What is Content Marketing?

Using high-quality, relevant content to attract customers is the essence of content marketing. Social media posts, emails, and blog posts are all examples of this useful field. In this overview, you'll learn more about what content marketing is, what it can do, who uses it, and how to learn it to determine how to add this skill to your professional toolbox.

What Can You Do with Content Marketing?

Content marketing helps you connect with your audience, improve brand loyalty, generate leads, and increase sales. Unlike traditional marketing, which makes a direct pitch for products, content marketing is based on storytelling and rarely mentions a brand or sales. The content appeals to readers by helping them with a problem or issue. 

The first step in content marketing is to determine your audience and what they care about using Google Analytics and social media analytics tools. Once you know your audience’s interests, you can begin to draft content that addresses those needs. This helps build a relationship with your readers, which is crucial to improving brand loyalty. 

Although content rarely mentions the brand or product, relevant content tells a story that consumers relate to best. It gives them a sense of belonging to a group. Content marketing creates more customers than traditional marketing, and these customers are also more loyal. They feel connected to the company or brand and are more likely to buy again. This connection develops through storytelling that resonates with followers.

Content marketing also generates more leads than traditional marketing. Consumers prefer to learn about companies and products through articles and blog posts rather than advertising. Finally, content marketing costs less than traditional marketing and leads to higher conversion rates.

How Do You Get Started with Content Marketing and How Much Does it Cost?

It is easy to get started with content marketing, and you can do it for free. Content Marketers use tools like Google analytics to figure out their target audience. The cost of creating content depends upon the type. Internet research and writing don't cost anything, but if you are taking photographs or making videos, there may be some costs for equipment. Some content marketing tools like SEMRush have a price, and others have a free version or a free trial period. You can find free email service providers to promote content via email. Also, promoting content on social media does not cost anything. You can build an organic following on social media for free.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) tracks how content performs regarding the number of website visitors, leads, and conversions. GA produces many different reports and can help identify issues with web pages so you can change content to improve performance and sales. You don’t have to pay to use Google Analytics, but learning can be challenging.

HootSuite

HootSuite lets you plan and schedule content on social media. You can monitor and manage audience engagement, promote your organic content, manage paid ads, and create performance reports across all your social media channels. HootSuite offers a 30-day free trial. After that, it costs $49 a month for the professional level, $129 for the team package, and $739 per month for a business account.

Platform-Specific Tools

Each social media platform has its own analytics tools. Twitter and TikTok each offer free analytics tools. Meta Analytics covers Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube data can be collected through Google Analytics. It is free to post on social media, but you can buy ads on all of the platforms.

SEMRush

SEO is an essential part of content marketing, andSEMRush is a popular tool to help you with keyword research and competitor analysis. SEMRush can help you drive organic traffic to your website. After a one-week free trial, SEMRush offers three levels: Pro for $119.95 monthly, Guru at $229.95 monthly, and Business for $449.95 monthly.

Moz

Moz does similar things to SEMRush but offers a less powerful free version and a pro version. You get a 30-day free trial, and then you can purchase Moz at four different levels: Standard for $99/month, Medium for $179/month, Large for $299/month, and Premium for $599/month. There is a 20 percent discount if you pay for a year upfront.

What Are the Benefits of Learning Content Marketing?

If you have a small business, learning content marketing can help you build a relationship with your customers, leading to brand loyalty and higher sales. This depends upon creating and promoting high-quality content your audience can relate to and get something from. This is because a correctly targeted audience will generate more sales than a broader, more general audience for a much lower cost. Broadcast and print advertising are much more expensive than pay-per-click ads, and organic or earned advertising through content marketing is essentially free.

You can also learn content marketing to change to a new career. If you have strong communication and writing skills, good organization abilities, an understanding of meeting deadlines, and the talent to create content of different types that maintains a brand message, you have a good chance of establishing a successful content marketing career.

Read more about why you should learn content marketing.

Content Marketing Careers

If you love writing, photography, or video production, you could turn that into a career in content marketing. Companies are looking for people with excellent communication skills, writing or editing experience, data analytics skills, and SEO knowledge. Agencies and large companies employ some Content Marketers, but many work as freelancers. Content Marketers fall into the advertising and marketing category, and according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, these occupations will grow by 22% in the next ten years.

Copywriter

Copywriters work with the marketing team to create content for social media, email, and web pages. They earn an average yearly base salary of $50,000, ranging between $40,000 to $65,000. 

Copy Editor

After the Copywriter finishes the content, it goes to a Copy Editor who reviews the piece and corrects errors in mechanics, like punctuation and spacing, grammar, and spelling. Copy Editors also check the text against the company’s chosen style guide. Copy Editors sometimes fact-check material if the company doesn’t employ Factcheckers. Copy Editors earn an average annual base salary of around $40,000.

Photographer

Photographers use cameras to produce images to illustrate articles in magazines and newspapers. They also work for marketing agencies and companies that use digital marketing and take photographs for social media posts on platforms like Instagram or Pinterest. Photographer salaries vary, but the average annual base salary is $50,000.

Illustrator

Illustrators and Graphic Designers create digital art and infographics. These can be added to blog posts as illustrations or stand on their own as posts. The average yearly base salary for Graphic Designers is $45,000, ranging from $38,000 to $60,000.

Videographer

Videographers shoot and edit videos for company websites and social media channels. Many also work as freelancers. Videographers' average yearly base salary is $50,000, ranging from $40,000 to $60,000.

Content Marketer

Content Marketers may be creators, too, but whether they make the content or get it from someone else, they set a schedule for publishing the content, track performance using data analytics tools, and plan future content strategy. Salaries for Content Marketers in the US range between $40,000 and $100,000 a year, with an average of $65,000.

Content Manager

After working as a Content Marketer for a while, some people move up to Senior Content Marketer or Content Manager. These positions come with more responsibility and sometimes involve managing personnel. Content Managers earn higher salaries than Content Marketers, with an average yearly salary of $70,000.

How to Learn Content Marketing

When you are exploring the possibility of learning content marketing to switch careers, you can try to learn it on your own or sign up for a class. If you choose to take a class, you can take a traditional in-person class with an experienced instructor. These sessions meet according to a set schedule in a classroom setting. You can also choose live online training. These sessions are often held concurrently with in-person classes, but you attend through a video conferencing platform. Many people prefer an interactive classroom setting when learning a new subject, but with a live online class, you don’t have to commute. You can sign on from your home, office, or any other location with a stable internet connection. 

Another option for learning content marketing is to enroll in on-demand video classes. These are pre-recorded sessions that you can watch at your convenience wherever and whenever you decide. On-demand classes are available on different learning platforms, like Coursera, Udemy, or LinkedIn Learning. Although you have to pay for these classes, they tend to be less expensive than in-person or live online offerings, and many platforms offer a free trial before you need to pay for a subscription.

If you haven’t decided whether content marketing is for you, Noble Desktop has a free seminar called The Pillars of Digital Marketing Success. This course not only covers content marketing but many other aspects of digital marketing. You will learn the basics of SEO, data analytics, social media marketing, and website optimization, so you can decide if you want to move on to Noble’s Digital Marketing Certificate. You can also find useful free resources on Noble’s Tech Blog. 

Read the full guide on how to learn content marketing.

A Brief History of Content Marketing

Content marketing is older than you might think.It began in the late 18th century when Benjamin Franklin produced Poor Richard's Almanac to promote his print shop. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, companies began producing magazines for their customers. One example of this is The Furrow from the John Deer tractor company. The magazine contained helpful articles for farmers and their families, with very few mentions of John Deer anywhere in the publication. 

This trend continued in 1902 when the Genesee Pure Food Company, the original manufacturer of Jello, distributed free recipe books. When people started buying radios, laundry detergent companies began to sponsor afternoon drama programs that became known as “soap operas.” These companies use meaningful or helpful content to their customers to form a relationship, build brand loyalty, and increase sales. 

Although it has mostly moved online, the goals of content marketing remain the same: Find out who your audience is, discover what they need, find a way to meet that need to form a relationship, and increase sales. The goals are the same, but the landscape is very different.

Comparable Fields

Because content is an important part of social media marketing, that field could be comparable to content marketing. Social Media Marketers post content on different platforms and monitor its performance regarding audience engagement, website visits, and conversions. Social Media Marketers also need to know how SEO works and be familiar with tools like Google Analytics. 

Email and Content Marketers need good communication skills and excellent writing ability. Email marketing is another field that is similar to content marketing. Email Marketers must write compelling emails with links to helpful content to drive website traffic.

Learn Content Marketing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

You can learn content marketing with hands-on classes at Noble Desktop. Taught by expert instructors, class sizes are small and give you ample opportunity to interact with the instructor and the other students. If you want to learn more about content marketing, sign up for Noble's Content Marketing Bootcamp. This course covers an introduction to content marketing and techniques for content creation and promotion, including how to measure the success of your content marketing.

If you want to go a step further, try Noble's Digital Marketing Certificate course. It covers email marketing, SEO, Google Analytics and Google Ads, and all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn Marketing. You also get a Streaming for Social Media course and a portfolio class. If you want, you can retake any class for free for up to a year. To find out more about content marketing and change careers, visit Noble Desktop's digital marketing page.

Key Insights

• Content marketing helps you connect with your audience, improve brand loyalty, generate leads, and increase conversions.
• You can get started in content marketing for free, but most people purchase software tools to help with SEO and content management.
• Some careers that use content marketing are:
• Copywriter
• Copy Editor
• Photographer
• Videographer
• Content Marketer
• Content Manager

• You can learn content marketing in-person, live online, or in on-demand classes.
• Content marketing is older than most people think. It dates back to Benjamin Franklin.
• Fields Comparable to content marketing are social media marketing and email marketing.
• You can receive comprehensive content marketing training through an in-person or live online course with Noble Desktop.