Content Marketing
Using useful content to attract, educate, and help a relevant audience.
Content marketing means creating and distributing useful content for the people you want as customers. The content helps them solve a problem, understand a decision, or see how something works. The business benefit comes from attracting the right people and giving them a reason to trust you.
A tutorial can do this. So can a template, a teardown, a short video, or a calculator. A blog is one possible home for the work; it is not the whole strategy.
Make something worth keeping 🧰
Imagine you sell client onboarding software to small agencies. An article about “the importance of client relationships” says little. A client kickoff agenda, complete with the questions an agency tends to forget, gives the reader something to use on Monday.
The choice is yours: describe a problem from a distance, or help someone get through it.
Ahrefs’ own content marketing guide demonstrates this approach: it uses product screenshots inside explanations of how to do the work. The reader gets an answer and sees the tool in context.
Choose the job for the content 🎯
Different pieces can serve different moments. You do not need to force every reader straight into a demo.
| Reader’s question | A useful piece | A plausible next step |
|---|---|---|
| How do I do this? | A walkthrough with a finished example | Try the workflow |
| Which approach should I choose? | A comparison with honest tradeoffs | Check whether the product fits |
| Will this work for a team like mine? | A customer story with context and evidence | Discuss a similar use case |
These are planning examples, not promised conversion paths. A useful article can influence a purchase much later, or help an existing customer succeed.
Publishing is the halfway point 📣
The Content Marketing Institute’s definition includes distribution for a reason. A good page still needs a route to its readers.
Choose that route before you write. A searchable question might suit SEO. A detailed teardown might travel through a newsletter or a relevant community. A sales objection might become a resource your team sends after calls.
Adapt the useful part to the channel. If you share a template in a community, explain who it is for and give people enough to judge it. Dropping a link with “new post!” asks everyone else to do the work.
Measure the help it provides 📊
Look beyond pageviews. Does the piece bring relevant visitors? Do they use the template, reply with a real problem, start a trial, or arrive on a sales call better informed?
Use attribution to track visible journeys, and ask customers what helped them decide. Neither gives you the entire story. Together they can help you decide what deserves another afternoon of writing.