Content Marketing
Content Marketing tests how to plan, produce, distribute, and measure content that earns attention and supports a business goal. Expect questions on audience research, content types, funnel mapping, editorial process, and ROI.
Core rules and concepts
- Start with audience and intent, not format. Define the reader, the problem, and the action the content should enable.
- Map content to funnel stage: awareness content educates; consideration content compares; decision content proves value and removes risk.
- Build topic clusters: a pillar page covers a broad topic; supporting articles answer subtopics and link back with descriptive anchors.
- Distribution is part of the plan. Owned email, search, social, sales enablement, and repurposing turn one asset into multiple touchpoints.
- Audit existing content for traffic, conversions, freshness, and overlap; update, consolidate, or retire.
Worked example
A blog receives 50,000 monthly visits. A lead magnet converts 2% to email opt-in: 1,000 leads. Sales qualifies 10% as marketing-qualified: 100 MQLs. Of those, 20% become sales-qualified: 20 SQLs. A 25% close rate yields 5 customers. At $5,000 revenue per customer, that is $25,000. If content costs $5,000, the return is ($25,000 − $5,000)/$5,000 = 400% ROMI. The reasoning: follow the full chain and state assumptions.
Traps that cost marks
Publishing without a distribution plan; measuring pageviews or time on page as business outcomes; ignoring sales enablement; letting old content decay; and producing every format for every audience segment.