What Is Content Marketing?
3 minute read.
Content marketing is a form of marketing involving the creation and sharing of online material that does not explicitly promote a brand but offers some value relating to the products or services offered by a brand.
Online material can mean:
Blog articles
Web pages
Landing pages
Books
Photos
Infographics
Videos
Podcasts
Social media posts
Ads
Content in any of the above formats can provide value to an audience. And if it is both relevant and consistent enough, it will drive profitable action from your audience.
Content Marketing Actually Offers Something Your Customers Want
Traditional marketing is becoming far less effective while content marketing is on the rise. Why?
Because content marketing provides what traditional marketing doesn’t: value and relevance.
When you understand how the buying cycle works, you can start to see where content marketing succeeds and traditional marketing falls short:
Awareness: The customer becomes aware there is a solution to a need they may have
Research: Upon becoming aware of a solution, the customer will educate themselves on offerings of solution
Consideration: After deciding they have obtained enough information about the solution, the customer will compare and evaluate the tangible solution offered by different vendors
Purchase: Once the customer has selected a vendor to fulfill their need, they will move forward with the transaction
Traditional marketing is good for the last two steps— offering an option, a sales pitch, and a call to action for how to buy the product or service. Traditional marketing is also known as push marketing which is all about pushing the ad message out in front of anybody.
Push Marketing vs. Pull Marketing
In push marketing, there’s no room for the first two steps of the buying cycle.
But with content marketing, the first two steps are the most important. The aim is to raise awareness and then educate an audience on a solution they may not have previously considered.
By tapping into the first two steps of the buying cycle, content marketing does a great service to consumers by offering them honest, valuable, and relevant information. There are no strings attached. There is no luring and no shady sales tactics in content marketing. It is honest and upfront.
This is why this type of marketing is otherwise known as pull marketing. Because it is designed to attract customers through search engine optimization, which allows the consumer to find brands through relevant searches.
The consumer is pulling marketing to themselves that they find relevant and of value.
When the first two steps of the buying cycle are accomplished by you, the marketer, you have established ethos with the consumer. With that trust, you can establish customer loyalty far more effectively than any form of traditional marketing can.
Content Marketing Is Your Friend
Not only is customer loyalty a big positive to content marketing, but it is also much cheaper and more effective than traditional marketing.
Content marketing efforts cost 62% less than traditional marketing efforts, and they generate three times as many leads (Demand Metric, 2016).
Who wouldn’t want cheaper and better marketing efforts?! That’s content marketing.
Content marketing offers something far more than promoting your product or service. It offers actual value to consumers. This form of marketing has become so popular that it’s actually starting to rival traditional marketing.
90% of all organizations use content in their marketing efforts (Demand Metric, 2016).
Don’t be left behind in the substance-less ways of exclusive traditional marketing. Join the efforts of marketing not just products and services, but the real value to consumers.
Don’t forget: Content is queen!
If you’re in need of help with your content, drop me a line and let’s chat, my friend.