What Types of Digital Content will Benefit your Business?

Content is a vital part of your digital marketing strategy. I’m sure you’ve heard that one before, but just take a second to really think about it.

If a business has no online content, in theory, it means that it has almost nothing on the website and therefore, there is nothing to optimize.

Without content you have no way to get your business’ message across.

Digital Content – The Good and the Bad

Bad online content can be even more disastrous. Online content is your business’ online sales representative: sometimes it’s the first point of contact between a business and a potential client.

Having high quality content shows customers that your business is strong; intelligent and high quality too. Having presentable content (equipped with great grammar; sentence structure; title hierarchy and logical paragraphs) is like having a sales person with a strong hand-shake, brilliant smile and a charming demeanor selling your products and services.

Conversely, bad content is similar to having an undesirable, rude and dirty person trying to sell your product – it’s off-putting.

Therefore, it makes sense that the type of online content you create should be determined by your online audience’s needs wherever they are in their buyer journey. Yes, this means that different stages of the buyer’s journey require different types of digital content.

Start by creating multiple buyer personas in order to identify your audience’s goals and what the challenges are regarding marketing your business to them. On the most basic level, your content should meet these goals and overcome these challenges.

What types of digital content should you create?

This is determined by where the consumer is in their buyer’s journey. Think about when they would be most likely to consume digital content in relation to their position; this is called online content mapping.

Content Mapping

Content mapping is about targeting your digital content to hit your audience at just the right moment. To encourage the audience to engage with your content by giving them the information they need when they need it.

Therefore, the goal is to target digital content according to:

The characteristics of the consumer (the reason for creating buyer personas) and
How close the consumer is to making a purchase (the position in their buyer’s journey).

Different types of Digital Content for different audiences

It’s beneficial to keep in mind that different audiences may appreciate different formats of content. This depends on both the type of business your company conducts – whether B2B or B2C – as well as the consumer’s position in their buyer journey.

Business to Business (B2B) content

Business to business content tends to be longer and more detailed, with examples such as: research reports; e-books; case studies and testimonials.

This is a result of the nature of products that companies buy, which are usually long-term and high-expense. The content has the task of convincing more than one person as businesses will have multiple people reviewing the appropriateness of any purchase, unlike B2C business.

Business to Customer (B2C) content

Business to customer content tends to be shorter and extremely informative, for this reason content such as infographics, blog posts and short videos.

This is a result of business to customer sales usually being directed at individuals and therefore, there is only one person to convince. The average individual prefers short, impactful content that holds the key points of information they are looking for; rather than long-winded, “salesy” essays about product and service offerings.

There are many variations when it comes to formatting digital content. With so many formats to try, things can get a little confusing, so here are a few examples of digital content formats to use for each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness Stage
- Blog Posts
- Infographics
- Short videos
Consideration Stage
- EBooks
- Research reports
- Webinars
Decision Stage
- Case studies
- Testimonials

Digital Marketing South Africa

The world of digital and social media marketing is incredibly dynamic and complex. However, content strategy and digital marketing are vital tools to market your business which offer countless opportunities and incredible benefits.

Digital Marketing South Africa offers you the opportunity to take your business to the next level. We have a team of digital and social media marketing wizards ready and equipped with all the tools necessary to help you grow your business online.

We handle all aspects of online marketing, including: