Content Marketing: Everything You Need To Know In One Comprehensive Knowledge Base

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing often provides helpful, educational, and entertaining information audiences seek out themselves. This differentiates content marketing quite significantly from traditional marketing practices such as advertising, which are disruptive (think of watching a TV show—you want to watch the show, not commercials).

What Is The Purpose Of Content Marketing?

From establishing your brand as an authority to driving sales, content marketing helps accomplish various goals.

Keep in mind though: all the benefits of content marketing are interlinked. A piece that educates, for example, establishes your expertise and can attract potential customers ­— even encourage sales or trials of your tool’s freemium version.

Let’s look at these benefits in detail.

What Are Examples Of Content Marketing?

1. John Deere Launches A Revolution With The Furrow

One of the most classic examples of content marketing, and one of the longest-running content marketing plays in history, is John Deere’s publication The Furrow.

First published in 1895 as “a Journal for the American Farmer,” The Furrow began as a printed newsletter sharing information about agriculture.

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Today, it exists as a digital magazine on the John Deere website and continues to provide all kinds of information that people who might buy John Deere equipment would want.

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How has The Furrow managed to remain successful for more than 100 years? There are a few simple principles of content marketing that can account for its enduring appeal:

• It focuses on educating over selling. No one wants to be sold before they’re ready to buy. But everyone wants information that helps them do their work and solve problems more easily. The Furrow focuses on making its audience smarter and more capable through useful and authoritative articles that establish trust.
• It’s written by subject matter experts. Sure, it’s a piece of marketing collateral. But it’s also written by people who know what they’re talking about. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t feel as authentic.
• Education + Expertise = Trust (And Sales). The Furrow wouldn’t continue to earn investment from John Deere unless they knew it helps drive sales. Which it does by building a relationship with its consumers. By creating a publication that readers make a habit of reading, they occupy a place in their lives that a 30-second advertisement never could.

2. Michelin Stars Helps Travelers Discovery High-Quality Restaurants

You’ve heard of Michelin Stars, right? They’re awarded to restaurants as a measure of quality, and they’re highly coveted because of how well they can burnish a dining establishment’s reputation.

Michelin Stars were created by the Michelin tire company as part of its Michelin Guide, which started as a guide to places to eat for people going on road trips. Before smartphones, Yelp, and Google Maps were a part of people’s lives, it was essential for cross-country travel. It still exists today as a website.

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It might not make sense for a tire company to create restaurant guides and rating metrics. But when we consider the fact that people traveling needed that information, and people were traveling in their own cars (which would eventually need tires), it makes perfect sense.

Offer value first. The rewards for your brand will come later.

3.Yeti Helps Consumers Embrace the Outdoors

Today, brands are more than just product sellers—they’re content creators and community builders. Whether B2B, B2C, or a mix of both, companies are realizing the power of engaging their audiences through valuable content.

Take a look at Yeti.

What could a company known for durable coolers and drinkware blog about? Plenty! Yeti’s content dives into outdoor adventure stories, survival tips, camping guides, and even recipes for outdoor cooking. Their blog and social media presence don’t just promote products; they create an experience that appeals to outdoor enthusiasts. It’s content that someone passionate about adventure and nature would enjoy, whether or not they’re in the market for a new cooler.

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What Are The Steps Of Content Marketing?

There’s a lot that goes into content marketing including strategizing, ideating, and more. Here’s a breakdown.

1. Begin With Strategy

Plan your work, then work your plan. This simple saying has long driven the work we do at CoSchedule, and the results speak for themselves.

This starts with strategy. At a high level, this entails figuring out the following:

• Who are you trying to reach? These are your potential customers.
• Why are you trying to reach them? You’d like them to buy from you.
• What would you like them to do? Again, you want to land more sales.

This is ultimately what you’re trying to accomplish, but it’s a bit … me-centered. In order to be successful, the focus has got to be put back on the customer. Let’s try rethinking these three bullets another way:

• Who are you trying to help? This is your potential audience.
• Why are you trying to help them? Because your products or services are the best solution to meet their needs and solve their problems.
• What would you like them to achieve? To become better versions of themselves.

This might sound like some feel-good mumbo jumbo, but if you’re actually committed to developing the kinds of long-term relationships that build long-term businesses, this is the way to think about it.

If you can nail the second set of bullets, you can achieve the first set of bullets with much less effort. It’s a virtuous circle that stems from what Brett McGrath at The Juice calls having an “abundant mindset”:

• Developing personas: Understand your audience by doing your research and developing basic character descriptions for who you’re attempting to attract.
• Crafting messaging: What core messages about your products or services does your content need to convey?
• Selecting channels: Which are best to reach your target audience?

2. Vet Ideas

Content marketing is driven by ideas. In order to maintain a consistent publishing pipeline that provides continuous value for your customers, you’ll need plenty of ideas.

• Content ideation: You’ll need to create a bank of ideas and learn how to prioritize them.
• Content mapping: Align content ideas with each stage of the funnel.
• Content calendar: Plan your publishing schedule on your content calendar.

Recommended Reading: Content Calendar Template

Recommended Reading: How To Create A Content Marketing Editorial Calendar In 2024 (Template)

3. Conduct Research

Content marketing relies on research:

• Industry research: Marketers aren’t always experts on the industries their companies operate in. At least not at first. You’ll need to do your homework.
• Product research: If you’re not a subject matter expert, you’ll need to learn who is within your organization.
• Competitive research: Follow your competition (but not too closely).
• Topical research: Develop an understanding of the topical areas your content needs to cover.
• Keyword research: Uncover what people are searching for and create content around their interests.

4. Create Content

Executing content marketing requires several different roles (not necessarily formal job titles, but specific groups of tasks and responsibilities).

• Strategists: Who determines what you’ll do and why?
• Writers: Who’s going to write all those words that serve your audience?
• Audio/Videographers: Who will interview and record subject matter experts?
• Editors: Who will make sure your content is crisp, clear, and clean?
• Designers: Who will make that content look awesome?
• Analysts: Who will determine whether your content is delivering ROI?
• Managers: Who’s got their hand on the wheel to steer the whole content ship?

5. Measure Results

Content marketing can be challenging to measure, particularly at the top of the funnel, where it’s difficult to connect activity that drives awareness directly to revenue.

But you do need to understand how to measure the impact of your work from the top of the funnel all the way down. This is essential for understanding how content marketing is actually helping to build your business.

Without numbers to show progress and prove results, it will be impossible to get the buy-in and investment you need to be successful in the long-term, too.

This will entail:

• Setting goals: What are the numbers you need to reach?
• Determining metrics and KPIs: Which numbers will you track to measure progress toward goals?
• Reporting: How will you share with your organization how your content marketing is performing and helping to drive growth?

What Does A Content Marketer Do? An Overview Of The Content Marketing Process

A content marketer is responsible for executing the content marketing process, which includes tasks like content planning, writing, editing, optimizing, and more.

Here’s a breakdown of the most in-demand skills for content marketers according to data gathered by Statista in cooperation with SEM Rush:

SourceLet’s dive into the steps of the content marketing process one by one below.

1. Strategize

All good content marketing starts with thorough planning that aims to create an audience-first strategy. The strategy, in turn, directs your efforts — increasing your odds of success.

2. Ideate

This includes coming up with topics to create content on for all your publishing channels. The audience research you do for creating your content strategy and the conversations you’ve had with your customer-facing teams will help spark content ideas.

Ideally, aim to pick out ideas that are relevant to your audience and those that offer business value to you (i.e. are relevant to your product or service offering or the space you are in).

3. Research

Content marketers do a lot of research — both before creating a strategy and after it, as they plan individual content topics. Research work includes:

Competitor research

Study your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to understand what opportunities are available to you. Questions to ask here include:

• What types of content are our competitors creating?
• How is the content doing for them?
• Which marketing channels or content distribution channels are they using?
• What is their content’s value proposition?
• What’s something you can do that they can’t?

See if you can identify the strategy they’re following. Some may be taking a community-first approach, for example. Others might be focused on producing a few content pieces but repurposing them for maximum exposure

Product research

This is specifically helpful for SaaS brands invested in creating valuable product-led content. For conducting this type of research regularly, sync with your product team to learn about the product.

Create a product cheat sheet so you use it to reference product features to mention in your content and to educate your team about the tool.

4. Write

Reference all the research work you’ve done to create content that speaks to your audience and shows your expertise.

If you’ve the budget, you can also outsource content writing. In that case, you’ll need to share your documented research work in a creative brief that captures your expectations from the piece.

5. Record

Recording podcasts and videos (educational tutorials, marketing videos, and webinars) takes extensive planning. Begin with deciding the content format, then research the topic, and write a script before you start recording.

6. Design

As with writing, content marketers with a budget can outsource design to an in-house or freelance illustrator or designer. Alternatively, you can also use branded templates for social media, email, and blog graphics to save time and maintain design consistency.

7. Edit

Content marketers need to edit all the content they produce — no matter its format (written, audio, or video) for:

• Clarity. Is everything that you’re saying easy to understand?
• Brevity. Are you using just enough words to get your point across?
• Accuracy. Are all the facts and research you’ve shared correct?
• Brand consistency. Is the content aligned with your business values? Are you using your brand voice?  Does the content follow your brand’s style guide?

8. Publish

Creating a publishing checklist ensures you don’t miss any of the small tasks that go into publishing content. It’s also effective to use a content calendar to stick with a publishing schedule and hold yourself accountable for publishing regularly.

9. Promote

Content distribution is as important as content creation as it gets your work in front of the people you’re targeting.

You can always bake distribution into production by identifying snippets to share on social and snippets to repurpose. Other ways to distribute the content you publish include:

• Share it on your social channels
• Write an email and share with your email list
• Create a short video
• Do a webinar
• Host a X Space
• Guest post on the topic

10. Measure

Measure your content’s performance against the metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ve set. For instance, study how well the content is ranking and what traffic and conversions it’s driving.

You can also use a website analytics tool like Hotjar (nofollow) to review the areas on your blog that get the most views and clicks and the areas where readers are bouncing off. You can set up feedback surveys with it as well to learn how helpful your content is directly from your readers. All this helps you create better content design and improve your conversion rate optimization.

11.  Report

Content marketers are also responsible for updating stakeholders about the content’s performance and the expected and achieved ROI. This includes communicating which content types and channels are driving the best results and future plans based on it.

12. Iterate

Regularly evaluate how well your content plan is doing. Based on what you learn, content marketers are responsible for deciding how to improve their content campaigns. Three questions that’ll guide you in this step are:

• What results is the content driving — are they the desired results or better?
• What content topics, formats, and types get the most engagement from your target audience?
• What actions do you plan to take moving forward — scrap an initiative after having given it ample time, invest more resources into it, or continue with the same plan of action?

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This piece was originally written by Ben Sailer and published December 1, 2021. It was updated October 11, 2022. It was most recently updated significantly in March 2025. Ben Sailer and Nathan Ellering  and Natalie Zuidema contributed to the writing of this piece.