12 Types of Marketing Content for Your Business

The types of marketing content that suit your business will entirely depend on your goals, industry, and how exactly you want to connect with the world. What works for you might not work for absolutely everyone. That’s why we need to know what options we have available to us. As the production of digital content has evolved over the past few decades, we, as marketers, have evolved with it.

Content marketing is miles away from what it once was. A few years ago, marketing was a narrow field which print media and ads ruled. Over the past 15 years, the rise of digital media is unmistakable. In this age of connection, marketing content comes in many shapes, sizes, and formats. We’ll cover all the types of marketing content you can turn to and outline their uses, including what sets them apart and how they can benefit your business.

• 12 Types of Marketing Content Your Business Can Use
• Which Type of Content Marketing Is Best for Your Business?

12 Types of Marketing Content Your Business Can Use

When starting a content marketing campaign, you need to move through a range of different potential content mediums. Beyond selecting a platform, you need to know what format your content takes. Depending on your industry, the best types of marketing content for your business can vary. To be on the safe side, move through each of the types until you find one that is most suitable to your niche, audience, and business goals. And while there’s a range of different types of marketing content to pick from, there are 12 common types that often show the best results:

1. Blog Content Marketing

Blog content marketing is the holy grail of the marketing industry. This is often the first strategy that people try, and one that almost every brand uses. According to Hubspot, businesses that have a blog get 55% more traffic on their site compared to the ones without. Beyond just views, they also have 97% more inbound links, which shows the power of blogging for generating traffic.

Whatever your industry and focus, blogs will come into the picture. You could trace industry trends, discuss the best strategies in your business, or simply give business updates. A blog is a catch-all location for customer information. Users will come to your site for your educational content.

Most of the time, teams are producing TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) content when blogging, increasing the total traffic to your blog. When writing each article, you should remember that SEO is vital for success. At the end of the day, writing a blog that no one will read isn’t helping your content goals. Write informational, high-value content, but don’t forget to include on-page SEO elements.

What’s great about blogging as a type of marketing content is that it really is forever. A blog post from 2016 can still rank today. Equally, something you publish right now could bring leads to your site years down the line. You can’t go wrong with a company blog.

2. Case Studies

Case studies are fantastic ways to prove the benefit of what your business does. In this consolidated format, you’re sharing how you help your customers. With past examples from real customers, you can tell the world how effective your products or services are. Case studies are typically a MOFU (middle-of-the-funnel) marketing strategy.

And at this point, your customers probably know all about your brand. After all, who is going to read a case study about a brand they have never heard of? Users that have found your content previously, maybe even read a few posts on your blog, and are curious about what you can offer them will move to your case studies.

Any social proof is great marketing for your business, as it shows you provide solutions to your customers. Most of the time, you won’t need to produce hundreds of case studies. With blog content, you’ve got a fairly endless pool of topics to go through. Case studies, on the other hand, only really provide one benefit to your business. A well-made case study will help sell your product or demonstrate why a customer should use your service. On your site, aim for at least three case studies. Customers that find social proof are much more likely to work with your brand.

3. EBooks

When someone hears the word eBook, they may think of a long novel in an electronic format. This is definitely not the case in the world of marketing. An eBook could be as short as three or four pages. Simply put, they’re similar to longer blog posts and can download straight to a customer’s device.

As a type of marketing content, eBooks are common for getting more information about leads. For instance, a site offering a free eBook can gain leads from the information audiences submit, such as email addresses. Generally, this marketing content is a bridge for businesses. If you need more details to effectively cultivate leads, then eBooks are the way to go.

What’s good about eBooks is they’re fairly easy to create. If you’ve got a blog that’s doing well, you can expand it into an eBook. Bring in some new content, create a few extra sections, and you’re good to go. You can even attach it as a CTA within the original blog post.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing goes beyond just being a content format. It’s actually a whole different style of writing. Of course, if you send a whole blog in an email, you’re not going to have many people reading it. That’s why we’ve included email marketing as a type of marketing content here.

As a content form, email marketing is all about pulling people in. Email itself isn’t that useful for our business. But, getting people to click onto our website or social media pages via email is incredibly beneficial. Creating emails that get to the point and leave readers wanting more is vital here. 

Equally, you could start an email newsletter, which will keep your readers in the loop. Building up your mailing list is something that doesn’t happen overnight, so start early, and keep at it. There’s a reason that email marketing has survived this long. It really does work. In fact, according to Website Rating, every $1 a business invests in email marketing sees around $44 in marketing ROI.

It’s also interesting to note here that email marketing doesn’t have blanket results across all industries. Depending on what your business serves, your team can see differences in open rates, click-through rates, and click-to-open rates. Here’s a breakdown from Campaign Monitor:

Image via CampaignMonitor

5. Influencer Marketing Partnerships

With most content types, you need to put in tons of work to produce something publishable. With influencer marketing partnerships, you’re passing that workload to someone else. This type of marketing content involves reaching out to an influencer in your industry and asking them to write or create something for you. Whether that’s a guest post on your site, a video promoting your products, or something entirely different, it all falls under the influencer marketing umbrella.

This marketing style has taken off over the past few years. In the UK alone, Google searches for “influencer marketing” have increased by an insane 400%, according to Micro Biz Mag. As social media platforms become even more essential to modern-day marketing, influencer culture is growing. By finding influencers that can post about your company and give recommendations, you’re on to a winner.

This is a type of marketing content that we suggest you use as a secondary source. Most of the time, tactics like blogging or creating eBooks are fairly low-cost. While influencer marketing can be cheap, it can also take up huge portions of your marketing budget. Always remember to balance cost and potential ROI.

6. Podcasts

Podcasting is still extremely underrepresented in the world of marketing. Yet, there are over 80 million users that listen to a podcast frequently, according to Statista. Back in 2006, only 22% of adults knew what a podcast was, with this number now pushing upwards toward 80% as of 2021. Podcasting has had an incredible decade, and marketing teams should take notice.

As a type of marketing content for your business, different podcast styles can work if you’re in a field where new information comes out all of the time. If you’re in tech, healthcare, finance, or general business, this could be a fantastic strategy for you. Creating a weekly podcast where you summarize news in your industry, discuss trends, and predict changes for the future could go a long way.

Another advantage to creating podcasts is they only take the duration of the episode. If your founder wants to jump on the episode, it’ll only take an hour of their time. Alongside showing off your knowledge, podcasts can introduce your business to a whole new audience.

7. Infographics

Image via Wishpond

For a lot of marketing teams, infographics are one of the most fun types of marketing content to produce. In essence, you’re creating a punchy graphic that gets the information across as quickly as possible. People are able to process visual content much faster than the written word, making infographics a fantastic tool.

What’s more, audiences are more likely to share infographics on social media. Other websites might even see your graphic and link back to your site as credit if they use it in one of their articles. If you’re trying to generate leads and expand your reach, infographics are a great way of doing so.

Equally, all infographics focus on hard data, making your business seem even more reliable. What’s even better is if your brand conducted the study where the data comes from. Owning every stage of the process is a great marketing technique to position your brand as an authority in your industry.

8. Reviews and Testimonials

Much like case studies, reviews and testimonials are firmly MOFU content. Taking customer reviews and turning them into centerpieces helps prove your company is great at what it offers. This is one of the easiest forms of content to produce, as you’re not actually writing anything. All you need to do is find shining reviews, collate them, and put them in prime positions on your site.

Reviews can come from customers or even influencers that you’ve partnered with. Most customers will look for social proof before they consider buying a product. In fact, according to Automat.Ai, 75% of customers are more likely to buy after seeing a recommendation. A business that doesn’t have any reviews doesn’t look particularly trustworthy. Compare that with one that has hundreds of shining testimonials, and you get the picture.

9. Short- and Long-Form Video Content

Over the past decade, video content marketing has had a complete revolution. With the rise of content platforms like YouTube and TikTok, both long- and short-form videos have become king. According to HubSpot, short-form video is currently the #1 tool for lead generation, and engagement, and has the highest ROI of all marketing types. That’s pretty impressive, right?

As marketing teams, we cannot overlook the rise of video content marketing. Creating platforms and distributing videos on them is a great way to tap into what’s working for businesses right now. A video that’s under 60 seconds could be the difference between smashing your marketing goals or wasting more time with more ineffective strategies.

If you want to focus on long-form videos, you can turn one of your successful blogs into a post on a site like YouTube. By illustrating your points and delivering the content verbally, you can create highly entertaining and educational content. In our digital age, people don’t want to spend time reading—they want information instantly, and video content does this.

10. Social Media Content

At this point in the game, we all know how powerful social media marketing can be. No matter what your business niche is, you need to have a presence across popular social media platforms. People use social media to find businesses, get information, read the news, and share what they find relatable. By spreading your branding across these platforms, you make your company as visible as possible.

We’re talking Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and every site where you can connect with your audience. The more, the merrier. And best of all, social media posts can include repurposing content, so you save tons of time distributing across all channels. If you’re not already on social media producing content, it’s time to get started.

11. Webinars

Webinars include BOFU (bottom-of-the-funnel) marketing content that many businesses are now using for their marketing strategies. Especially if you’re producing content on tech topics, like SaaS, webinars are a great way of demonstrating how your product works. You can also demonstrate exactly how it solves certain problems. Or better yet, give a tour of the product and show off some of the main features. These content types have two distinct advantages:

• • • New Leads: You often need people to sign up with an email address to get access to your webinar event. This gives businesses new leads to add to a mailing list (with permission) to reach out to.
    • BOFU sales: Using webinars to show off how your product or service solves a problem or fulfills a need can persuade users to make a purchase or take a next-level action toward your content goals.

Webinars also help customers connect people to a company. Often, marketing can actually come across as fairly hollow. Apart from your About Us page, do you even display a single team member on your site? Probably not, that’s just not how we do things. Webinars take a completely different direction, connecting your audience with someone from your company.

As they move through your product, they can answer questions, giving a live demonstration as they go. While not the biggest benefit, this human touch can really go a long way.

12. White Papers

Out of all the types of marketing content for your business, white papers are one that a select handful of businesses may use. A whitepaper is an in-depth report on a specific topic. For example, a financial or blockchain company might use a white paper to describe the company structure, fund and resource allocations, and business objectives.

Often, these documents demonstrate the why behind a business and showcase the industry know-how behind the founders. White papers can cover industry trends and how a business breaks the mold, or they might explain certain policies the business follows. Because whitepapers can contain in-depth industry research and data, several industries use this type of content frequently, including:

• • • Non-profits
    • Technology
    • Manufacturing
    • Insurance
    • Finance
    • Healthcare

Every whitepaper is different, but they’re normally very detailed. Instead of a quick blog post or even a short eBook, these are lengthy documents that clearly demonstrate the company’s position on a matter. Whether it’s showing what solution they provide or detailing the values their business is founded on, it’s going to get into the nitty-gritty.

If you’re new to content marketing, a white paper is something we suggest outsourcing. These documents need to be highly detailed and right to the point. Research, documentation, and factual information are the priorities here.

When done well, white papers can be great marketing materials to convince users about the validity of your business. They demonstrate knowledge, expertise, and a comprehensive understanding of the company’s position in the industry. If you’re in one of the above industries, this isn’t one to overlook.

Which Type of Content Marketing Is Best for Your Business?

Depending on your industry, any number of the above types of content marketing could work for you. Knowing what’s currently working in your industry is the best place to start. If all your competitors are producing podcasts, it might be time to head to the studio. Alternatively, if your competitors are churning out infographics, then fire up Adobe Illustrator.

Beyond just selecting the best type of content, it’s important to keep it consistent. Focus on longevity and a steady stream of content rather than bulk drops. Google—and your company’s customers—love consistency. No matter what type of marketing content you select, make sure you keep to your content schedule and keep the content flowing.

And if you’re not sure what content to start with, CopyPress has the tools you need. With our in-depth content analysis tool, you discover the best types of content and low-hanging fruit where you can focus your efforts. With information about what’s working for your competitors, you’ll have a much better idea of what you should be targeting. Simply enter your details below and get your report in as little as an hour.

Lauren Oliver

Digital Marketing Manager at CopyPress

More from the author: