Content Marketing

Content Marketing
Certificate in Digital Marketing

for reaching Global Markets.
May 4th, 2022

Hello !
I’m George KASSAR
Full-time faculty member and part of the research team
at Ascencia Business School, member of Collège de
Paris.
Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) candidate,
hold a Postgraduate-Certificate in Business Research
Methods, a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA),
and a Bachelor of Science in Management Information
Systems.
Professional experience of about 16 years at the banking
sector, mainly within the field of performance management
and business analytics.
Academic experience of round 13+ years at the higher
education sector, mainly teaching core business disciplines
such as management, marketing, information systems, etc.
Outline
1 Introduction
2 Understanding content marketing
3 The content marketing strategic framework
4 Managing, organizing and optimizing content
5 Conclusion
1
Introduction
Introduction
• With so many businesses operating online, standing out
from the crowd is essential.
• Content marketing is a great way to help you attract
your audience’s attention.
Introduction
• In this lesson, we’ll mainly focus on helping you better
understand content marketing and we’ll look at why it is
so important, and how you can use it to engage with
your audience.
• We’ll also discuss its strategic framework of content
marketing to help you define the key elements of a
powerful content marketing strategy.
Introduction
• We’ll also discuss how you can better manage and
organize using Content Management System (CMS)
• And finally discuss how Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
and content marketing work together to fuel your online
success.
2
Understandi
ng content
marketing
A (Brief) History of Content
Marketing
• The famous American poet Maya Angelou once
said: “if you don’t know where you’ve come
from, you don’t know where you’re going.”
• This applies to many different facets of life,
including content marketing.
Marketing
• Only by understanding the history of content marketing
can we know, and prepare, for the future.
• As we go through, consider what historical trends
remain relevant today, and how they can inform your
own content marketing strategy.
Marketing
• For as long as humans have existed, people have been
creating content… One could go so far as to argue that
cave paintings were the first attempt at communication
through content.
• The history of written content and advertising probably
goes back farther than you think !
Marketing
• Traditional marketers have long used content to
disseminate information about a brand and build a
brand's reputation.
• Taking advantage of technological advances, business
owners started to apply content marketing techniques
in the late 19th century to build connections with their
customers.
A (Brief)
History of
Content
Marketing
A (Brief)
History of
Content
Marketing
A (Brief)
History of
Content
Marketing
What does this teach us ?
• Everything comes back around: At one time radio was
all the rag, now we have podcasts !
• The fact of the matter is people will always want to be
served with new and interesting content, and every year
there are brands out in front of a hot new content
marketing trend, followed by late adopters.
• Be Different
• Every example of breakthrough content worked because it
was unique, creative, and well-thought out.
• That’s what it takes to stand out in a saturated marketing
landscape.
• Quality Matters
• The cream always rises to the top. For your content to be
successful it needs to be better than everyone else’s.
• Focus on quality over quantity. One high-quality piece of
content will do more work for your brand than ten pieces of
poor content.
• Know Your Audience
• Previous successful approaches worked because they knew
exactly who their customers were and what sort of content
they were looking for.
• They then leveraged that knowledge to create unique, quality
content and place it in locations their customers were
looking.
• Connect on an Emotional Level
• Superhero comic books and cereal mascots are still used
today to sell products because consumers have formed a
powerful connection with these forms of content.
• If you want your content to succeed, it needs to mean
something to your audience. It has to spur an emotional
reaction. That’s how you create customers that will return
again and again.
• Connect on an Emotional Level
• Superhero comic books and cereal mascots are still used
today to sell products because consumers have formed a
powerful connection with these forms of content.
• If you want your content to succeed, it needs to mean
something to your audience. It has to spur an emotional
reaction. That’s how you create customers that will return
again and again.
• Today, Visual content, including videos and infographics,
are increasing in popularity.
• COVID-19 has pushed virtual events to the forefront.
And influencers have given marketers a new way to
connect with their target audience.
• What does the future hold? You will decide !
So really now… what is Content
Marketing?
• Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach
focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant,
and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly
defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable
customer action.
• It focuses on building a relationship and loyalty by
providing value to its audience.
Marketing?
• Go back and read the content marketing definition one
more time, but this time remove the relevant and
valuable.
• That’s the difference between content marketing and
the other informational garbage you get from
companies trying to sell you “stuff.”
Marketing?
• Instead of pitching your products or services, you are
providing truly relevant and useful content to your
prospects and customers to help them solve their
issues.
• That is the biggest difference between a content
marketer who is effective and one who flails.
• Content marketing is truly the art of reaching audience !
Why Content Marketing ?
• Content Marketing is often used by businesses for:
• Building brand awareness and attract attention;
• Expand customer base and enter new markets;
• Generate leads for the business;
• To engage with community and provide valuable information;
• Generate sales via online or offline channels;
Why Content Marketing ?
• Content marketing attracts new customers by creating
and sharing valuable free content.
• It helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty,
provides valuable information to consumers, and
creates a willingness to purchase products from the
company in the future.
Digital Content Marketing
• Digital content marketing is focused on creating,
publishing and distributing relevant and useful content
for a target audience online.
• In fact, content creation is the foundation of all modern
digital marketing efforts: the main objective of content
creation is to attract new and returning customers.
Digital Content Marketing
• Inbound marketing strategies give away high-value
digital media for free. This content establishes the
brand’s thought leadership while providing audience
with the information they need to make a purchasing
decision.
Types and formats of Content
• Content comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be a piece
of writing, audio, video or an image, etc.
Written content: Blogs,

articles, white papers, eBooks, Imagery: Infographics, GIFs...
emails, social media posts…
Audio: Podcasts, Video: Animations, webinars,

audiobooks… talking heads…
• Content is a broad term that can take many forms, and
new forms of content arise alongside new technologies.
• For example, the first blog appeared in 1994, while the first social
media site launched in 1997. Yet, Apps like TikTok have shown
marketers that there is still room for innovation when creating
content.
• Online content can take lots of different forms: from case
studies and ebooks, to infographics, images and video
clips. Each of these different formats comes with its own
benefits; whether it’s to inspire, educate or entertain.
• Whatever format you choose, the purpose of content is
always the same - to connect with an audience.
• This audience, in turn, will engage, share, learn, and
perhaps even convert into customers.
• Infographics: Best for
visualizing processes or
displaying statistics,
infographics are valuable
top-of-funnel content that
provide readers with
quick, actionable insights.
• Blogging: Blogs and articles often form the heart of
content marketing campaigns because they are bite-
sized enough for readers to consume in a single sitting
while also providing the time and space to dive deeply
into a particular topic.
• Podcasts: Audio formats like podcasts enable brands to
add a personal touch to their web presence. Plus,
they’re great for repurposing written content.
• Videos: Animations, interviews and other video content
is highly engaging for both B2C and B2B customers.
• Case studies: Providing third-party evidence of your
brand’s value, case studies offer decision-makers useful
information.
• Webinars: This type of visual content provides your
audience with detailed information on a single topic
while giving viewers the opportunity to ask questions
and interact with you directly.
• White papers: Another form of written content, white
papers typically involve more research than the average
blog article. It’s basically a report or guide that informs
readers about a complex issue and presents the issuing
body's philosophy on the matter.
• Now that you’re familiar with different formats, the next step is
to consider the main goal of your content. In content marketing,
there are typically four main purposes of content, which are:
entertain inspire educate convince

• Let’s take a look at how to match different content formats to
your content goals.
• Meet Amber. Amber runs a dog grooming business and is looking to create a content
strategy to help boost her online presence.
• To entertain her audience, she decides to publish funny video clips of dogs doing tricks over
social media.
• To inspire, she plans to create a forum space on her website where people can post their
questions and get insights from both her and other pet owners.
• To educate her audience, she shares blog posts including top tips on dog care and dog nutrition.
• To convince people to use her services, she’ll share testimonials from happy customers, as well
as ebooks to showcase her knowledge in specialist grooming skills
Content marketing channels
• Let’s face it, creating good content can be time
consuming, so you want to make sure as many people
as possible enjoy it.
• Before you start creating a content, it’s important to
consider the channels available.
• Identifying channels by Owned, Earned and Paid
categories is a great place to start.
Content marketing channels
• This refers to the marketing channels you manages, such as own website, blog,
Owned Channel and social media profiles. Promoting content over owned channels is a great
starting point because it’s a typically flexible and low-cost option.
• This refers to anything that’s picked up by a third party, such as another

Earned Channel content creator or blogger that shares your content. Earned channels can boost
the reach of content and add credibility.
• This refers to promotion you pay for. This can allow you to target campaigns to
a specific audience, based on your goals and budgets. You could invest in
Paid Channel advertising your blog post over social media and reach more potential readers
who regularly browse those channels.
Content Creation for Social Media
• Let’s journey back to the days before the web, when TV,
print and radio dominated.
• Two-way interaction wasn’t possible between brands
and customers and audiences received advertising
messages whether they wanted them or not.
• These days, people can pick and choose when they
engage, and content marketing allows businesses to
connect with their audiences like never before.
• While social media posts have a much shorter lifespan
than other types of content, they are extremely
valuable.
• In fact, more than half of surveyed marketers believe
social media can drive customer engagement and lead
to increased sales.
• Plus, social media can augment your other content
marketing efforts.
• For example, you can create content that promotes your blog
or teases larger assets like eBooks.
• For B2C brands, social media platforms are often the
first-place new customers learn about products, making
it ideal for lending social proof to marketing campaigns.
3
The content
marketing
strategic
framework
Marketing is impossible without great
content
• Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use,
content marketing should be part of your process, not
something separate.
• To be effective at content marketing, it is essential to
have a documented content marketing strategy.
What is Content Marketing Strategy?
• A content strategy is a plan in which you use content
(audio, visual, and/or written) to achieve your business
goals.
• A successful content strategy will attract your target
audience at every stage of the funnel and keep them
engaged even after a purchase.
• Content marketing strategy involves the planning,
creation, distribution, and measuring the performance
of content developed to either generate awareness or
generate leads for your business.
• In essence, a good content strategy is the foundation of
your “Attract and Delight” stages in a buyer's journey
that follows any inbound marketing framework.
• Along with attracting prospects to your brand, you can
leverage a content strategy for sales enablement and
customer satisfaction.
• Content Marketing should involve a comprehensive and
holistic strategy.
• This strategy should cover everything from content
mapping to content creation and optimization.
• Ultimately, you want to produce a strategy that allows
you to attract and engage a clearly defined audience
and, in the end, generate profitable customer action.
Elements of the Content Marketing
Strategy
• There are endless suggestions, recommendations and
guided steps that claims to be the key to have a
powerful content marketing strategy.
• Whatever method is chosen, the core aim is to
ultimately make sure that the content strategy is
adequately aligned with the overall business strategy.
Strategy
• Just as any aspect of life or business, having a clear plan and
a well-defined strategic path is extremely useful because it
gives a framework for thinking about how to reach set goals
efficiently.
• Planning helps you finish activities in a sensible order, and
they help you ensure that you don't miss any key steps.
Strategy
• The key to success is creating a content marketing
campaign that accomplishes 3 main goals:
Answering your audience’s questions
Providing something of value
Keeping them wanting more

Strategy
• In other words, to develop an effective and
workable content marketing strategy, you
should make sure that the necessary work
is done so that you can be comfortable
answering the following key questions.
• The answers to these questions will
gradually fill-in the missing pieces of your
content marketing strategy.
Strategy
• Who will be reading your content?
• Who's the target audience for your content? For how many
audiences are you creating content?
• Just as your business might have more than one type of
customer, your content strategy can cater to more than one
type of user.
• Using a variety of content types and channels will help you
deliver content that's tailored to each persona.
Get to know your online customers
• Everyone is different, so when it comes to creating online content
it’s good to think about who your audience is, and what they want to
know. This is where audience segmentation can help.
• Segmentation involves dividing your audience into groups of who
they are and what they like.
• Rather than spending time and money targeting a wide range of
people, segmentation helps to identify the groups most interested in
your product or service.
• The result is a more cost effective and persuasive way to connect
with potential customers.
Get to know your online customers
• To get insights into what people search for, try free online
tools like “Answer The Public” and “Keyword Planner”.
• You also can utilize analytics features on social media
platforms like Facebook and Twitter to get a glimpse of
audience demographics and behaviors.
• Experiment with several tools and compare results to get
a more complete picture of who your audience is, and
how they behave online.
Strategy
• What content formats will you focus on?
• To figure out what formats to focus on, you need to meet your audience
where they are.
• While you may to tempted to launch a podcast since it's grown so much
in the last few years, or launch a YouTube channel, find out first where
your audience lives.
• Otherwise, you may waste time creating content that either won't reach
your audience or capture their attention.
• Once you identify the best formats, start creating a budget to assess
what resources you can allocate to execute this strategy.
Strategy
• What channels will you publish on?
• Just as you can create content in different formats, you'll also
have various channels you can publish to, from your website
to social media.
• This, again, will reflect where your audience lives. If your
audience prefers long-form video content, you may opt to
publish your content on YouTube. If you have a younger
audience that likes quick content, you may opt for TikTok and
Instagram.
Strategy
• How will you manage content creation and publication?
• Figuring out how you'll create and publish all your content can
be a daunting task.
• Before you execute, it's important to establish: Who's creating
what? Where is it going to be published? When it's going live?
• In a small team, this may be easy enough as you may be the
sole decision-maker. As your company grows, you may need to
collaborate with several content teams to figure out an
effective process.
Strategy
• What problem will you be solving for your audience(s)?
• Ideally, your product or service solves a problem you know your
audience has. By the same token, your content coaches and educates
your audience through this problem as they begin to identify and
address it.
• A sound content strategy supports people on both sides of your product:
those who are still figuring out what their main challenges are, and
those who are already using your product to overcome these challenges.
• Your content reinforces the solution(s) you're offering and helps you
build credibility with your target audience.
Strategy
• What makes you unique?
• Your competitors likely have a similar product as yours, which means
your potential customers need to know what makes yours better —
or, at least, different.
• Maybe your main asset is that your company has been established
for many years. Or perhaps you have a unique brand voice that
makes you stand out from your competitors.
• To prove why you're worth buying from, you need to prove why
you're worth listening to. Once you figure that out, permeate that
message in your content.
Measuring your success in content
marketing
• While it may be tempting to focus on creating as much
exciting content as possible, it’s important to regularly
sit down and review your goals.
• This ensures the time you are spending on your content
is time well spent.
marketing
• Whether your target is to increase sales or spread the
word about your business, if you don’t monitor your
progress against your goals, it will be hard to know if
what you’re doing works.
• Once you identify your content goals, it will be easier to
track what you set out to achieve.
marketing
• To start, identify your goals and objectives, and make
sure they’re measurable and trackable.
• For example, perhaps you wish to increase your
YouTube channel subscribers by 200 people this quarter
or see a 10% increase in page views on your blog per
month.
marketing
• Next, monitor the specific metrics that could help
improve your content marketing.
• For example, consider where your visitors are located,
their age and gender demographics, how long they
spend on a specific webpage and what they search for
when they land on your site, etc.
• There are many tools that helps you track such metrics,
namely Google Analytics, HubSpot, etc.
marketing
• Try comparing your metrics to previous results, such as
last month’s blog posts or the number of online
transactions made during the last quarter.
• Tracking against past results will give you a clearer
indication of whether new strategies are truly
successful.
4
Managing,
organizing
and
optimizing
content
Managing, organizing and optimizing
content
• Content marketing management mainly includes the set
of activities performed the content creator (or designated
manager) while handling the daily operations and the
overall success of content marketing initiatives.
• These management tasks are highly guided by the content
marketing strategy and aims to facilitate ongoing content
planning, day-to-day content creation, content editing,
promotion, and reporting on the results, etc.
content
• Organizing and categorizing is a key part of managing
content. But staying on top of it is tough, given the sheer
volume, velocity, and variety of internal and external content
that organizations manage - particularly large organizations.
• The longer you wait to organize and categories your digital
marketing content, the more likely you are to miss
opportunities to use this content to your company's
advantage.
What is an SEO?
• We’ll take a deeper look at some of the most common
forms of content marketing management, but first let’s
understand what is SEO and what role it plays in content
creation.
• SEO – Search Engine Optimization
What is an SEO?
• SEO and content marketing have changed the digital
marketing world.
• SEO without content marketing is like a body without a
soul !
• SEO is strategized around content marketing since every
website needs words, articles, substance, keywords, etc.
In order to be successful, both must go hand in hand.
What is an SEO?
• When you create a piece of content, you’re always
making it for two main audiences: your customers and
search algorithms.
• The latter is a complex technology that retrieves
information and matches patterns.
What is an SEO?
• Modern search engines like Google are incredibly
complicated.
• In the early days of Google’s history, content creators could
fill their websites with keywords to get their pages to shoot
to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
• These days, it’s not so simple to rank highly — especially for
lucrative keywords that signal an intent to make a purchase.
What is an SEO?
• An SEO strategy is the process of organizing a website’s
content by topic to improve the likelihood of appearing
in search results. Essentially, it is the process you follow
in order to maximize the opportunity to gain organic
traffic from search engines.
What is an SEO?
• There are three types of SEO that marketers can focus on:
• On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the content that's on-site pages,
and how to optimize it to boost the website's ranking for specific
keywords.
• Off-page SEO: This SEO focuses on links directed to the website from
elsewhere on the internet. The number of backlinks a site has from
reputable sources helps you build trust with search algorithms.
• Technical SEO: This SEO focuses on a website's backend architecture,
like site code. Google cares just as much about technical set-up as it
does content, so this position is important for rankings.
content
• Given the burdensome of the aforesaid tasks, there is great
need for content creators for a solution to help in uploading
or writing content, formatting it, adding headlines and
images, and doing all the technical backstage tasks related
to SEO optimization, etc.
• And here comes the CMS – Content Management System –
which is basically a system for creating, managing, and
optimizing your customers’ digital experience.
content
• More specifically, a CMS is a software application that
allows users to collaborate in the creation, editing, and
production of digital content: web pages, blog posts, etc.
• The core CMS features may vary depending on the
system application and provider, but typically include
indexing, search and retrieval, format management,
revision control, and management, etc.
Core functions of a CMS
content
• Today, as digital marketing evolved, focusing more
deeply on customer experience while incorporating
mobile apps, the IoT, and more… CMS also evolved from
just helping you launch digital content to a more robust
system that is core to managing an overall digital
experience across many different channels, such as
email, mobile apps, social media, web sites, and more.
content
• To conclude, despite the help of a CMS, managing
content is about more than just staying on top of it and
keeping it organized. It’s about getting the most out of it
and managing it strategically.
• Here’s a quick recap on some of the main ways to
categories and organize your content from a strategic
perspective:
content
• Conduct a content audit and inventory
• Running a content audit and creating an up-to-date, detailed
inventory of every single piece of content in your organization
may sound scary, but it's the best way to ensure you manage
content effectively.
content
• Utilize metadata, categories, and tags in CMS
• Accurately and consistently updating metadata, categories,
and tags in your CMS is important.
• This information helps you, your readers, and the search
engine find your content easily.
content
• Map content to personas to customer journey
• Rather than just creating content randomly, you should
always tie each piece back to a user's need or goal.
• The best way to do this is to create buyer personas as we
previously discussed, and then map each piece of content to
a different stage in their journey.
• Broadly speaking, these stages are 'awareness',
'consideration', and 'decision.'
content
• Develop pillar pages and content clusters
• Again, developing proper pillar pages and adequate content
clusters is another way that you should do to better organize
your content online.
• This is a great way to help both search engine bots and
people logically navigate through your site, making it a
winner for user experience and SEO.
content
• Develop pillar pages and content clusters
• Pillar pages are detailed, often long, pieces of content covering
all aspects of a certain topic. Then, around these pillar pages,
you create 'content clusters' for different related topics. You can
then internally link from your pillar page to these topics.
Content Calendar
• That being said, once you know and fully understand how
to manage and optimize your content, it’s important not to
forget to create a content calendar.
• A content calendar is a detailed timeline that organizes
your content marketing activity.
• By clearly outlining what to publish and when, it can help
make your content process consistent and efficient, as well
as give everyone involved a clear action plan to follow.
5
Conclusion
Content Marketing in a nutshell
• Content marketing is based on the creation and sharing of
online material, like videos, blogs, and social media posts.
• It’s designed to generate interest in a company’s products
or services by capturing people’s attention.
• When starting to write your own content marketing strategy
remember the 3 keys to success mentioned earlier:
• focus on answering your audience’s needs
• create content they’ll find valuable
• keep them engaged so that they’ll visit you in the future for more
content.
• By keeping these pointers in mind when creating your
content marketing strategy, you can boost your
potential reach and strengthen your presence online.
• Also, here’s some few best practices to keep in mind as
you put together your own strategy:
• Take the time to get to know your audience better. Look at which accounts
they follow on social media to get a sense of their likes and interests.
• Experiment to find the best types of content for reaching your audience and
don’t be afraid to use multiple formats.
• Choose the right places to publish your content and make sure you’re talking
directly to your audience.
• Throw away the business speak and stock responses and prioritize natural
language to interact with your audience.
• Make your content unique, interesting and exciting. Use engaging headlines, eye-
catching pictures and informative language to capture your audience's attention.
• Finally, always keep in mind, the reason why content
marketing is so important is simply because it answers
your audience's questions and helps you build trust,
develop relationships, improve conversions, and
generate leads.
• In today's age, customers expect high-quality, consistent
content from their favorite brands, products or service
providers, etc.
THANK YOU
for your
attention
References
• History of Content Marketing:
https://prosandcontent.knotch.com/posts/history-of-content-marketing#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9Ccontent%20marketing%E2%80%9D%20itself,consid
er%20%E2%80%9Cmodern%E2%80%9D%20content%20marketing
.
• What is Content Marketing :

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/#:~:text=Content%20marketing%20is%20a%20strategic,to%20drive%20profitable%20customer
%20action
.
• What Is Content Creation? The Complete Guide:

https://www.brafton.com/what-is-content-creation/#:~:text=Content%20creation%20is%20the%20foundation,pieces%20to%20a%20target%20audience.
• The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing : https://digitaluncovered.com/content-marketing-guide/
• The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing Strategy : https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-marketing-strategy-guide/
• What is Content Marketing Manager ? https://divvyhq.com/content-marketing/what-does-a-content-marketing-manager-do-exactly/
• Google Digital Garage : https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/course/digital-marketing/module/138/lesson/147
• What is CMS? https://www.sitecore.com/knowledge-center/digital-marketing-resources/what-is-a-cms
• SEO Strategy :
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-strategy#:~:text=Pack%20%5BFree%20Kit%5D-,What%20is%20an%20SEO%20strategy%3F,organic%20traffic%20from%2
0search%20engines
.

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Certificate in Digital Marketing

May 4th, 2022

2 Understanding content marketing

3 The content marketing strategic framework

4 Managing, organizing and optimizing content

Written content: Blogs,

Audio: Podcasts, Video: Animations, webinars,

entertain inspire educate convince

• This refers to anything that’s picked up by a third party, such as another

Answering your audience’s questions

Providing something of value

Keeping them wanting more

• What is Content Marketing :

• What Is Content Creation? The Complete Guide:

• The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing : https://digitaluncovered.com/content-marketing-guide/

• The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing Strategy : https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-marketing-strategy-guide/

• What is Content Marketing Manager ? https://divvyhq.com/content-marketing/what-does-a-content-marketing-manager-do-exactly/

• Google Digital Garage : https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/course/digital-marketing/module/138/lesson/147

• What is CMS? https://www.sitecore.com/knowledge-center/digital-marketing-resources/what-is-a-cms

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