02   CHAPTER

It’s a big promise: perfect content marketing.

But it is possible if you understand how content fits into your overall digital marketing strategy.

And done right, your content marketing will not only attract prospects, but also move them through a marketing funnel to drive more sales and grow your business.

In this chapter, we cover the basics of a successful content marketing program, including methods and metrics, the business roles that should own your content marketing, and the lingo you’ll use to talk about it.

Methods of Well-Executed Content Marketing

Let’s start with a thorough understanding of what we mean when we say

content.

You see, most businesses miss out on a lot of opportunities because their vision for content marketing is too small.

As a result, they’re churning out content but not getting great results. And here’s why: content in and of itself isn’t what drives traffic and sales.

Your content needs to be “perfect.” Now, what do we mean by that?

Perfect content isn’t about you, your brand, or your objectives. It’s about delivering the right information to your prospects at exactly the right point in the customer journey.

For instance, for the software company Freshbooks, this web page represents perfect content marketing for a prospect who needs pricing information to make an informed buying decision.

Content is any information that helps you keep the funnel full.

Yep, a pricing page is content.

The big misconception is that content marketing is blogging.

While blogs are a major component of content marketing, they’re only

a part of the bigger picture. In fact, in most cases, a blog is not the most lucrative form of content marketing.

But we’ll come back to that.

First, let’s get clear on the six characteristics of perfect content marketing and why it’s essential that you get started.

(NOTE: At the end of this chapter, you’ll get access to a tool we use to make perfect content planning a breeze.)