Meaning & use
content marketing
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
A way of promoting a business by creating useful or interesting articles, videos, etc. that attract and keep an audience.
Grammar: Uncountable: say 'content marketing is effective', not 'a content marketing'.
Patterns
- do content marketing
- a content marketing strategy
- use content marketing to do something
The company uses content marketing to build trust with customers.
Good content marketing means answering questions people actually ask.
They hired a specialist in content marketing to improve their blog.
Common combinations
- content marketing strategy
- Our content marketing strategy focuses on short how-to videos.
- do content marketing
- Small businesses often do content marketing on social media.
- content marketing campaign
- The content marketing campaign increased newsletter sign-ups by 30%.
- a content marketing agency
- They hired a content marketing agency to manage their blog.
Synonyms and how they differ
- inbound marketing
- A broader term that includes content marketing plus other methods like search ads and email.
- brand publishing
- Similar, but emphasizes a company acting like a media publisher rather than a marketer.
Word family
- content marketer noun
- A person whose job is to plan and produce content marketing.
- content noun
- The articles, videos, or other material used in this kind of marketing.
Commonly confused: content marketing or content farm?
content marketing vs content farm
A content farm mass-produces low-quality writing for search traffic, while content marketing aims to build a real audience with useful material.
Practice
Instead of running more ads, the startup turned to ______ to attract readers with free guides.
Choose one answer.
'Content marketing' is uncountable and fits the meaning of attracting an audience with useful material. 'A content marketing' is wrong because the noun is uncountable.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “content marketing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.