Today, if you want to grow your brand, great content is how you get noticed.

Content Marketing Foundations

Cheltenham's Content Marketing Foundations guidebook

Download your free Content Marketing Flight Plan Guidebook

Download your free Content Marketing Flight Plan Guidebook

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the technique of leveraging the internet and technology to connect with potential clients and promote products and services. Content marketing is just one of many digital strategies used to create engaged and loyal fans.

What is Content Marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 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 actions.

Content marketing is an important part of any digital marketing strategy.

Why is content marketing important?

1. Content marketing helps improve brand reputation by building trust through consistent messaging.

2. Great content helps influence conversions.

3. Content enables your brand to showcase your subject matter expertise.

Types of content marketing

  • Blogs

  • Emails

  • Guidebooks

  • Infographics

  • Podcast

  • Videos

  • Visual content

Crafting your Content Marketing Strategy

A content marketing strategy will help provide your audience with valuable, engaging, and consistent marketing content. Cheltenham’s content marketing framework uses the inbound marketing methodology and the buyer’s journey to craft a comprehensive marketing strategy.

6 focus areas for effective and engaging content

  1. Inbound Marketing

  2. The Buyer’s Journey

  3. Pillar & Cluster Content

  4. Content Variation

  5. Content Channel Plans

  6. SEO

What is inbound marketing?

According to Hubspot, inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them.

The inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:

  1. Attract: Drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that establish you as a trusted advisor with whom they want to engage.

  2. Engage: Presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you.

  3. Delight: Providing help and support to empower your customers to find success with their purchase.

The Inbound Marketing Methodology

The Buyer’s Journey

What is the buyer’s journey?

The buyer’s journey (also called the sales journey) is how a potential client or customer moves from a stranger to a client. Delivering content at every stage of the buyer’s journey helps to move potential clients through your sales funnel.

The 5 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey

  • Ideas for Business Promotion

    • Social media posts

    • Blog posts

    • Customer referrals

  • Ideas to Influence Customer Consideration

    • Case studies

    • Freebies

    • Landing pages

  • What Do Customers Purchase

    • Products

    • Services

    • Membership

  • Ideas for Long-Term Investment

    • Member areas

    • Tailored content

    • Discounts/Rewards

  • Ideas for Supporting Customer Referrals

    • Impact analysis

    • Feedback surveys

    • Testimonials

What is Pillar Content?

Pillar content is foundational content that broadly overviews a core topic and links to in-depth articles about specific subtopics.

Why is pillar content important?

Pillar content supports SEO, showcasing your expertise and authority, while adding context and improving page rank.

Pillar & Cluster Content

What are Cluster Topics?

Cluster topics are multiple pieces of content grouped by a shared topic and related subtopics. Together these pages present a comprehensive understanding of a specific subject.

Why are cluster topics important?

Cluster topics create a strong internal linking web to help users (and search engines) find relevant content.

Content Variation

Content Variation- The Spice of Life

Boost content engagement by providing a variety of content.

5 Types of Content for Your Content Marketing Strategy

  • Helpful content that is educational, shareable, teaching/ learning opportunities

    • Definitions

    • Comparisons

    • Infographics

  • Idealized content depicting an attainable vision, goal oriented content

    • Ads

    • Before and Afters

    • Testimonials

  • Content to increase awareness, relationship nurturing, content which encourages action

    • Email welcome series

    • Nudge email

    • Newsletter

  • Branded content, business forward, showcasing brand personality and culture

    • Quizzes

    • Contests

    • Interviews

  • Timely content, relevant, useful for years to come

    • How-to blogs

    • Case studies

    • Essential Guides

Reposting the same content on every marketing channel is NOT effective. Great content should be repurposed and tailored to fit the platform and the audiences it is posted for. We suggest crafting a unique plan for each marketing channel you use when engaging with your audiences. But we’re also big fans of working smarter using content repurposing.

What is Content Repurposing?

Content repurposing also called cyclic content, is the process of re-using existing content and presenting it in new ways to expand its reach and lifespan. You save a significant amount of time in your content marking efforts and increase your engagement by repurposing content over multiple channels. Establish post frequency and plan ahead with automation in mind for each content channel.

Content Channel Plans

What is SEO?

You want to ensure your great content is found by anyone who needs it right? SEO or search engine optimization is a process for improving a website and its content to increase its visibility when people search for products or services. SEO stands for search engine optimization.

4 Pillars of SEO

  1. Keywords

  2. Website Optimization

  3. Consistent Valuable Content

  4. Linking Strategies (Backlinks and Internal linking)

Strengthen your SEO ranking by optimizing your website, delivering consistent, valuable, and engaging content, and by establishing a link-building strategy.

Why is SEO important?

Search engine optimization attracts clients to you, increasing your rank in search engines as a credible source of information. SEO helps your brand attract more business.

Search Engine Optimization

Use your content to drive brand growth

Content marketing is used to establish your brand as a credible source of information. It attracts qualified leads and helps you build trust while nurturing client relationships. Are you ready to establish your brand as a trustworthy and positive client experience? Developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy is a great place to start.