Content marketing is a strategic marketing and business process focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer action.
When done correctly, this helps create a relationship with your audience, which leads to trust. And when your audience members trust you, they’re more willing to do business with you when they’re ready to make a purchasing decision.
To communicate with your audience, you need to produce content. Content has the very important job of pulling people from one stage of the inbound methodology to another. Your content should attract the right people to your site, engage those people into leads, and nurture ad help close them into customers. But it doesn’t stop there. Your content should also delight your customers and turn them into promoters of your brand.
In a nutshell, content marketing is the art of communicating with your prospects and customers without having to sell to them. As opposed to advertising your products and services, you’re creating helpful, engaging content that your prospects and customers can enjoy and learn from.
SOURCE: Content Marketing Worksheet - Hubspot Academy