Content marketing is the strategic marketing practice that focuses on developing and distributing relevant, valuable, and consistent content to capture the interest and acquire a well-defined targeted audience. Content marketing aims to create awareness amongst buyers, help them make an informed decision, and influence them to take buying action. Content marketing has now become one of the integral parts of digital marketing. In fact, 90% of B2B organizations are using some form of content marketing.

Content marketing strategy is about utilizing the people, process, and technology to generate desirable results. It is getting more and more advanced, enabling content strategy leaders with much scope to grow and excel. A well-defined content strategy generally includes audience research, keyword research, copywriting, editing, and content planning skills, management of multiple vendors, agencies, budgets, projects, and teams, robust data analysis and management skills, in-depth understanding of platforms and content formats, coordination and collaboration across the organization/departments, and measurement and tracking.

Content marketing offers many business benefits to businesses of any size. It helps brands in lead generation, creating brand awareness, expanding the customer base, building communities, driving traffic, improving search engine visibility, scaling into new markets, increasing audience engagement, enhancing brand value, and boosting overall business growth. Brands leverage content marketing in a variety of ways to empower consumers and evoke emotional connections with them.

Content marketing is simply irreplaceable. You cannot replace it with another form of marketing. It fits nicely for any business needs in any scenario or demography and can cater to any type of audience. Content marketing programs work best when they are executed in a collaborative capacity. For example, you can accelerate your other marketing efforts like social media marketing with content marketing. You can enhance your offline marketing impact by integrating it with a content marketing strategy. Moreover, it works well with native advertising, product marketing, traditional marketing, social media, SEO, inbound marketing, public relations, influencer marketing, and more.

Content marketing objective is to build trust and familiarity with a brand’s targeted audiences. In business to business (B2B) space, it becomes more specific because decisions are often taken on different criteria. As compared to B2C, the target audience of B2B products and services works in a narrowly defined market. Decision-makers of the B2B industry are generally autonomous in researching purchases. So, the main difference is the audience, and based on audience selection; the whole content marketing strategy is drafted. If the B2B content marketing strategy is executed well, it can generate exciting results in a short time and at a comparatively reduced cost.

Many digital marketing agencies offer content marketing services. Different agencies offer content marketing services in different ways. Some offer it as a standalone; some often pair with search engine marketing (SEO) or PR. If you cannot execute it in-house, hiring the best-suited online marketing agency is the right option. These agencies will also help you in how you can add value through content marketing (if you are not sure), and what type of content you should produce to engage your audience.

There is no standard rule in calculating the content marketing cost or budget. According to industry standards, the cost of content marketing can generally range from $3,000-$40,000 per month, depending on your business size, goals, and resources. You can start it at a small scale and then expand it slowly and steadily as your business demands. If your competitor is not doing content marketing or they are executing it well, then you have a clear advantage with the right strategy in place.