14 Highly Effective Types of Content Marketing to Use in 2023

Content Marketing has become a key element of modern communication. The proof is that it appears across almost every advertising channel and has become the “backbone” of integrated marketing campaigns. That is why more and more organizations are exploring a wider variety of content marketing formats.

If you are still not sure what Content Marketing is, or which types of Content Marketing work best, let The7 walk you through it!

What Is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is simply the practice of creating valuable content to attract a wide audience and turn them into potential customers. As society develops, almost every company/business and every Content Marketer uses different kinds of content to get their message across to customers, including images, videos, text, podcasts….

That said, keep in mind that the ultimate goal of Content Marketing is not necessarily to sell. Depending on the stage and the audience you are targeting, Content Marketing can simply be about grabbing attention and increasing brand awareness.

Typically, people who work in Content Marketing are not limited to written words. They can also freely show off their creativity across many different types of Content Marketing.

3 Basic Types of Content Marketing

Today’s content marketing formats are extremely diverse and can be classified by many different criteria. In essence, though, there are three main types of content: entertainment content, informational content, and utility content.

Entertainment Content

This type of content aims to entertain and relax readers. Of all the content types, entertainment content goes viral the fastest. Quite a few well-known brands use it to get their posts shared with as many users as possible, which generates interest, attention, and a topic of conversation for the online community. As a result, businesses can easily promote their products and brand to a large number of internet users.

Example:

News that Xiaomi had changed its logo drew enormous public attention. Specifically, the company reworked its logo design from a squared-off shape into softer, more rounded curves. The change seemed unremarkable until Xiaomi revealed that the new logo cost up to 2 million CNY (roughly 7 billion VND).

Right after Xiaomi disclosed the logo design cost, news sites and social media platforms shared the story at breakneck speed. Most of the posts were memes and articles poking fun at the brand’s generous spending on a logo that “doesn’t look much different from before.”

Setting the old and new logo designs aside, from a marketing perspective, Xiaomi’s logo showing up across websites and news articles all over the internet can be considered a resounding success as a brand communication campaign.

Informational Content

No website can do without informational content. Among all types of content articles, informational content plays an especially important role. Its main job is to give readers useful information and answers to the questions they care about.

Within an article, a business can weave in information related to its brand or its products/services. Marketers love this type of content because it reaches customers in a very natural, effortless way.

Users typically go online on their own to look for things they don’t yet know. If you provide useful information, your business makes a strong impression on those users, who may well be your potential customers. That makes it a great solution for businesses that are struggling to find the right direction for brand development.

However, compared with entertainment content, informational content delivers results somewhat more slowly. In addition, building and developing the content requires a business to invest considerable resources.

Utility Content

Utility content refers to content marketing formats designed to untangle and solve customers’ problems. Most marketing service companies use this type of content to remind customers about their brand, which builds and strengthens the business’s position in consumers’ minds and in the market.

Utility content makes it possible to measure how often customers use it. It provides statistical reports on clicks, downloads, and usage. When rolling out utility content, a business needs to invest in a systematic, serious way. Only then can it deliver truly useful and enjoyable experiences to customers.

The Most Popular Types of Content Marketing

Here are the 14 most popular types of Content Marketing that The7 wants to introduce to you. Take a look!

Social Media

Among today’s popular types of Content Marketing, social media is considered the top-priority format simply because it suits every kind of business model.

Social Media lets companies/businesses build content in many formats to attract viewers and interact with them directly.

Today, social media is often compared to a “giant” ecosystem. It allows companies/businesses to combine several different content formats in a single Marketing campaign for maximum impact. On top of that, you can test the effectiveness of Content Marketing on Social Media extremely quickly, without waiting weeks or months.

All you need to do is look at viewers’ engagement data (likes, shares, and comments) on the content you publish, and you can easily identify which type of content performs best with your audience. Do they prefer images or videos? Are they drawn to short or long content? From there, you can create content that fits your company’s/business’s core audience.

Blog

Blogs are also one of the most popular types of Content Marketing today, as more and more companies/businesses invest in this format to reach their customers.

Blog posts usually deliver the best results when they are used for the right purpose. Whereas blog content used to be limited to promoting products or services, companies/businesses now choose to create content related to their products/services.

This shift has significantly raised the role of Content Marketing on Blogs. It not only has a bigger impact on potential customers but also creates a necessary connection with the business activities the company/business already has in place.

A Blog can also be seen as an online diary that lets companies/businesses post updates on all kinds of information they want to promote.

Combining two types of Content Marketing, Social Media and Blog, also creates a mutually reinforcing environment and drives traffic to each other very effectively.

Email

Email Marketing is another popular type of Content Marketing that many companies/businesses choose to use. This approach lets companies/businesses proactively engage with potential customers.

With Email Marketing, your company/business can also promote new products/services, announce current promotions, or remind customers about their purchases…

With its variety of formats, Email Marketing is no longer confined to text-heavy content. It can now take many forms, including images, videos, survey forms…

Video

Although it takes more effort and production cost from the content creation team, video Content Marketing still leads the trend in reaching Vietnamese users. The proof is that many people enjoy watching videos because they combine both sound and visuals.

In practice, quality videos always attract a lot of viewers. Not only on video platforms like YouTube and TikTok… but also video Content Marketing on other social media platforms gets plenty of attention from users.

Still, you need to master five key elements when producing video Content Marketing to get the best results: Attention, Attractive, Demonstration (showcasing the product/service), Advise, and Action (a call to action).

Infographics

If you’re tired of text-only content, try sparking readers’ interest with Infographics. This type of content is especially well suited to material with lots of data, because readers can easily process and encode the information. In fact, all of us are drawn to images more than to written words. Above all, Infographics also make it easy for readers to save the information that matters to them.

Podcast

Although Podcasts are a new form of Content Marketing, they promise to bring many breakthroughs to content creation. They are seen as an upgraded version of the Ebook. Where companies/businesses once published plenty of free Ebooks to reach customers who like to read, Podcasts get closer to people who like to listen.

Podcasts are arguably an effective way for companies/businesses to raise brand awareness in hard-to-reach environments. However, this form of Content Marketing demands meticulous attention to detail and a certain level of expertise in order to deliver information in the most natural way.

Podcasts are arguably an effective way for companies/businesses to raise brand awareness in hard-to-reach environments.

User-Generated Content (Content Created by Users)

User-generated content is a rather bold content marketing approach because it draws in a large number of customers and generates high engagement. Besides making use of the main sources of information from your customers, you can also listen directly to their opinions and new ideas to help improve your company/business.

Case Studies

It is hard to deny that today’s customers can easily suffer from “information overload,” because countless brands and their promotional content keep appearing. This has also made customers savvier, able to judge objectively the information they come across online. But it has also made trust between consumers and companies/businesses more important than ever.

Experience shows that customers only choose to buy a company’s/business’s products/services when they trust it. Case Studies are an effective type of content that helps you build that trust with your customers.

If empty talk doesn’t deliver practical results, give your customers real stories instead, so they can gradually experience and start using your company’s/business’s products/services.

Guides/How-Tos

User guides are essential for improving customers’ experience with a product/service. You can offer documents, articles, or videos that explain your products/services in detail and help consumers get the full value out of them. Whether you create guides for physical products or for software, they bring your company’s/business’s products/services closer to your customers.

E-Books

E-books are on the list of popular types of Content Marketing today. This type of content is often used in the early stage of a Marketing campaign to attract potential customers. With free Ebooks, you can collect users’ emails and build a lead list for your Email Marketing campaign.

White Paper

A white paper is a report or guide issued by an authoritative body to help readers understand an issue and make a necessary decision. White papers are widely used in the B2B model.

Like Ebooks, white papers are long-form content with a powerful magnetic pull. Compared with Ebooks, though, white papers are a bit richer in information. That makes this form of Content Marketing an ideal solution for B2B and for small companies/businesses that want to build thought leadership.

The biggest benefit of using white papers is that they help small companies/businesses collect a significant amount of information about potential customers. According to a 2019 report, as many as 76% of buyers are willing to share personal information with a company/business in exchange for a white paper.

If you want more opportunities to collect information about potential customers, you must make sure your white paper is managed effectively.

Checklist

The next type of Content Marketing The7 wants to introduce is the Checklist, a worksheet that lists the tasks needed to achieve a desired result. Checklists are regarded as a type of Marketing that every company/business should have, because they do more than promote: they provide real, practical value to potential customers.

A checklist typically provides a list of tasks that a company/business needs to carry out. It must be easy to read and easy to grasp. You can also share these checklists on media channels or pair them with Blog posts to get considerable results.

Interviews

Interviews are a type of Content Marketing that adds value to a company/business in customers’ eyes. Interviews with industry experts or real customers both deliver the best results.

Prioritize information-rich interview content for customers that addresses the needs and challenges they face. What’s more, this approach also helps establish your company/business as an expert in your industry.

Here are some interview formats you can consider for your Content Marketing campaigns:

– Live interviews through online webinars or Facebook live streams.

– Recording the interview and posting it on your company’s/business’s website as well as sharing it on YouTube.

– Writing up the interview as text and publishing it on your Blog.

– Looking for opportunities to interview additional third-party sources.

Note that the interview content must deliver practical value for your potential customers. When choosing who to interview, you also need a deeper understanding of the topics that matter to your customers.

GIFs and Memes

GIF (short for Graphics Interchange Format) is a format for exchanging images. GIFs offer more than 256 colors and a range of animation styles. Memes, meanwhile, are part of Social Media and are usually spread as humorous images that go viral extremely fast on the Internet.

GIFs and Memes are both popular Content Marketing formats with customers. They have long been an indispensable part of Internet culture. Companies/businesses can use these two formats to reach their customers by creating exciting or highly entertaining images. You can also use GIFs and Memes on your Blog or in Emails to engage with customers.

Social Media Posts

Social media has always been an extremely powerful brand communication channel. Social media platforms are the bridge that lets businesses reach customers and build close relationships with them. With a growing number of users, social media is also an environment full of target audiences who could become your potential customers.

Today, most businesses treat social media as an important part of their content marketing strategies. Depending on how they approach customers and what conversion goal they have, businesses can choose different social network channels for their marketing activities.

Social media posts can be posts on a Facebook Page, in groups, on a personal profile… or posts created to run ads. If you run ads on social media, you need to study the rules for writing posts and choosing images carefully. If you violate the terms, your business account can be locked at any time.

Press Releases

A press release is a brief written announcement, usually one page long. It is created to attract attention and raise awareness about an important issue or event at a business.

A business/organization sends its press release to media companies, reporters, and journalists. It works as an invitation for media outlets to cover the business’s latest activities or events, which in turn draws public attention to the important activity the business is carrying out.

Daily Content

Daily content is also among the most popular content types today. This type of content is scheduled for regular publication every day at a specific time. The most common examples are news bulletins and news updates…

Daily content is fairly easy to get in front of readers because it is short, selective, and condensed. It lets readers grasp all the key information quickly, which saves users time when reading the press or following the news online.

Marketers use daily content to attract readers to visit their websites regularly. This type of content also helps businesses build their brand on social media sites or create links that lead users to their website.

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are emails that organizations, businesses, or individuals send regularly to subscribed users. Typically, the email revolves around a particular theme such as news, promotions, or new product introductions…

Don’t confuse an email newsletter with a promotional email. A promotional email is usually meant only to provide product information and persuade recipients to buy, try a product, or join a program. An email newsletter, on the other hand, focuses more on the user experience and gives recipients useful, valuable information.

Livestream

Livestreaming has only emerged in recent years. Even so, it quickly became popular and has taken the lead over other content types. When creating livestream videos on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok… a business gets control over the location and timing and can create content freely.

Livestreaming is also a cost-saving solution that reduces dependence on TV stations. With just a smartphone and a prepared script, you can join any livestream channel you like.

Today, standout livestream sales videos can draw hundreds or even thousands of views, interactions, and shares. Thanks to livestreaming, businesses can interact directly with customers, which increases your business’s brand reach.

Product Review Content

Among the most popular content marketing types today, Product Review Content can’t be overlooked. It refers to content created to evaluate a product/service, giving readers the most objective and authentic view of the product so they can decide whether to use it.

Product review content can take the form of articles or review videos. Some of the most popular platforms for publishing review content are Facebook, YouTube… The advantages of product review content include:

• It doesn’t require deep expertise or knowledge, so almost anyone can write a review
• The content revolves around real experiences, so you can use a friendly, everyday tone as long as it meets readers’ needs
• It provides information and introduces products objectively
• It strongly motivates readers to take action
• It can be applied across many different fields and industries

8 Tips for Effective Content Marketing

In addition to mastering the popular types of Content Marketing, you also need the following 8 tips to make your Content Marketing effective.

Understand Your Target Audience

The most practical advice for companies/businesses today is to put the customer at the center. Only when you truly understand your customers, or the audiences you are aiming for, can you create the content they want.

Understand the Customer Journey

The customer journey is simply the process in which customers interact with a company/business and its products/services across media channels. At each stage of this journey, customers have different thoughts, behaviors, and needs. So knowing where your customers are helps you create content that is relevant and effective.

Offer Useful Solutions

However many forms Content Marketing takes, the ultimate goal we want to achieve is to bring value to customers. Useful content helps customers solve the problems they are facing, or brings positive energy through empathy and sharing.

Set Specific Goals for Each Type of Content

To get the best results, set a specific goal for each type of content you plan to produce. For example, if you want more followers on your Instagram channel, increase your email subscription rate.

Provide In-Depth Content

Alongside quick, highly entertaining content, to keep your customers around you need in-depth content that is valuable and, above all, exclusive. This type of content can be built through Blog posts or high-quality long videos. Providing users with useful knowledge is a way to build a long-term relationship with them.

Keep Your Content Consistent

For effective Content Marketing, you need to make sure content is posted and updated regularly. Use content management tools to make content production more consistent. Updating regularly also helps reduce the risk of published content becoming outdated.

Use Data to Make Your Content More Persuasive

Content that comes with data is usually highly effective because it makes what you say more persuasive and credible. Building trust in readers’ minds is, of course, extremely important for a company’s/business’s brand awareness.

Track Results and Update Regularly

Don’t just create content, post it online, and leave it there. Regularly track and measure metrics such as readership and engagement to evaluate how well your content performs.

Core Content Is the Key to Optimizing ROI

Core Content is content that your company’s/business’s potential customers care about. Keep in mind that not every piece of Core Content will do its job in a Content Marketing strategy when it runs on its own. So you can create more Content related to the campaign to increase Traffic and lead your audience to the core content you are building.

If a piece of core content is performing well and you still want more Traffic, keep applying it. But if your Core Content is inconsistent, you should stop.

Our advice for you:

– Consider looking for overlap between the many topics your potential customers struggle with and the problems your company/business can help them solve through its products/services.

– Think carefully before settling on a new topic, and run competitor research so you can make the most of your company’s/business’s strengths.

Conclusion

Overall, you can absolutely combine different types of Content Marketing to get the maximum impact from your company’s/business’s Marketing strategy. And always remember that whichever type of Content you use, you need to put your readers at the center.

If the information above about the different types of Content Marketing was truly useful to you, keep following The7‘s website for more new and effective knowledge about full-service Marketing!

For all information about our services, connect with us today via Hotline: 082 246 7979 – 028 3899 7377 or visit https://the7digital.com/ for a consultation!

Content Marketing resources:

• Storytelling content
• Writing content marketing
• Types of Facebook content
• Content marketing plan template
• Content marketing strategy
• Content marketing trends 2023