Tag Archives: Content Marketing Explained

Is content marketing merely a PR exercise?

No, I’m not asking this question. Avinash Kaushik has raised this question in his recent newsletter. Actually, he has taken an example from a Think with Google web page and has dissected various sections of the page to illustrate that the writer has merely thrown around his verbosity without communicating anything concrete. Here is the web link to Avinash’s latest newsletter update.

The title of his newsletter is very apt: “Stop telling me Jesus was great”.

What it means to say is, through your content, stop telling something people already know. Stop telling that has been told thousands of times already. Tell something that I don’t know. If you are simply regurgitating everybody else’s message, through your content marketing you are just indulging in sophisticated PR exercise to get traffic to your website.

There is a reason why I’m talking about Avinash’s newsletter. The example that he has given is not of content marketing but of landing page copywriting.

From the landing page copywriting example, he has tried to deliver a larger message – your content marketing should be about communicating something which is highly useful, and hasn’t yet been communicated.

The Think with Google link actually makes no sense. It tries to deliver a very weighty message but in the end, ends up conveying nothing. The writer seems to be too impressed with himself or herself.

He first mentions three pointers published on the Google link: 1: Accumulate and integrate. 2: Unearth insights that matter. 3: Turn data into action.

Is there something new what is being said above? Doesn’t everyone these days tell you to use data to get insight? Aren’t organizations and even political parties using big data to decide what is the next step they need to take?

Anyway, I’m not writing this post to talk about what Avinash has to say about this particular link and it would be better that for that you read his update on the link above. I’m interested in the last para of his newsletter:

There is one major flaw in my analysis above. Perhaps the point of Content Marketing is to selfishly engage in Public Relations exercises. Hence, there is absolutely no attempt at understanding what the audience wants/needs and no attempt at creating anything that solve for anyone except the pimping company. The only goal is to cheat the audience of their precious attention. This strategy would be odd, but if that is your explicit strategy then nothing I’ve said above applies.

I can understand his general comment on the state of content marketing, that it is often used to create a senseless presence on the Internet to draw traffic from all over the web and when people actually arrive at the website, no purpose is solved. In that sense, you may like to read 3 Most Important Objectives of Content Marketing.

But pertaining to the Google link, it is a copywriting failure rather than a content marketing failure.

Content marketing is definitely not merely a PR exercise. It is an educational exercise. You educate people so that they can make a better decision.

I will give you an example from my client without revealing his identity:

My client is offering a service that is being offered by thousands of other service providers. But there are some features that only he is providing.

His problem is, his target audience doesn’t even know what problems it is facing. For his content marketing, he needs to

Make people aware of the problems they are having.
Explain to them what they are losing due to the problems they have.
Tell them that an efficient solution is available.
Tell them that that efficient solution is available with my client.
Convince people into going for that solution.

So, it is a complete educational process. Through ongoing education, I need to tell the prospective clients of my client what they are missing if they’re not working with my client.

Efficient content marketing empowers your customers and clients. It gives them solutions they’re looking for. It also gives them solutions they’re not looking for presently, but they need those solutions.

This should be achieved in very plain language unlike the Google link above. Live examples should be given rather than simply making claims.

Show, don’t tell, is the fundamental principle of content marketing.

Is content marketing an asset or a cost?

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These days I’m reading Joe Pullizi’s Epic Content Marketing: How to tell a different story, break through the clutter, and win more customers by marketing less. In one of the chapters he mentions that many marketers consider content marketing as cost and not an asset.

This comes to me as a surprise because I believe everything you have that promotes your business, gets you more leads, gives you more exposure, is an asset.

What’s that signboard in front of your shop or business establishment? What are the employees that help your customers buy from your retail shop? What are the advertisements that you carry out? Are these assets or costs?

The thing is, everything you spend money on is the cost. This is the reality of life. You have to pay for things. If you want to have a very good website for your business, you have to pay the web designer. If you want to improve your SEO, you have to pay an SEO expert. Similarly, if you want compelling content on your website, you have to pay a content writer or a content marketing agency. A premium service is going to cost you.

Having said all this, I always tell my clients that all the webpages and blog posts they are getting our assets, because they are generating business for them, they have no reason to exist. Your FAQs page is an asset. Your about us page is an asset. Your homepage is obviously an asset. All the blog posts that you are publishing to improve your search engine rankings and engage your customers are assets because they are helping you get more business. All the updates that you are publishing on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to engage your prospective and current customers and clients are assets because they give you brand visibility.

People who consider content marketing a cost don’t understand what’s content marketing and the do content marketing simply because the others are doing. They have heard that other businesses are doing great with content marketing and they would also want the same results, but without putting in the extra effort of understanding how to do it and what to expect of it. Read Why content marketing is important for your business.

It’s the same like SEO: most of the people who want better search engine rankings don’t put much effort into understanding what is SEO. They just want higher rankings and for that they are ready to indulge even in those activities that are counter-productive. By the time they realize that they have harmed their rankings rather than improving them, it’s too late and the worst part is, they blame SEO in general rather than blaming their particular activities. Read 5 ways to beat your competitors at SEO with content writing.

Why is content marketing an asset?

In order to understand why content marketing is an asset you first of all need to have a clear idea of why you want to use content marketing for your business. Is it just because you have heard about content marketing and you have heard many people raving about it, or do you really believe it can make a big difference? Read What is content marketing? Explained in detail.

If you simply want to follow people because they seem to be doing cool activities, you are in for a big disappointment if your soul is not into it. In order to make full use of content marketing, you have to realize its importance. Why content matters to your business? Read Why is content marketing so important?

Content marketing is an asset because you use it to build a platform and then due to this platform, you are able to increase your business.

Sometimes a blog post that you publish and then promote may get you direct business or the email campaign that you send may get you direct business but more often than not, content marketing helps you build a platform and that platform eventually helps you convert. Blog post by blog post, web page by web page, you build this platform.

Take the example of a celebrity. Once you are famous, innumerable doors open for you if you have got talent. Suppose you are totally unknown but you are an exceptional writer. Paris Hilton is known for whatever reasons. If both of you approach a publisher who has got a better chance of his or her book being published? I’m not talking about an idealistic publisher.

The same happens with content marketing. It turns you into a celebrity in your own universe. You create your own circle of influence and whoever is inside that circle likes you, trusts you, values your opinion and consequently, when it comes to doing business, prefers to do business with you.

For example, if I’m constantly writing about content marketing and giving you useful insights that you can use to promote your own business, one day when you need someone to do content marketing for your business, are you going to look for a content marketer somewhere else or you would approach me (provided you haven’t heard bad things about me)? Or someone you know needs a content marketing service. Obviously, you are going to approach me.

This is the sort of presence your content marketing creates. This is the circle of influence you create when you do content marketing for your business. In that sense, content marketing is an investment and when you invest, you create assets.

How do you explain content marketing to a child?

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If you find it difficult to explain the concept of content marketing to a business executive, perhaps you should try explaining what is content marketing to a child.

Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

When I came across this quote, in another tab I was reading a blog post quoting various content marketing and digital marketing experts explaining what content marketing is.

As a concept content marketing is very old. All those corporate journals and newsletters were nothing but content marketing. The soap operas were content marketing.

But this concept is very difficult to explain to a business executive to whom everything is blurry either because the idea is too good to be true or he isn’t ready to accept that conventional advertising isn’t as good as it used to be (it was never good, it’s just that, now it has an alternative).

So how do you explain content marketing to a child?

Content marketing means…

Help people with your content
Make them feel good
Become a source of useful information
They begin to like you
They begin to appreciate your knowledge
They begin to trust you
They do business with you

It’s as simple as that.

Of course, it is not as simple as that, but this is the beginning. These are the fundamentals of content marketing. You don’t use content marketing to directly promote your business. You create a platform where your prospective customers and clients find something highly useful or entertaining, on an ongoing basis. Publish your content in such a manner that you don’t hard sell, you are always useful, and people know what business you offer.

Since they know you and trust you, they would rather do business with you than someone they are unfamiliar with.

Take my business for example. I provide content writing and content marketing services. I continuously share useful information about content writing and content marketing on my blog as well as on social networking platforms.

My blog is my base. All my quality content exists here. Since I’m continuously writing on various topics related to content writing and content marketing, people easily find the information they’re looking for on my blog. They also come across my links and search engines for relevant keywords.

Then I’m constantly sharing my links on LinkedIn and Twitter. I’m constantly appearing on people’s timelines. I make sure I share the information they can use to grow their businesses.

This, is content marketing. I publish and disseminate helpful content. People find that content useful. They appreciate it. They may not hire my content writing and content marketing services immediately, but whenever they do, they remember that I provide the services.

This is how you can explain content marketing to a child.

3 Most Important Objectives of Content Marketing

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It is often difficult to explain to a layperson why use content marketing to promote one’s business.

What are the main objectives of content marketing? Why is it important to understand your content marketing objectives? Why is it better than conventional advertising and marketing?

Most importantly, why spend money on it?

The concept of content marketing has existed since the time immemorial and individuals and businesses have been using content marketing to keep their customers coming back to their businesses.

After the advent of the Internet the concept has gained prominence because creating content and publishing it is easier on the Internet compared to using conventional means like books, magazines, pamphlets and newspapers.

If you want to use content marketing to promote your business, all you need to do is, set up a blog under your domain name, start publishing quality content, and then start distributing their content using the social channels available to you. Even this single step can help you achieve many of your content marketing objectives.

Although the actual implementation can be much more complex and may require lots of other steps, the point is that the entry barrier is quite low. If you are ready to put in the effort, there is little deterrence aside from the fact that your competitors may work harder to outsmart you.

One of the oldest instances of content marketing can be found in this post that talks about two brothers who invented a usable hose pipe to douse fires. One of the brothers used an educational booklet to explain people how this invention could be used. He also used to give presentations. He used visuals. He also provided consulting services (on how to use the hose pipe). All these methods are nothing but content marketing.

Another good example of content marketing is a village fair. Why do most of the people go to a village fair? 70% of the people have no intention of purchasing stuff. They mostly go because of the entertainment available at the fair. There are shows. There are mythology storytelling sessions where folk singers use colloquial language to tell awe-inspiring stories. There are giant wheels and merry-go-rounds for kids and adults.

The basic draw is the entertainment. This is content.

This content draws people to the village fair site and this in turn benefits all those merchants and shopkeepers who want to sell at the fair.

The Disney company, once having created the brand, makes more money selling the merchandise than from its movies and animation films.

The entire television industry depends on this concept. Through their content, television channels, including news channels, create a platform for themselves and once they have built an audience, they make money selling advertisements.

Hence, the most important objective of content marketing is to create a platform for you or your business. Then people keep coming back to this platform to consume your valuable content.

The more they consume/read your content, the more familiar they become with your product or service.

Most of the established content marketers insist that content marketing is basically educating your prospective customers and clients. It’s providing them solutions. It’s solving their problems. It’s being there when they need you.

The marketing part comes where you make it easier for people to find you.

No matter how great and valuable and useful your content is, unless people know about it, it is of no use.

This is why, once you have published content, you have to market it, you have to promote it in such a manner that people are able to find it and then they can benefit from it.

Aside from this, the 3 most important objectives of content marketing are:

Lead generation
Brand awareness
Thought leadership

This may sound like a business jargon, but these 3 content marketing objectives make it very easy to explain it to someone how it can help a business.

Content marketing for lead generation

Every business needs to generate leads because these leads eventually turn into sales. So, if your content marketing efforts are generating leads, then it is a successful campaign. It is meeting one of its biggest objectives.

The statistics in this Slideshare presentation say that businesses that blog regularly generate 88% more leads compared to those who don’t publish a blog post regularly.

It’s obvious. The more content you have all over the Internet, the better are the chances of your links being found by your prospects, provided you are focusing on the right kind of content.

If I want to attract an audience who would like to hire my content writing and content marketing services, then obviously I should be writing content around these topics, whether I publish it on my own website or somewhere else (on Medium, for example).

Why your content gets you more leads?

Remember that everything depends on how effectively you publish and market your content.

Assuming that you are targeting the right market, with more content in circulation, you get more targeted traffic.

People associate you with high-quality content. Due to your consistency and adherence to high-quality, your prospective customers and clients begin to respect you.

They either directly do business with you or they recommend your business to people they know.

Content marketing for brand awareness

One of the greatest content marketing objectives is brand awareness.

You may also like to read How to build your brand with content marketing.

Brand awareness, as the term speaks for itself, means, more people know about your brand and are aware of what it stands for. This sort of content marketing may not get you business directly (but indirectly, it certainly does) it makes your brand visible.

Despite being one of the greatest content marketing objectives, tracking business growth via brand awareness can be a tricky business because your brand can grow in many ways and most of these ways are not easily trackable.

People repeatedly come across interesting content by you and they become familiar to your presence.

The best way of creating brand awareness through content marketing that comes to my mind is guest blogging and publishing informative articles on other websites.

By publishing guest blog posts on other blogs and websites you immediately put your brand in front of a completely new audience. If I want to put Credible Content in front of my prospects, I can submit blog posts to various websites like LinkedIn, Entrepreneur, web design blogs (to encourage them to hire my content writing services) and other business niche websites where people would be looking for a content writer.

You can also publish lots of educational material and simply let it be known that it’s your brand that’s publishing the material.

Content marketing for thought leadership

This is to establish your authority as an expert, or as a niche product or service provider. For thought leadership you need to publish lots of insightful content that helps people in real-world situations. You are considered a thought leader when your wisdom solves actual problems rather than dabbling with vague topics

Anyway, the objective of this blog post is not to talk about how to develop a strong thought leadership. It is to talk about the most important objectives of content marketing: lead generation, brand awareness and thought leadership. These are the basic, fundamental content marketing objectives and then they spread into various branches and sub-branches.

Is content marketing a misleading term?

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I was just reading this interesting take on content marketing and content marketers. The author says that when the “content marketers” are charging $50 per blog post (what he means is they are just providing cheap writing labor) they are simply misleading the clients because the truth is that they have no idea what they are doing.

What should they be doing?

The author says that they should be helping their clients build their mailing lists because the money is in the mailing lists.

I agree with him that in most of the cases the “marketing” in “content marketing” is missing. Marketing, whether it is content marketing or traditional advertising, needs to make money, it needs to attract money, it needs to generate money.

I’m not sure if the author has some interest in mailing lists but I cannot disagree with him that one of the biggest purposes of content marketing should be building a robust mailing list. Other than that, it seems like a rant against the concept of using content for generating traffic. He is missing the point. Not about the so-called content marketers merely writing content, but about the entire concept of using content marketing for generating traffic.

You see, I agree that there is already lots of content on the Internet and many websites provide a ton of information to help you decide what you want to purchase and what you don’t want to purchase. But this information is on other websites not on your website so all the traffic is going to go to other websites and not your website.

There is lots of confusion when it comes to employing content marketing, but people don’t realize that confusion is also there when people use conventional advertising. In fact, conventional advertising is just like throwing darts in the darkness, hoping that some of the darts may hit the target. Yes, analytics have advanced a lot and every click and every entry into the website can be traced, but for a small business, it can turn out to be very expensive.

Why businesses that understand content marketing, use it?

To increase search engine rankings
To avoid PPC expense
To increase the authority of their brand
To inform and educate their customers and clients
To create presence on social media and social networking websites and apps
To build their own broadcasting platforms

I know some of these words may sound very big, but on the Internet, they are not. Remember there was a time when email used to be very geeky. Only engineers and scientists used to have email ids. These days even your dog may have an email id. What I’m saying is, even as a small business you can establish your authority or your brand’s authority and build your own broadcasting platform to increase your visibility.

Content marketing, of course, doesn’t just mean relentlessly publishing content. The “marketing” part is a big part. Marketing here doesn’t just mean you are marketing your content. It means you are using content for marketing. You are using content to increase your visibility. You are using content to improve your search engine rankings. You are using content to create a buzz around your brand, product or service. At the center of your marketing activities, lies your content. This is why it is called content marketing.

It is not, contrary to what the author of the above post has tried to establish, a snake oil remedy for the starry-eyed business owners. Billion-dollar businesses have been created around the business of content marketing.

Having said that, just like any other business branch, there are big players, there are smaller players and then there are players who are just goofing around hoping that they will make some money with little effort. This is not something specific to content marketing; these sorts of entrepreneurs are in every business.

So, if you are simply writing content for your clients, do you call yourself a content marketer? It depends. If you are

writing content
disseminating that content
coming up with new topic ideas
trying to make sure that the content that you create increases traffic for your client

then yes, you can call yourself a content marketer, because basically even when you are writing content, knowingly or unknowingly, you are helping your client market his business.