What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is defined by The Content Marketing Institute as: “…is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving customer action.” 

Target Acquired

There is absolutely no excuse in this day and age, to have anything less than a complete understanding of your target audience. The vast amounts of data and information ‘out there’ on everything and everyone is never-ending. As a content marketer, you should know exactly what appeals to your target audience, which means you should be presenting them with the most relevant content.

Traditional advertising had a ‘spray and pray’ approach, which meant spending tons of your budget on the prospect of hopefully reaching your target audience. With Content Marketing there is no need to hope and pray, so put down the rosary, and have a good long look at the data! 

Don’t Get Lost in the ‘Crowd’

Due to the vast amounts of content online, we are posed with another challenge, how do you keep your content from getting lost in this giant machine that is the internet? The answer is simple and two-fold, create relevant content that is valuable. This means creating content that is relevant to your target demographic, so that it doesn’t get lost in the sea of content and ensuring that content is of the highest value so that it gains traction and stays there. 

“The entire industry is fuelled by great content. The greater the value perceived the greater the exposure, and ultimately the greater the profits.”

Accumulative Effect of Content Marketing

The main difference between traditional advertising and content marketing is that the budget spent on traditional advertising is lost fairly soon after the campaign ends.

“The effect that traditional advertising has on consumers is temporary, if there is any effect at all – print adverts are seen and, in most cases, forgotten, television ads are simply fast forwarded and commuters pay more attention to the road than they do to billboards.”

Traditional ads normally only last for the time that they are relevant. Consumers won’t remember them in a month or years’ time. This leaves you with two options: run adverts persistently throughout the year, or, change your marketing strategy. 

With a content marketing strategy you accumulate content that keeps growing year upon year. Your database of email subscribers, RSS feed subscribers and social media followers increase. This whole community (database) can be nurtured as relationships are built and sustained with both existing and potential clients.

It’s All Measurable!

Every little action you take in Content Marketing is measurable. From an individual post to a month long campaign. Which means you can monitor your content, analyse it’s performance and tweak your strategies based on your findings. Which brings me to my next point…

With Content Marketing You Get What You Deserve

“Before content marketing (and its powerful counterpart, social media) a company could produce a product that was not outstanding. They would then hold a massive marketing and advertising campaign. The campaign would mean that thousands of people bought the product. Sure, they were disappointed, but the customer’s personal disappointment didn’t mean that the next guy, the next day, didn’t go out and buy that product too.”

The whole thing circles back to having great content. For many businesses the content produced might as well be their product. With so many incredible tools available as well, there is absolutely no excuse for your Content Marketing efforts to be anything less than awesome. 

Another Virgin Case Study

A great example of a content marketing success story comes in the form of one of the power brands of the world, Virgin. Virgin Mobile launched their social newsroom called Virgin Mobile Live. Through this medium they publish fresh content several times a day which is fanned out through social media. The site averages over a million unique visitors per month. What’s their secret weapon? Yup, you guessed it, fresh, well-planned content of the highest quality.

After reading this article you should have a good idea of the potential and strengths of a well-planned, and measured Content Marketing Strategy. Now, armed with new knowledge and an invigorated confidence in Content Marketing venture forth into the great unknown that is the internet and become my next featured case study!

Julian Karstel is a Digital Marketing, Sharepoint & E-learning Consultant for 
Sound Idea Digital.
| julian@soundidea.co.za | Sound Idea Digital | www.soundidea.co.za