Content marketing, like many other technical terms such as management, strategy, and marketing is an easy concept to grasp but a hard concept to define.
I have my own definition in mind wherever I refer to the content marketing in this blog:
Content Marketing is an approach to the marketing that uses content as the main instrument. Although in a highly competitive or saturated content market, the content marketing itself transforms to the marketing of content.
In addition to the above definition, here you can find a few other popular definitions of the content marketing.
Content Marketing Institute on Definition of 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 (+).
Content Marketing as defined by Chris Bolman
Advertising that delivers value to its recipient, not just [an] impression (+).
Definition of content marketing by Copyblogger
CONTENT MARKETING means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you (+).
i-SCOOP defines content marketing as follows
Content marketing is much more than creating, distributing and sharing content in order to engage audiences, generate leads, improve branding, and other marketing goals you can serve with content marketing (+).
Content Marketing Definition by Unbounce
The discipline of creating editorial content that serves a business objective, such as attracting prospects, establishing credibility or converting customers. Content marketing is about building a long-term relationship with your audience while delivering as much value and delight as possible (+).
Hubspot on definition of content marketing
Content marketing is a marketing program that centers on creating, publishing, and distributing content for your target audience — usually online — the goal of which is to attract new customers (+).
Content marketing defined by Contently
Content marketing (n.): The use of storytelling to build relationships with consumers by providing them with something entertaining or useful (+).
Content Marketing definition according to The Marketing.AI
Content marketing is distinct from traditional marketing because instead of the marketing strategy consisting solely of one medium – a pitch for its products – the marketer’s core activity is as a branded publisher of its own content. Because of this, any content marketing definition will often highlight this distinction from traditional marketing, particularly given that the popularity of the former has been largely brought about by the latter’s limitations. The limitations of tradition marketing include:
- Oversaturation of online traditional marketing
- Increasing ability of readers to subconsciously filter out traditional marketing
- Limited ability to engage customers, as traditional marketing offers little information for the discerning potential client (+)
Definition of Content Marketing by Heidi Cohen
Content Marketing provides consumers with useful information to aid purchase decisions, improve product usage and entertain them while achieving organizational goals without being overtly promotional (+).
Definition of Content Marketing by Keith Blanchard
Content marketing is the opposite of advertising. It’s about engaging consumers with the stuff they really want, in a way that serves your brand’s purposes and ideals, rather than just trying to jam your logo into their periphery (+)
An excerpt from the Content Rules
Content Marketing is anything a company creates and shares to tell their story. It is conversational, human and doesn’t try to constantly sell to you (C.C Chapman and Ann Handley).
Articles and references for further reading:
The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing (Moz)
Definition of the content marketing platform (Curata)