Finding the Wisdom and Strength of Content Marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing that gives useful and valuable information with its main objective to gain the attention of its target audience. This oftentimes results in that the people who get involved with the brand through the message and information it gives them so they also became loyal to it. With this in mind, content marketing is not about the brand itself but its target audience – what their preferences are. For the purpose of this understanding here are a few questions that are important in creating the right content:

• How could a brand provide something no one else would be able to?
• Who is the target audience?
• What do the target audience care about?
• Why is the brand creating content?

Content marketing is different than traditional marketing in terms that it does not try to push the products or services to the consumers but to engage them by providing such information that can even benefit them. Content marketing is efficient when it has a documented strategy – which is going to be discussed in further chapters – and behind a good strategy there is the content itself. Content marketing has started way back in the history having a huge success as it was a groundbreaking way to promote one’s business. From time to time its popularity decreased then increased again, however, when then internet was introduced in 1993 when the first online magazine the Global Network Navigator (GNN) was established. From that time, content marketing has experienced a revival and in today’s modern digital world it is in its best light since platforms such as network-enabled devices, web browsers, mobile phones, email programs are providing great opportunities for presentation of content. It is important to keep in mind which of these platforms is going to work the best for each type of content and then build on them (Frick, 2010, p5).

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is basically the type of marketing that was long established before the internet and social media were introduced – for example print, in-person events, telemarketing, direct mail, salespeople and the list goes on. The main difference between these two types of marketing is that while content marketing focuses on and tries its best to identify its target audience, traditional marketing techniques use segmentation to define the target audience (Kotler et al, 2017, p47). Despite the fact that traditional marketing has a general audience, it still has advantages that make companies use it, however, there is a problem that these days it is difficult to decide which type of marketing to use.

One of the most beneficial advantages is that traditional marketing is well-researched and offers proven methods on how and in what ways to reach the customer. Using this form of marketing depends on many different factors, for instance on the product itself, the location or even the time of the day. To point out location, for example, it can be crucial when it comes to local competition – since that is a more narrow field traditional tools might work more effectively. Although local marketing is limited, it is more efficient in case of raising awareness about smaller businesses like restaurants, franchise companies and local stores.

As a matter of fact, even its name says its advantage: traditional. Printed media is considered to be the most traditional way of advertising. As for example, in ancient Egypt (3000 B.C) people used papyrus (the word “paper” comes from this) to promote their products which they wanted to sell; or as it was in China during the Song dynasty (960-1276 A.D) when the first advertising handbill appeared. These were actually the precursors of printing, which was first introduced by Johannes Gutenberg in 1436, and however it was a movable type, the ones that have closer resemblance to those that are in use today were invented in the Industrial Revolution (from 18th to 19th centuries). So, as for printed media, daily newspapers and magazines, as well as, printed ads are still essential in building brand awareness thus leading to strong brand equity.

Other platforms of marketing like TV and radio broadcasts could be considered as digital form as well, however, in digital marketing online web-based platforms such as social media, video-sharing websites and other media-service providers are used. There was a study in 2017 which showed that in the preceding year traditional TV viewing time has dropped from 76 hours to 64 hours within the 18- to 24-year-old age group. In addition, another study also showed that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, YouTube and YouTube TV have been experiencing a gradually increasing number in their user base and the reason for it is that these video streaming services are cheaper, easily accessible and more efficient than traditional cable TV services.

With this in mind, it is still important to consider television advertising as it reaches a larger audience than newspapers or radio stations for instance. According to a study conducted by Nielsen Media Research, Millennials aged between 18 and 24 spent 66% of their video viewing time watching traditional TV, while this number for adults aged 35 or over was 89%. This means that a considerably high percentage of people spend their time watching television so advertisements reach them still in a high quantity. Also, as it was mentioned before, traditional marketing is targeted to a more general audience, however, with using the telemarketing tool this can be narrowed down a bit, as for example if teleshop advertisements were aired around midday it would reach the right audience, similarly alcohol commercials for instance would not been aired in the morning (it is not even allowed) as usually children watch TV at that time.

Given these points, traditional marketing has been and still is a great marketing form, whether it is applied on its own or combined with digital marketing. Traditional marketing alone already has a high success rate due to the fact that it has proven and well-researched methods, on the other hand however, it is not that cost-efficient as digital marketing. In either case, as traditional marketing has been here and it still has effective methods and tools, it is unavoidable not to use digital marketing strategy when it comes to developing a business.