The aim of content marketing is to build a relationship with a group of people by providing useful and engaging content in the hope that some of those people will become customers.

Traditional advertising and direct mail relies on interruption to get the message across to prospective customers. TV adverts interrupt interesting programmes, magazine adverts appear in the middle of articles and junk mail and unsolicited phone calls interrupt your day. Content marketing gets the message across in the content whilst providing something that’s useful, interesting or solves a problem for your audience.

The idea is to create relevant and interesting content for your visitors and build a relationship with them that hopefully at some point will result in them making a purchase or using your services. There are now more ways than ever of delivering content on the web including, blogging, video, podcasts, email and social networks. If you can get people to opt in for your mailing list or subscribe to your blog, or follow you on Twitter, you have lots of opportunities to offer them information and build a relationship.

Most people on the internet are looking for solutions to a problem, if they’re looking for a direct purchase, then your sales pages can offer that as well. If they’re not sure what they want to buy or not confident that your product or service is right, then the content that you produce can help reduce the resistance to making the decision and introduce the reasons why they should buy from you.

So maybe offering your visitors lots of useful content with the odd sales message thrown in is a good way of attracting new prospects and customers.