reusable in any channel.
Using a strategic DAM, marketers enjoy the best of both worlds: features like modular content and tools like intelligent workflow automation to create and remix immersive content, and rich performance data to evaluate the ROI and the ROE (return on effort) for individual assets. This complete view of the content lifecycle enables faster, more targeted creation for future content.
The top 15 types of content to use for your next campaign
Every piece of content holds value. The following 15 content types?divided into four major categories?offer some of the best engagement and ROI for your effort:
Text
Articles: Blog articles and long-form content are valuable tools for buyer education. A well-written article delivers significant value, builds brand awareness, and increases visibility. If a high-quality piece of content is created and distributed wisely, you reach thousands of readers and guide them through the customer journey.
Utilizing blog articles as part of a content marketing strategy can yield high-impact results. In fact, 44% of buyers say they typically consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a vendor.
Newsletters: Newsletters allow marketers to stay in touch with their target audience and ensure potential customers see regular updates from their business. They also drive conversions and traffic back to the company’s webpage by promoting new products, offerings, and deals. As such, they have grown in popularity in recent years as an effective marketing strategy that delivers tangible outcomes.
The convenience of newsletter marketing makes it an attractive option for businesses seeking an efficient marketing approach. That’s why over 80% of marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters.
Testimonials: Social proof is an important part of cementing customer trust. Testimonials and case studies tell a story of how a customer used the product to achieve their desired results, giving potential buyers confidence that they, too, can benefit. These real-life success stories lend credibility to a brand, contributing to brand awareness and trust. These vital benefits make testimonials essential to converting leads to sales.
Audio
Audiobooks: Audio content can be a powerful addition to your digital marketing strategy. It offers an engaging way to showcase thought leadership and explore topics in depth. Audiobooks help brands establish an expert voice without sounding salesy.
It’s easier than ever to produce professional-sounding material without a large production budget. Distribution channels such as Audible make it possible to deliver your message to audiences specifically interested in your topic.
Podcasts: Podcasts are an increasingly popular way for businesses to reach new audiences. Developing a podcast allows you to create content that can be shared across social media platforms, build relationships with customers, and grow your business. It’s also becoming easier to expand a podcast’s reach thanks to social media and streaming platforms. Most importantly, a podcast offers an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with listeners.
Audio blog posts: This is a blog post recorded by a narrator. It can be used to offer more dynamic content than text-based blog posts. This allows you to engage with new audiences looking for a different way to experience your content.
Audio blogs have the added benefit of often being shared or embedded in social media platforms which can amplify your message. Different social media sites also offer tools that make it easy to create and share audio files. This way, you can make sure you’re simultaneously reaching different audiences with your content.
Visual
Videos: Video content is one of the most impactful forms of marketing. Videos like demos, FAQs, and video tutorials help businesses provide a better customer experience by offering support in a quick, efficient way.
Using videos helps a company demonstrate how their products work, cover relevant industry topics or share information on features and updates. What’s more, investing in video content allows companies to help their brand voice stand out from the competition and resonate with viewers continuously looking for diverse media experiences.
Email marketing: Email has been a digital marketing staple for years. It allows brands to craft branded content quickly and easily using templates tailor-made for their audience. By customizing the look, feel, and messaging of emails, companies ensure their consumers get a personalized experience every time they visit their inbox. Email offers an effective and efficient way to reach large numbers of people with digital content.
Social campaigns: Social campaigns are a powerful tool to increase engagement and website traffic. By facilitating communication on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other apps, marketers drive targeted website traffic back to a blog post, landing page, or offer page.
These tools provide the convenience of tracking key performance factors such as impressions, conversions, and more for gauging success in each online campaign. Ultimately, social campaigns empower organizations by creating a strong digital presence to promote their products and services to new and existing customers.
Infographics: Infographics are an invaluable customer education tool because they provide pertinent information in a way that is easy to digest and share. Instead of wading through a lengthy content piece, infographics present important content in simple, engaging, and easily understandable formats.
Multimedia
Sponsored content: Sponsored content creates engaging content such as blog posts, podcasts, and videos that are paid for by a company or organization for marketing purposes. It allows companies to target specific consumers through search engine algorithms and other search-related factors.
Sponsored content can allow organizations to build up a brand presence in search results with relevant news stories and information that customers can trust. By creating quality informational pieces distributed through high-value content placements, sponsored content allows businesses to stand out.
Webinars: Webinars are a great way to reach customers and move them down the funnel. Live streams and pre-recorded webinars provide valuable content and spark conversations with your audience. They also offer an opportunity to build relationships with viewers in real time.
Webinars most often have a live Q&A session where viewers can ask questions, which helps to engage customers quickly and directly. This makes webinars an ideal method of creating content that can help convert customers by tapping into the power of personal sales and providing answers on the spot for any customer inquiries or questions.
Curated content hubs: Curated content hubs are a collection of branded content that centers around one idea or topic. They’re an increasingly popular tool for marketers to reach and educate their audience. Utilizing a hub helps a company maintain visibility with current and future customers and deliver salient information in an organized way. Additionally, audiences have access to meaningful insights that grow deeper over time, creating stronger customer loyalty.
Website content: Website content is the cornerstone of a successful content marketing strategy. SEO plays an important role in ensuring that your content can be found by potential customers, while backlinks help create credibility and boost search engine rankings. Blog content is essential for SEO optimization, so developing interesting and engaging pieces which feature keywords relevant to your target market is key.
By delivering regular website content updates, SEO performance improves organically, increasing visibility and reach to capture and convert your ideal customers.
Facebook Ads: Ads on Facebook reach millions of interested users as they scroll down their newsfeeds every day. Facebook ads are highly customizable to target particular demographics, enabling more reliable customer acquisition and improved ROI. With affordable pricing and sophisticated insights into how campaigns are performing, Facebook’s advertising capability offers an attractive way to drive awareness that grows and converts your audience.
Scaling Production with Modular Content Building Blocks
According to a recent Gartner CMO Spend Survey, for a company with $1B in revenue, adopting a modular content strategy could mean $4M in savings each year. That more than justifies the investment in a content operations platform with digital asset management powering the content lifecycle.
Modular is a tiered approach to content development that means you don’t always have to start from the smallest piece of content and build from there. It instead means that content can be created from any tier: content block, content set, and content experience.
Taking this type of tiered, start-from-anywhere approach to content operations has many benefits to a modern marketing organization. It will help streamline content operations and get to market faster by democratizing content building, taking an interactive, non-sequential approach to the content lifecycle, and significantly shortening approval times.
To learn more about this approach, read more here.
How Aprimo helps marketers manage every content type
Making the most of your content library and available assets is easier with the right software. It helps content and creative teams build immersive, compliant campaigns through more streamlined content operations. Aprimo helps marketers search for, use, remix, and deliver high-quality content to their internal and external stakeholders. It offers marketing teams next-level features to help amplify your message:
- A searchable, dynamic repository for storing every type of content or asset, with metadata and rich asset profiles to maximize use
- A modular approach to building personalized customer experiences at scale
- Collaboration and communications features that keep every creative team member on the same page and keep projects moving forward
- Performance metrics that let you see the impact your content is making in the digital world, proving not just ROI but contextualizing ROE
To see how Aprimo helps fast-moving businesses make the most of their content offerings and assets, start with a free trial today.