Creative content marketing is the strategic process of crafting and distributing original content to attract, engage or persuade a target audience.
Content marketing’s effectiveness makes it incredibly popular. That said, there are still plenty of opportunities to stand out, build trust and turn interest into sales – so long as you plan thoughtful campaigns.
In this article, you’ll learn how creative content marketing benefits businesses and which formats are the easiest and most impactful to get started with. We’ll also provide some creative content marketing examples for inspiration and run through five simple tips.
Why creative content marketing is essential for your business
Creative content marketing is proven to help businesses win trust, close more deals and increase revenue.
In a Semrush survey of 1,700 business owners and marketers, a whopping 97% said content marketing had been successful for them.
This “success” takes various forms. Typical outcomes of effective content marketing strategies include:
Improved brand visibility. Stand out in a crowded landscape and reach your target audience sooner with search engine-optimized (SEO) marketing content that puts you at the top of the results pages.
Increased audience engagement. Capture attention and inspire action with original content that speaks to your ideal buyers’ challenges and objectives.
Enhanced brand reputation. Demonstrate your brand’s personality and values to foster positive associations from your target audience. Tell your story and invite buyers to get involved by signing up, sharing or buying.
More website traffic. Use high-quality content to funnel users onto other pages of your website, such as product and feature landing pages, e-commerce stores and registration forms.
What’s more, content marketing (along with search engine optimization) is easy to measure – certainly more so than offline advertising. With the right tools and metrics, you can quickly learn what works and doesn’t, then tweak your marketing efforts for even better results.
5 accessible content marketing formats to use first
There are many types of content you can use to foster trust and inspire action across the sales cycle.
However, trying to achieve too much in one go can be costly, confusing and counterproductive – especially if it’s your first time trying content marketing. With that in mind, we’ve compiled five of the most accessible creative content formats to begin your journey with.
1. Infographics
Infographics are visual representations of data, insights or knowledge. They’re perfect for presenting complex information quickly and clearly.
Simple, well-designed graphics appeal to internet users’ preference for scanning content, increasing your chances of engagement.
For example, Slack uses infographics to present research data:
Users can quickly digest its information without needing to read for longer than a couple of minutes and choose whether to open the full report (and move further down the sales funnel).
Traditionally, graphic designers would create infographics. Now there are various beginner-friendly tools for in-house marketers and marketing service providers to create high-quality visual content, including Canva, Visme and VistaCreate. Many include professional templates to streamline the content creation process.
Post your infographics on social media and in blog articles to engage users and encourage sharing to build brand awareness.
2. Social media posts
Social media posts shared on social platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and Instagram can engage audiences. They include any combination of text, image, audio and video content.
As a form of creative content marketing, social media posting allows for real-time interaction with your audience. This makes it ideal for addressing prospects’ problems and generating interest in your brand.
For example, software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Evernote provides product updates, shares insights and supports users on X. Here’s a recent update:
By replying to users’ comments and questions, Evernote enhances its reputation for helpfulness:
This strengthens audience trust, increasing sales and reducing churn.
Focus your social media activity on the channels your ideal buyers use most. For example, if you’re in business-to-business (B2B) sales, you’re likely to reach senior decision-makers on LinkedIn. TikTok, on the other hand, is well-suited to Gen Z business-to-consumer (B2C) audiences, according to PEW research and CMI.
Note: Social media is one of B2B’s most popular content marketing channels. In a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) survey of B2B marketers, 90% said they use social media to distribute content, 79% use blogs and 73% use email newsletters.
3. Webinars
Webinars (video presentations delivered over the internet) offer a more immersive and interactive experience for audiences. They let prospects and users engage with your messaging in a casual and accessible format.
While webinars are typically delivered in real time, you can publish recordings for people to view at their convenience. It means your content serves your business (and audience) for longer, without any extra effort.
For example, Pipedrive’s sales and CRM webinars help users get more value from their software. There are regular events covering a range of audience-relevant topics in various languages:
When it comes to webinars, the best content focuses on specific audience challenges or outcomes. Pipedrive’s webinars cover topics such as “How Email Sync works” and “How to save time”, for instance.
Find great content topics for your webinars by tracking customer support conversations and social media interactions. Then build your strategy around the most common questions and requests.
4. Case studies
Case studies are detailed accounts of real-life business scenarios, presented as stories in written or visual form (e.g., an article, graphic or video).
Most case studies focus on transactions or relationships, showcasing:
Challenges your business or its customer faced
Strategies and solutions implemented in response
The outcomes achieved
Case studies offer concrete examples of how your product, service or entire brand supports customers. They help potential customers understand the value proposition more clearly.
Zapier produces case studies showing how its automation app benefits users, like this one involving Jotform:
This is valuable information for companies in Jotform’s industry. It offers reassurance to make sales more likely.
Ask your most loyal customers for permission to tell their story and aim to build a library of case studies from various industries to appeal to different buyers. Request testimonials to include for extra authenticity.
5. Email marketing
Email marketing involves sending targeted messages to a list of subscribers known as an email list. Its main aims are to nurture leads, promote products or services and drive sales conversations.
Email’s accessibility and personalization potential makes it a highly effective marketing tool. Free or affordable email marketing software lets you plan email campaigns, design professional-looking content fast and target specific user groups.
Start planning your email marketing campaign now
Email marketing is also highly measurable. Metrics such as open rate, click-through rate and spam complaints help you gauge effectiveness, so you can refine your efforts for better outcomes.
You can deliver all kinds of content via email, from blog posts and in-depth guides to podcasts, quizzes and user-generated content. For example, Pipedrive’s email newsletters promote recent pieces of content from the blog, like this one:
This insightful content positions Pipedrive as an industry thought leader, solves users’ challenges (building valuable trust) and drives traffic to the Pipedrive blog.
Note: Campaigns by Pipedrive lets you create beautiful email content, engage your customers and manage all your lead and campaign performance data directly in your Pipedrive account.
6 simple tips for stronger content marketing campaigns
Content marketing’s popularity means it can be difficult to stand out from your competitors. Here are six simple tips to hit the ground running and differentiate your business.
1. Be honest
Always be honest in your content, as audiences can often tell when a company is being genuine. In a Forrester survey of US consumers, 71% said that they can relate to authentic brands and therefore want to support them.
Content writers and marketing agencies that make false promises often get called out, particularly when a company has a presence on social media platforms where it speaks directly with customers.
It’s essential that your content includes valuable, truthful information that’s relevant to your target audience. If your content helps people, they’ll start to realize your product or service might help them too.
2. Optimize your content for search engines
By applying key SEO principles to your creative content, you’ll make your brand more visible online and help people find your products faster.
While SEO is a complex topic, you’ll boost your search performance significantly by following these basic steps:
Incorporate relevant keywords. Include terms that your audience is likely to use in search engines when researching the types of products you sell.
Write compelling meta descriptions. Craft concise and engaging meta descriptions that accurately summarize your content and encourage clicks.
Optimize images. Use descriptive file names and alt text for images to improve accessibility and help search engines understand your visual content.
Build internal links. Link relevant pages within your website to each other to help users navigate your content (and move further down the sales funnel) easily.
Above all, the best thing you can do to improve your search rankings is to create original, high-quality content that resonates with your audience. Always aim to solve buyers’ problems, instill trust and inspire people to learn more about your brand and products.
3. Play the “Wonderland” game
The “Wonderland” game is a metaphorical strategy content marketing creatives use to craft engaging and interactive experiences for target audiences.
Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it involves linking products to unlikely people, places or things to build an interesting narrative.
Say your product is project management software. You could use a topic like “What I learned about project management from my grandma” or “How I improved my project management skills using parenting tips”.
By pairing dissimilar topics like this, you can grab attention faster and keep it for longer.
4. Study what others are doing
People love teaching others. Try typing “how to” in a Google search with auto-complete on and you will see that there are many teachers out there.
When thinking about creatively bringing your message to others, look at what other people have done. Is there a marketing campaign that impresses you? Can you deconstruct it and use its principles in yours?
The best marketing managers can see what’s worked for other companies in their space, take a similar concept and make it their own.
5. Collaborate internally
Collaborating with your team is one of the most efficient ways to develop a creative content marketing strategy. The best digital marketing companies use their teams to brainstorm many content marketing ideas and concepts.
Bring your vision to your team to discuss. See how the idea is transformed into something better.
It is challenging to work in a vacuum and the content creation arena is no different. Let your thoughts breathe and evolve with help from others.
6. Forget shortcuts and hacks
The goal of content marketing is to generate leads and establish your brand as an authority in your industry.
There’s no hack to achieve this. The only way is to regularly publish original, valuable content that conveys your company culture and service effectively to your target audience.
As part of this long-term content marketing strategy, ensure you:
Leverage social media content. Use social media sites and social media marketing, such as LinkedIn and X, to communicate with your target audience regularly. This will keep you top of mind and make it easier to notify them of updates and developments.
Optimize your landing pages. Make sure your landing pages are optimized for conversions, as they’re often the final destination before your audience chooses to buy, sign up to your email list or bounce.
Blog consistently. It’s not enough to create one long-form article or infographic and move on. Creative content marketing is all about nurturing potential buyers over time. The goal is to have your audience anticipating your next piece of valuable content, or influencers waiting to share it.
Note: Plan your content marketing activities in quarters so that you always know what to work on next. Use a project management tool or simple spreadsheet to keep track of your ideas and publishing dates.
Final thoughts
Creative content marketing might be a complex field with lots of opportunities but getting started is easy – even for small businesses. Once you publish the first few pieces, momentum will build and the results should motivate you to continue.
Use the insights and guidance in this article to plan your first content marketing strategy or refine a previous attempt. Account for SEO and you’ll see traffic, awareness and engagement grow in no time.
