How Content Marketing Differs From Traditional Advertising
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing refers to digital content that provides its audience with value. Content marketing is typically created and published for a specific purpose, such as: to educate, to entertain or to evoke emotion. As a result, the content created often targets its audience more carefully, limiting whose feeds it appears in. In turn, lead generation can be considered a by-product of content marketing rather than the sole purpose. While content marketing can include paid ads, campaigns and posts, content is usually published without these, and allowed to organically generate leads and results.
Content Marketing Often Includes:
What is Traditional Advertising?
Traditional Advertising refers to physical media that businesses pay to publish. They are published with the aim of generating leads for a specific product or service. Any education, entertainment or emotion evoked from the audience are a by-product of the advertisements efforts to generate leads. Traditional advertisements take a broader approach when it comes to reaching their audience.
Traditional Advertising Often Includes:
– Newspaper adverts
– TV adverts
– Magazine Adverts
– Billboards
– Flyers
– Radio Adverts
How Do Content Marketing and Traditional Advertising Differ?
The type of media produced in content marketing and traditional advertising differs greatly. Content marketing often provides a channel for the audience to connect and engage directly with the brand. Traditional advertising produces media that speaks to audiences but doesn’t give them the chance to speak back; it provides no direct opportunity for audience engagement.
Content marketing and traditional advertising have different functions within an organisation, but are united by the need to drive lead generation. Their approach for this is very different. Traditional advertisement takes an opportunistic approach. It relies on catching the right person’s attention at the right time i.e. a thirsty person seeing an advert for Fanta. It doesn’t reach out directly to a targeted audience, but rather exists in a high-traffic space, where people who fall within the target audience are likely to be.
Content Marketing is less opportunistic, it seeks to establish a relationship, build brand recognition, and customer loyalty. It will often produce media that is carried to the target audience through carefully structured SEO, or consistent targeting of specific niches to help algorithms understand the content.
Do Businesses Still Need Both Content Marketing and Traditional Advertising?
Both content marketing and traditional advertising require some level of commitment and investment in order to generate results. With traditional advertisement businesses should consider the cost of the crew who are creating/filming the advert, any print costs required, rent on ad spaces etc. Whereas with content marketing businesses should consider the purpose of their content. For instance, are they hoping to establish a community, to educate on a topic or establish themselves as an authority within a niche? The choice between content marketing and traditional advertisement often comes down to weighing up the desired impact, time frame and budget spend of a project. Being clear and knowledgeable on these key factors can help the decision between whether to approach something through content marketing or traditional advertising.
In Summary, businesses need to use both content marketing and traditional advertising methods to optimize their lead generation and reach as wide an audience as possible. Whether a business will benefit more from content marketing or traditional advertising will depend on their individual needs, goals and budget. Ultimately, both types of content will support a business in generating leads, however they will employ wildly different strategies to do so.