What is the core focus of content marketing?

The core focus of content marketing is to attract and retain a clearly defined audience by creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content. This process stimulates interest in products and services, ultimately driving profitable customer action. "Exclusively promoting brand messages without addressing consumer intent" is incorrect because effective content marketing prioritizes audience needs and interests, not just brand promotion. "Generating immediate sales through aggressive advertising" describes direct marketing or advertising, not content marketing, which focuses on long-term engagement and trust-building. "Creating content solely for entertainment purposes" is too narrow; while entertainment can be a component, content marketing also educates, informs, and solves problems for the audience.