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Why content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising

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Content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising

Content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising

Traditional marketing and advertising is one way – you send out marketing messages to put your brand in front of prospective customers and clients and then leave it up to them whether they want to buy from you or not.

These days content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising – instead of simply broadcasting marketing messages, you engage with your audience.

This can be done either through entertainment or education. Or both.

In one of my previous posts I talk about a Netflix series called “Yeh Meri Family. It’s a story of a teenage boy whose father is a mutual fund investment consultant.

It is an engaging storyline and throughout the season (only the first season is out yet) you watch the series as if you watch any other series. Unless you are told, it never even registers that subtly, you are being sold the idea of investing in mutual funds.

Content marketing and traditional marketing and advertising are intertwined because, as this Business Standard article states, traditional modes of communicating with consumers have collapsed.

The article has some interesting stats vis-à-vis India. There are more than 1 trillion media touch points. This is not interesting. What’s interesting is, More than 90% of these touch points have come into being only over the past 5 years, due to an average household having multiple mobile screens and hence, multiple modes of media consumption. Traditionally, there used to be just one TV.

The article further states that there are 3 media consumption attributes that dominate watching pattern:

  1. More personalization
  2. No prime-time (people can watch anytime anywhere)
  3. High propensity to skip (because the choice is unlimited)

There are 3 reasons why there can be no marketing and advertising without content and content marketing:

  1. People find information using search engines and for that, you have to take SEO seriously and for SEO, you need high quality content.
  2. People come across information (even search for it) on social media websites and it’s only high quality content that gets the attention on social media.
  3. People receive information through email marketing which, again, depends on high-quality content that is valuable and informative.

This Lyfe Marketing blog post cites statistics that reveal that 78% consumers prefer getting to know a company or a brand via helpful articles and blog posts rather than simple ads. 70% also believe that organizations that invest in good content are more interested in building meaningful relationships with consumers, customers and clients.

Search engines are a big source of traffic for most of the businesses these days because most of the businesses have gone online.

Due to the abundance of content, consumers first prefer to read a lot about a product or service before purchasing it. People do this instinctively.

For example, if you buy a phone, you will read about it, you will also watch YouTube videos of the model you want to buy.

When you come across a new product and you feel it may be useful, you read about it, you watch videos of people using it and giving their opinion on it. This is content.

Content marketing also democratizes the realm of marketing. When it comes to advertising, there is no limit. There is always a competitor that can out-advertise you.

Content marketing on the other hand is solely based on relevance, quality and usefulness. Your competitor cannot beat you with publishing lots of content unless that content is of high quality.

If your competitor publishes 50 blog posts of no particular value (only covering keywords) and you publish high-quality 5 blog posts that your customers appreciate, that is more beneficial.

Is content marketing replacing conventional advertising

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What exactly do you understand by “conventional advertising” and how do you think it is different from content marketing? Contrary to popular belief content marketing doesn’t just happen on the Internet. Ever since the first corporate magazine or journal was published to raise awareness about a particular field of work and through that, awareness about the product or service itself, content marketing has been in action. You must have already heard the story multiple times, but do you know why soap operas are called soap operas? It’s because it was a series of TV dramas sponsored by a soap company. What was that? That was content marketing.

Content marketing means creating emotional stories rather than simply telling people to buy your products or services just because you’re selling them. Stories create a context. You show actual people being impacted by the presence or absence of the said products or services.

This EContent article explains with some examples how conventional advertising is rapidly turning into content marketing.

How content marketing is different from conventional advertising

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Conventional advertising is constantly telling you to buy something. It’s normally one way – you come across it on TV, radio, print media or in the form of banner ads, landing pages and text link ads on the Internet. Conventional advertising is interruptive – instead of providing any value, it simply starts telling you buy this product or subscribe to that service. Of course it is exorbitantly expensive from business perspective.

In the absence of any other option, it was considered to be the best way of reaching out to prospective customers and clients. Content marketing not only altered the perception, it completely changed the rules of marketing and engagement.

We have all grown up in the midst of advertising, but content marketing is something very few people understand. Lack of proper understanding prevents many people from even taking it seriously, let alone considering it as an alternative to conventional advertising. What exactly is it?

Just because it is called “content marketing” it doesn’t mean there is lots of marketing. It simply means, indirectly marketing through valuable content. What is valuable content? Content that informs, educates, creates awareness, engages prospects, or even entertains. While implementing a content marketing strategy you don’t overtly tell your prospective customers and clients to do business with you. You constantly provide them highly useful information that they actually appreciate. Through your content, you are constantly communicating with them. The main ingredients of an effective content marketing strategy are:

  • Relevance
  • Value
  • Timeliness
  • Engagement
  • Regularity

Is content marketing an Internet-specific buzzword?

Although content marketing has certainly gone mainstream with the advent of easy publishing through the Internet, it’s origin definitely cannot be traced just back to the Internet. In the modern times (around 100 years) businesses have been using valuable content to strengthen their brands, reach out to their customers and clients and create an engaging presence in the market. Those in America may like to research more on the Michelin Guide for example. Been published since 1900, it is a very famous travel guide that provides highly valuable information to travelers such as where to live, where to eat and where to rent good automobiles.

Do you know that the G.I. Joe comics were created to boost the sales of the eponymous toys? Another good example is Richard Branson – he constantly participates in activities (for instance covering great distances in a hot air balloon) that get quite media coverage.

So one way or another, content marketing has been at the forefront of branding for many years. It has just now become accessible to almost everybody due to a publishing revolution called the web.

Why big businesses like Coca-Cola are ditching conventional advertising in favor of content marketing?

By now every content marketer, one way or the other, has talked about this famous Coca-Cola content marketing roadmap.

These videos were created for their own staff.

So why content marketing? Because it works. People these days don’t like being talked to. They don’t like interruptions. They want to be engaged. They want to find you when they need you. For that they may use their favorite search engines or their favorite social networking and social media websites. The moot point is, if I want to purchase a particular camera I would like to obtain the right information myself rather than you as the camera seller pushing that information down my throat when all I want to do is watch my favorite TV show or YouTube video.

Today’s customer is empowered by unprecedented connectivity. He or she can immediately log onto the Internet and find the needed information. He or she should be able to find you exactly when he or she needs you. This becomes possible through a carefully implemented content marketing strategy.

Big businesses are switching over to content marketing because one, conventional advertising is not as effective as content marketing, and two, conventional advertising is a lot more expensive and short-lived compared to publishing and distributing targeted content.

I will share more thoughts on this in the coming blog posts, so stay tuned.