Decoding Content and Content Marketing
By: Yati Labs
Tags: Content Marketing, Marketing Strategies, App Development, Content Strategy, Digital Marketing

It is a very common mistake for beginners in the industry to get confused and mistake Content Marketing as being similar to Content Creation. To state the line of the difference between the two let us break down the explanation.

The famous saying “Content is the king” is no doubt the holy grail to be worshipped by every content creator. But in order to understand the application, one needs to know that everything on the internet is content. To be precise, content is anything that is expressed in the form of voice, visuals, information, or thoughts.

Content Marketing, on the other hand, is using the created content to strategically target an audience and provide them with the solutions to the problems that either your business or the readers have.

Let’s understand this with some common marketing examples, done in various industries.

Health Supplement company publishes a case study on how their products boost the immune system. Fashion Retailer distributing a monthly magazine on how to keep up with the latest styles and trends. The SaaS platform that uses gamification to encourage users to discover and get to know its features. Athletic Clothing Brand publishes a blog on clean eating, benefits of exercise, and personal empowerment.

To a common eye, these day to day blogs and articles prove to be influencing, hence diverting the attention of the reader towards the niche industry and product. The content in this way becomes a medium of engagement while not precisely being a part of a direct marketing strategy. This planning, developing, and implementing the content created for a particular benefit is where the difference between content and content marketing lies. Content marketing focuses on the following key elements:

Creating a value: Create content that should be of some value to the reader. Put them first. The content should solve the business goal or the customer’s problem. Be consistent: Consistency is the key to content marketing. For example, if you are a fitness-related app startup, your content should be geared towards assisting people on how they could stay fit. Absorb readers to your platform: You are building authority by providing readers with a destination to which they can keep returning. Gauge and Tweak: Measure the performance of your content based on the data. Tweak wherever necessary.

Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis. Some of the means by which content is created to market the desired product and services are blogs, case studies, eBooks, emails, meta titles and descriptions, headlines, product descriptions, social media posts, video scripts, web content, and white papers.

Due to the pandemic, for the year 2020 Entrepreneur predicts that this decade’s content marketing will expand to use various online essentials tools due to the fact that content marketing is virtually limitless.

Live-streaming, Content that is voice search-optimised, Augmented Reality (AR) experiences, One-to-one conversations with customers through tools like Facebook Messenger, Personalised content that adapts to your audience based on collected data, such as location, online behaviour, or demographic are some of the popular predicted ways that can be used to their advantage by the businesses

Few popular ways to Achieve Content Marketing Success are -

Being aware of the latest trends and innovations available. Looking and recycling old content to boost the credibility of the site Focus on creating better content with catchy and captivating headlines and subtitles than mastering SEO tricks In order to grow your business quickly, create engagement through social media by sharing your content. Customer-Centric Approach — Create informative content that includes details that are beneficial to readers. The presentation plays a key role in engaging the audience. Customise your content to balance between the product and the targeted audience.

The proportion of major advertisers that say they are strongly committed to content marketing has doubled over the past two years, according to recent research from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and The Content Council. The report was based on data from a survey of 126 senior-level marketers from the US and Canada who work for businesses with annual revenue of $8.1 billion, on average. Some 52% of respondents say their firm is strongly committed to content marketing, up from 26% who said the same two years ago. Moreover, 78% of respondents expect their firm’s commitment to content marketing to be strong two years from now.

Earlier companies, entrepreneurs kept their businesses hardcore professional, but with time the demand for change has made these businesses switch to a more interactive profile, in order to create engagement.“These days, people want to learn before they buy.” hence making content marketing such an on-demand service.

Content Marketing has now become the backbone for any marketing strategy, and with time has proven that it is here to stay. With time the content has evolved and so has businesses approach towards it. In 2020, content marketing will continue to become more personal as it can generate high-quality leads, create thought-leadership, and even attract and drive engagement with the help of good content. The importance of level of engagement content marketing creates and is leveraged over other marketing strategies is simply because “Traditional marketing talks to people. Content marketing talks with them.”

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