8 Customer-Centric Types of Content Marketing

Customer-centric content is key for developing a positive relationship with your target audience.

After all, everyone is looking for new ways to increase efficiency, improve results and make regular responsibilities easier. Different types of content marketing help your audience achieve their goals more than others. Content formats like checklists and templates are easy-to-use tools that help your customer, which means you remain top of mind later when they may be in the market to buy or engage.

Below are a few types of content marketing that you can offer as tools to your target audience.

1. Cheat Sheets

Cheat sheets offer quick insight into a given topic by offering key tips or techniques. HubSpot notes that this content format offers easy access to information, which is why cheat sheets are often saved and used more often than longer, more in-depth pieces.

When to use them:

• Cheat sheets are ideal for lead nurturing; consider providing them as bonus content in a follow-up trigger email
• May be ungated or gated, depending on where this piece of content falls in your buyer persona’s journey

Typical standards:

• Length: One to two pages
• Structure: Variety of structures available, including checklist, glossary and steps; should remain quick to read and scannable
• Format: PDF

2. Tip and Fact Sheets

A tip or fact sheet details a process, service or software that your brand can offer expert insight into that will assist one or more of your buyer personas to tackle a task.

When to use them:

• This typically top-of-the-funnel offer should be gated to collect potential customer leads who will later be nurtured into the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey
• Disclaimer: Tip or fact sheets can be used for the middle of the funnel; however, the insight and difficulty of the task must align to that stage in the buyer’s journey

Typical standards:

• Length: Less than five pages
• Structure: Instruction list, sometimes featuring bullet points, check boxes or numbered steps
• Format: PDF

3. Checklists

Checklists offer a helpful rundown of steps required to complete a specific task. Often the tasks are listed in descending order, but sometimes, much like your own personal to-do list, they are grouped together under types of work or stages.

When to use them:

• Checklists are great pieces of content to use in an inbound marketing strategy. They are a workhorse piece of content, meaning they remain usable over and over, keeping your brand top of mind for a greater period of time. This is especially crucial in B2B marketing, where the prospect-to-sale time is often long.
• Include a checklist in a marketing kit or gated as an individual offer

Typical standards:

• Length: Less than four pages
• Structure: Checklist with short descriptions
• Format: PDF

4. Templates

Templates offer pre-planned fields and formulas for helping users create strategies, develop content or build programs. By using pre-formatted designs that provide editable fields, templates offer helpful guidance to users who are seeking ways to accomplish a task faster, look for new tools or evaluate programs.

When to use them:

• Templates are ideal for lead generation and should be gated or included in a gated marketing kit
• Templates offer the greatest impact versus effort when designed with prospects in the middle of the funnel in mind

Typical standards:

• Length: At least one page
• Structure: Includes an instruction page, perhaps an example of the document filled out and an empty template
• Format: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF, Google Sheet, InDesign

5. Marketing Kits

Marketing kits contain a suite of content aimed at educating current and prospective customers. They showcase the products, strategies and services your own company uses in such a powerful way that users stop to think, “Yes, that’s exactly my problem and this company is able to solve it.” The key to a successful marketing kit is ensuring that it remains instructional rather than promotional in tone and development.

When to use them:

• Marketing kits require a lead capture form for download
• They are an ideal offer for leads in the middle of the buyer’s journey

Typical standards:

• Length: No fewer than three pieces of content
• Structure: A variety of structures is available, including formulas, instructions, worksheets and templates
• Format: Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Bridge and Media Encoder), video or images

6. Interactive Content

Interactive content keeps users hooked and provides more data that can be mined for insights. Interactive content can include tests and quizzes, calculators, games, diagnostic tools, polls, surveys, videos, slides, social media and eBooks.

After data reveals insight into your buyer personas, consider what type of interactive tool will wow and delight prospective and current customers.  

The typical format to use is HTML.

7. Landing Pages

While landing pages act as gatekeepers, gathering information for your brand when readers fill out a form for another piece of content, that doesn’t mean they don’t count as content themselves. Landing pages should highlight the benefits of the content offer they are advertising in an engaging manner to increase conversion rates.

When to use them:

• Use landing pages as the final advertisement, highlighting the positive attributes of the content behind the gate
• Landing pages play a key role in an inbound marketing strategy and provide the vehicle for conversion with a visible form for viewers to fill out

Typical standards:

• Structure: Includes call to action, potentially the title of the offer, description of benefits of the offer and a form
• Format: HTML

8. Microsites

HubSpot defines microsites as individual web pages or small clusters of web pages that act as a separate entity for a brand. Microsites typically live on their own domain, but some exist as a subdomain. They often are used to promote campaigns and don’t include all of the information that a typical business website would include, instead offering a few main navigation options and no child pages.

Microsites can be used to highlight a specific campaign, target a specific buyer persona, tell a short story or inspire a call to action.

Typical standards:

• Structure: One to four main navigation pages
• Format: HTML

 Your editorial calendar and integrated marketing campaigns will drive greater conversions and engagement with content variety. After all, variety is the spice of life. Add more spice by discovering additional types of content by downloading J&C’s free eBook, “25 Types of Content Marketing.”