15 Types of Content Marketing (Including Some You Haven’t Thought of Yet)

While there are many types of content marketing imaginable and you are only limited by your creativity, sometimes it can help to start with ideas for inspiration.

Content marketing doesn’t need to refer to just the written word (although “crawlable” text content is great for SEO.) Content can be audio or visual, static or dynamic. It can be sent in a “blast” such as an email, available for download on your website, or shared in a one-to-one personalized way.

Here are 15 types of content marketing to use in your SEO and lead generation strategies. These 15 types cater more to B2B content than B2C, but some may benefit both audiences. These ideas will give you variety in your approach, and will also enable you to achieve many goals for your sales funnel. For example, some types of content will help attract new leads through consistent publishing and keyword targeting, while others will help you nurture leads and close them into sales. Many of the following could work as sales content--helping to educate and nurture opportunities--not just generate new leads.

1. Case studies in a written or visual format — Start out by interviewing happy and ideal clients. Get insight into the vernacular they use and capture direct testimonials to sprinkle throughout. Make sure to document the challenge, solution, and outcome of partnering with your business. Furthermore, a video, infographic, or written PDF are all useful formats for a case study.
2. Video series — Create a video series and interview stakeholders or industry leaders, discuss newsworthy topics, or provide helpful information. We’ve seen clients with even simple, low-budget video productions generate interest and new leads from video content.
3. Email nurturing content tailored to an interest — Using the information in your CRM, segment a list of leads by an interest they’ve indicated, or previous action. Send a series of email content that is targeted to their interests including helpful tips and more content offers available for download. Today, people appreciate segmentation and personalization in email correspondence especially.
4. Courses or certifications — Offer a certification class or courses in a topic related to your service, or in your software. This can be a combination of video or written content. You help educate business leads and you also earn free advertising when individuals promote their certifications.
5. Educational blog — When many companies think of a blog, they think about publishing company updates. However, an educational blog is a great content asset. Start with weekly 500-word articles answering questions and tackling hot topics in your industry. This will help you publish fresh, consistent content to entice your business leads, and also rank in search engines as part of a wider keyword strategy.
6. Competitor comparison charts — Create clear comparisons between you and your competitors to share with sales leads. Visual information is quick to digest, so design charts or graphs to showcase your main differentiators.
7. Third-party thought leadership contributions — Your website isn’t the only place you can publish. Contribute to third-party websites like online magazines and news publishers. You can have stakeholders offer opinion articles, or you can publish your research to a platform like Statista. This earns you wider exposure and also backlinks to your website.
8. Top-of-funnel eBooks — eBooks don’t have to be long-form in order to be impactful. You can create content offers as small as a few pages and offer them to leads. Explain a topic relevant to your industry using clear, helpful language. Offer eBooks for download on your website behind forms.
9. Free trial — A free trial is a form of content marketing, so you should offer your trial in context to a wider nurturing strategy. Free trials are often compelling but will fall flat if you don’t come up with ongoing touchpoints to educate leads about using your software. You also need a follow-up sequence to ensure that 1) new signups are happy and 2) they are encouraged to take the next step, i.e. add money to an account, talk to a sales rep, or provide more information to continue.
10. Infographic downloadables — Checklists, to-do lists, and flowcharts can be simple ways to share compelling and helpful information quickly. Either come up with a topic from scratch or take a more robust content offer and repackage it into several smaller downloadables. These can be useful especially with ongoing lead nurturing.
11. Original research — Original research is one of the most valuable assets you can create and it also helps clients significantly from a lead gen perspective, because you offer something they can’t get anywhere else. Original research can take the form of a quarterly report, for example, and can easily be repurposed into many different formats. We recommend doing robust research, then creating bite-sized publications showcasing your information for unique audiences. For example, repurpose portions of the data for a particular segment of leads with a certain job title, company size, or geographic location.
12. Interactive quizzes — Quizzes can be useful ways to 1) engage your audience and 2) capture information on leads, for example by providing quiz “results” via email address.
13. Gamifications on your website — A gamification is basically an interactive experience of your product or software. For example, you can “gamify” the idea of customization by letting website visitors add different features to a “shopping cart.” Or you might gamify a custom demo process by letting leads select different factors that apply to them, such as company size, budget, or vertical, then following up with a demo customized to their needs. Gamification experiences often require some custom development.
14. Customizable sales one-pager —  Content is very helpful for the sales process. Create a library of sales one-pagers built in a program that the sales teams can use and edit in. This helps you align marketing and sales messaging together because both teams collaborate and hit the main points on content, but they can also be customized for individual sales clients and presentations.
15. Recorded videos for sales process — Record simple videos of yourself answering and asking common sales questions, demonstrating product walkthroughs, and making informal introductions. These bite-sized videos are great for sales enablement and can be sent to leads via email during the sales and prospecting process.

We’ve only scratched the surface with types of content marketing here. Each content type achieves different goals as well. We suggest taking on a mix of content offers that benefit you at each point in your sales funnel and analyzing performance metrics like conversion rate to see the impact on your content investments.