Content marketing

Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all  formats that involve the creation and sharing of  in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving .

The idea of sharing content as a means of persuading decision-making has driven content marketers to make their once-proprietary informational assets available to selected audiences. Alternatively, many content marketers choose to create new information and share it via any and all media. Content marketing products frequently take the form of , print or online newsletters, , , , video portals or series, in-person roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, . The purpose of this information is to inform target customers and prospects about key industry issues, sometimes involving the marketer’s products. The motivation behind content marketing is the belief that educating the customer results in the brand’s recognition.

Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals. These may include:  increasing direct sales, introducing specific  and improving customer retention. The term "content engineer" is being used to describe a new breed of marketer who creates, optimizes, and distributes the different types of content required to engage customers on the social web, based on the data of many analysis tools.