Best practices of Content Marketing or Best Approaches to Content Marketing 2024

Best Approaches to Content Marketing 2024 / Best Practices of Content Marketing 2024

Introduction to Best Practic of Content Marketing 2024

Content marketing is all about planning, creating, distributing, and sharing sought-after and relevant content using appropriate digital channels at the right time for the target audience (Holliman & Rowley, 2014; Rita Lopes & Casais, 2022; Sharma, 2022; Terho, et al., 2022; Barbosa, et al., 2023). Content marketing is considered a strategy categorized under digital marketing (Du Plessis, 2022). The generated content can be in written, audio, or visual forms and from both academic and industry point of view, content marketing use digital media as the delivery channel (Beard, et al., 2021; Sharma, 2022).  

1. Purpose of Content Marketing and Best Practic of it

  1.1 The Role of Content marketing in Sales and Marketing

The purpose of content marketing is to build brand awareness by creating entertaining, inspiring, educational, and convincing content for the target audiences so that they can make rational and informed decisions to purchase products or services (Beard, et al., 2021). Content marketing eases the process of brand building, and social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are tools used in this procedure (Challa & Anute, 2021) and it becomes more vital when social media and content marketing can boost green marketing (Mozaffari, et al., 2023). Since content marketing influences consumer online buying behavior, it indirectly affects the branding process of a business by trust building, brand awareness, building relationships, brand loyalty, and brand value, in addition to brand equity (Du Plessis, 2022). To build and maintain customer loyalty the content should be presented in a way that customers make rational decisions rather than emotional decisions (Beard, et al., 2021). Branding indirectly leads to an increase in sales and eventually results in the success of businesses.

  1-2 The Role of Content Marketing in Customer Buying Decisions

In 2021, Alkharabsheh and Ho Zhen proved that content marketing affects customers’ buying decisions directly, heavily, and positively. Therefore, buying intention – which comes after brand awareness, discovery, and evaluation in the sales funnel – brings about purchase. After the buying process at the bottom of the sales funnel, it’s loyalty building turn and this is the time content marketing again has a key role in making the customers loyal and making them repeat their purchase (Lou & Xie, 2020).

2. Best Practice of Content Marketing in 2024
   

The best practice of content marketing aims to provide potential customers with informative and helpful content which leads to earning their confidence, and building relationships and trust so that indirectly and gradually they can sell products and services (Sharma, 2022).

  2-1 Inbound Marketing is prioritized over outbound marketing in 2024 Best Practices of Content Marketing 

Pull communications should be used rather than push communications (Terho, et al., 2022). Pull communication is used in inbound marketing or these two are interlinked or interchangeably used in content marketing. Digital marketing which is categorized under outbound marketing tries to convert the audiences to customers directly and it is upfront while content marketing is indirect and focuses on educating the audiences as potential customers to build trust. Outbound marketing is pushy and direct which is regarded as unscrupulous by audiences; therefore, businesses are advised to focus on inbound marketing (Halligan, 2021). Hard sell and soft sell are explained and defined on the Investopedia website in an article written by Kenton in 2023. Analyzing what authors articulated regarding inbound and outbound marketing and the role of content marketing one can find some of the tools, differences, effectiveness, advantages, and disadvantages of these two categories. Finding customers and making immediate sales is the goal of outbound marketing. Unwanted content, unwanted ads, push notifications, email marketing, SMS marketing, hard sell, cold calls, disruptive advertisements e.g. ads before or in the middle of YouTube video clips, pop-up ads, TV ads, and direct offers are tools of outbound marketing. Outbound marketing uses content that is unwanted, distractive, disruptive, and spammy, aiming to directly gain audiences’ attention to make immediate and emotional sales. Content marketing is regarded as inbound marketing using the pull communication method by adding value to what a potential customer is searching for on the Internet (Alkharabsheh & Ho Zhen, 2021; Beard, et al., 2021; Rita Lopes & Casais, 2022)

  2-2 Target Audience 

The goal of content marketing in the social media context is to gain the audience’s attention to certain topics for specific purposes in all these purposes directly or indirectly intended to make sales.  Needless to say, paperless communication and creating content on social media by users enhance green marketing (Mozaffari, et al., 2023). It is worth mentioning that, to reach and engage potential clients among the target audience of a business, content marketing has truly become a highly significant strategy for all types of businesses. There are a few outstanding points when it comes to best practice of content marketing, which has to be taken into consideration. Some of the best approaches are listed below, just to mention a few, as the Copyblogger website mentioned in 2023. To know the business target market and audience: demographic and psychographic factors in addition to needs, wants, and demands as the core concept of content marketing are vital when it comes to creating content for them.

  2-3 Customer-Centricity Is Everything in Best Practices of Content Marketing in 2024 

In 2022, Terho, et al. conducted outstanding qualitative research interviewing digital marketing consultants and experienced managers employing snowballing techniques to scale up the research in an exploratory way. They figured out that “customer-centricity” is the fundamental of content creation and content marketing. A year afterward, well-documented academic research emphasized positive customer experience and customer engagement which lead to great brand interaction or brand engagement (Fung So, et al. 2023). Content marketing is not a project, it is a process of creating and distributing video, audio, and written content over digital channels. This means that whatever created content is used in content marketing should aim to meet the client’s needs, wants, demands, interests, and preferences.

  2-4 Qualities of the Best Content in Content Marketing

    2-4-1 Localization and personalization, ethics and honesty 

Content marketing is the basis of digital marketing which shows the importance of it, however, marketers and researchers put emphasis on creating ethical personalized content (Barbosa, et al., 2023). Localization and personalization, ethics and honesty are highly significant when it comes to creating content to be used in content marketing as a marketing strategy for businesses (Esther Theressa Rumbay, et al., 2021).

    2-4-2 Create and Add Value for Internet Users

The good qualities of content used in content marketing are not new, as Holliman and Rowley in 2014, investigated the best practice of B2B content marketing from marketers’ point of view. The article emphasizes how valuable generating content is for B2B audiences and the highly significant role of the publishing approach (Rita Lopes & Casais, 2022). The digital content should create value for B2B audiences and take their information needs and buying intention cycle into consideration while creating content.

    2-4-3 Educational, Informative, Entertaining, Engaging, helpful, and Useful content

To come to the point, if marketers create value for the B2B audiences and help them with helpful, informative, and educational digital content using their digital channels, they can build long-term business relationships with them and turn them into loyal corporate clients. Created content in content marketing should be entertaining, engaging, educational, valuable, and relevant particularly personalized for the target audience (Rita Lopes & Casais, 2022). Giving useful information to the potential clients and customers who are the audience of a particular business. Publishing approach and valuable content creation for B2B Audiences as some of the best practices of content marketing (Rita Lopes & Casais, 2022). Helpful Content is the Key to implementing the best content marketing strategy (Holliman & Rowley, 2014). Therefore, making indirect and gentle sales overweight the push and, direct content marketing. The researchers illuminate the fact that digital marketers are and should be shifting from selling to clients to helping clients in their content creation strategy on digital channels.

3. Tools of best practice  

e-books, e-newsletters, blog posts, educational, entertaining, and informative podcasts, video clips, and written content. Creating content that creates value for the clients and helps them. Content marketing which is aiming to help clients by creating value which will result in trust building, brand awareness, and brand equity and these consequently lead to loyal customers.

3. Recommendations
   

Ethical, informative, entertaining, valuable, relevant, educational, engaging, high-quality, helpful, and useful are all qualities that have to be considered when creating content to be used in content marketing. These qualities of great content, have been repeatedly recommended by researchers in academic journal articles for a decade, from the year 2014 to 2023. Content marketing should be strategized and planned using the customer-centric method, to meet the customers’ needs, wants, demands, interests, and preferences. Using inbound marketing techniques in content marketing is definitely the correct way which is illuminated by Terho, et al. in 2022. The highly significant role of inbound marketing in content marketing and how interlinked these two are, is proved by a number of researchers (Terho, et al., 2022; Holliman & Rowley, 2014; Barbosa, et al., 2023).

4. Findings and Discussion

According to the literature review, the content that target audiences are looking for is what content marketing should be planned based on. The audiences’ desired content is what the content strategy should be developed based on. Therefore, content creation is all about what the potential customers need and want. Valuable generated content for the audience is what creates value for them.

Characteristics of the best approaches to Content Marketing in 2024

The best content for content marketing is informative, helpful, entertaining, educational, useful, wanted, and sought-after by the internet users and the business audiences are looking for. Thus, this is how the best practice of content marketing using the above-mentioned quality content can be implemented. Valuable content that is desirable for the audience attracts potential customers and it aims to help internet users instead of selling something to them in a direct and pushy way. The sales this way is indirect and it gives the audience time to think. Inbound marketing build trust and long-term relationship and the wanted content using tools creating or delivering them is the best a business can do to create value with the intention of brand awareness with the goal of customers making informed decision in the buying process. There is only soft sell in inbound marketing as this method doesn’t push the potential customers to make a prompt or emotional instant decision.

Content Marketing is bound to inbound marketing or they can be considered interlinked or even interchangeable (Holliman & Rowley, 2014). The aim of both content and inbound marketing is to attract potential customers and maintain existing customers by creating value for them or adding value to their purchased services. E-books, e-newsletters, blog posts, social media, and video marketing e.g. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube (aiming to attract followers and subscribers), and educational and informative podcasts, are the tools of content marketing using the forms of audio, video, visual, and written content.

References:

1. Alkharabsheh, O. H. M. & Ho Zhen, B., 2021. The Impact of Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Online Convenience on Consumer Buying Decision Process. l., Conference on Management, Business, Innovation, Education and Social Sciences (CoMBInES) , pp. 1823-1834.
2. Barbosa, B., Ramón Saura, J., Borovac Zekan, S. & Ribeiro-Soriano, D., 2023. Defining content marketing and its influence on online user behavior: a data-driven prescriptive analytics method. Annals of Operations Research , 1.
3. Beard, F., Petrotta, B. & Dischner, L., 2021. A history of content marketing. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 13(2), pp. 139-158.
4. Beard, F., Petrotta, B. & Dischner, L., 2021. A history of content marketing. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 13(2), p. 146.
5. Challa, A. & Anute, N., 2021. The Effectiveness of Instagram Content Marketing on Brand Building of a Company. Journal of Sales, Service and Marketing Research, 2(2), pp. 1-7.
6. copyblogger, 2023. The Complete Content Marketing Guide For 2023. [Online]
   Available at: https://copyblogger.com/content-marketing/
   [Accessed 15 11 2023].
7. Du Plessis, C., 2022. A Scoping Review of the Effect of Content Marketing on Online Consumer Behavior. Sage Journals, 1-15.
8. Esther Theressa Rumbay, W., Mangantar, M. & Wangke, S. J., 2021. Analysis of Digital Content Marketing Trend of Local Start-Up Business In North Sulawesi. Jurnal EMBA, 9(2), pp. 707-715.
9. Fung So, K. K., Li, J., He, Y. & King, C., 2023. The Role of Customer Engagement in Sustaining Subjective Well-being After a Travel Experience: Findings From a Three-Wave Study. Journal of Travel Research, Volume Forthcoming.
10. Halligan, B., 2021. Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing. [Online]
    Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/inbound-marketing-vs-outbound-marketing.aspx
    [Accessed 18 11 2023].
11. Holliman, G. & Rowley, J., 2014. Business to business digital content marketing: marketers’ perceptions of best practice. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 8(4), pp. 269-293.
12. Hsu, S.-F. & Liou, S., 2021. Artificial Intelligence Impact on Digital Content Marketing Research. Tainan, Taiwan, IEEE International Conference on Orange Technologies (ICOT) .
13. Kenton, W., 2023. What Is a Hard Sell? Definition Vs. Soft Sell and Characteristics. [Online]
    Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hard-sell.asp
    [Accessed 18 11 2023].
14. Lou, C. & Xie, Q., 2020. Something social, something entertaining? How digital content marketing augments consumer experience and brand loyalty. International Journal of Advertising, 40(3), pp. 1-23.
15. Mozaffari, S., Iranzade, S., Gharabeygloo, H. & Ranjpoor, R., 2023. The Conceptual Model for the Digital Content Marketing of Social Media to Boost Green Marketing. International Journal of Digital Content Management (IJDCM), 4(6), pp. 175-196.
16. Rita Lopes, A. & Casais, B., 2022. Digital Content Marketing: Conceptual Review and Recommendations for Practitioners. Academy of Strategic Management Journal , 21(2), pp. 1-17.
17. Saleem, M., Ahmad Khan, S. & Magd, H., 2022. Content Marketing Framework for Building Brand Image: A Case Study of Sohar International School, Oman. In: Building a Brand Image Through Electronic Customer Relationship Management. Oman: IGI Global , pp. 64-83.
18. Sharma, P., 2022. Content Marketing Trends and Effectiveness Strategies. International Peer Reviewed/Refereed Multidisciplinary Journal , 11(2), pp. 351-356.
19. Terho, H., Mero, J., Siutla, L. & Jaakkola, E., 2022. Digital content marketing in business markets: Activities, consequences, and contingencies along the customer journey. Industrial Marketing Management, Volume 105, pp. 294-310.
20. Yaghtin, S., Safarzadeh, H. & Karimi Zand, M., 2022. B2B digital content marketing in uncertain situations: a systematic review. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 37(9), pp. 1852-1866.

 

 Apendexes

Appendix A

Quality of Cited Articles

SJR: Scientific Journal Rankings

Q1

Barbosa, B., Ramón Saura, J., Borovac Zekan, S. & Ribeiro-Soriano, D., 2023. Defining content marketing and its influence on online user behavior: a data-driven prescriptive analytics method. Annals of Operations Research , p. 1.

Terho, H., Mero, J., Siutla, L. & Jaakkola, E., 2022. Digital content marketing in business markets: Activities, consequences, and contingencies along the customer journey. Industrial Marketing Management, Volume 105, pp. 294-310.

Fung So, K. K., Li, J., He, Y. & King, C., 2023. The Role of Customer Engagement in Sustaining Subjective Well-being After a Travel Experience: Findings From a Three-Wave Study. Journal of Travel Research, Forthcoming.

Holliman, G. & Rowley, J., 2014. Business to business digital content marketing: marketers’ perceptions of best practice. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 8(4), pp. 269-293.

ou, C. & Xie, Q., 2020. Something social, something entertaining? How digital content marketing augments consumer experience and brand loyalty. International Journal of Advertising, 40(3), pp. 1-23.

Q2

Du Plessis, C., 2022. A Scoping Review of the Effect of Content Marketing on Online Consumer Behavior. Sage Journals, pp. 1-15.

Q3

Beard, F., Petrotta, B. & Dischner, L., 2021. A history of content marketing. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 13(2), pp. 139-158.

Alkharabsheh, O. H. M. & Ho Zhen, B., 2021. The Impact of Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Online Convenience on Consumer Buying Decision Process. s.l., Conference on Management, Business, Innovation, Education and Social Sciences (CoMBInES) , pp. 1823-1834.

Appendix B

Understanding the audience and creating goals Personalize the to-be-generated content Auditing the existing content Provide value, optimize, and improve content Consistency is vital e-Business plan

Thematic Map of the best approaches to content marketing

 

Content Creation Written, Visual, Audio

Needs, Wants, Demands, Interests of the target audience

1-Market Research 2-Market Analysis 3- Competitor Analysis 4-keyword Research

Content Marketing

Outbound marketing (pushy & direct)

Inbound marketing (Indirect – no rush to sell)

Tools Unwanted Ads Pop-up ads Push notification cold email marketing Cold SMS Marketing Cold calls Disruptive Advertisements e.g. ads before or in the middle of YouTube video clips Disrupts the content TV Ads Direct Offers Hard Sell Cold Calls   e.g. one is forced to watch a video clip ad while watching his/her favorite educational video on YouTube. Or receiving unwanted or spammy like emails which is not even personelised with your name or your company/brand name.

Tools Blog Posts eBooks Social Media and Video marketing e.g. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube to attract followers and subscribers e-Newsletters Educational and informative Podcasts SEO – Search Engine Optimization SEM – Search Engine Marketing Influencer Marketing No hard sell Warm SMS & Email using e-customer clubs Warm Call White papers News Content Multilingual Content Content Licensing Digital magazine Infographic, pictures, Photos Smart Content Interactive Content

Helping is prioretised over selling. Creating informative, entertaining, valuable, relevant, engaging, high-quality, helpful and useful content. To attract potential customer, make them loyal by helping them. To create value for the audience and to maintain existing customers by adding value. Eventually making sales by brand awareness and making customers loyal.

Outboud marketing: Sales and money are prioritised over anything else. Find the customers and sell them directly, outbound marketing is direct, pushy, making emotional sales immediately. Digital Maketers spend 10% of their time and efforts on this

 

Best Practices of Content Marketing

Planning & Strategy

Digital Marketers spend 90% of the budged, time and energy on this part.

Tracking Performance Measure the Results ROI = Return on Investment

Optimise & Improve The Content

Target Audience