Content marketing is a marketing strategy by which the companies create valuable and authentic contents for informing their potential customers about their products and services, and attract them. Content marketing can be created in various forms due to the target audience and purpose ranging from social media advertising to blog authorship, podcasts, videos and e-mail bulletins.
In fact, we can use the definition of the art of establishing communication with your current and potential customers for the content marketing. Instead of displaying your products and services tenaciously, you present a content that raising awareness of the consumer about your product or service. The essence of this content creating strategy comes from the belief that as companies, if you present valuable knowledge continuously for the customer, then you will be awarded with their loyalty at the end.
Traditional marketing is a kind of marketing that we have been exposed to. It is a marketing strategy by which the commercials or promotions prepared by the companies for the products or services reach the consumers whenever and wherever the companies want. Traditional marketing appears before us in different forms such as journal advertisements, billboards, broadcast (television commercials, radio commercials) and direct e-mails and tele-marketing. Traditional marketers try to impose the benefits of their products or services about anything they want without asking their opinion and by addressing a large audience.
Let’s take a look at how the content marketing becomes different from the traditional advertisements and how the content can function for your enterprise.
- Difference in the channels for reaching the consumer
While traditional marketing uses television, radio, newspaper or journal advertisements, billboards, direct e-mail and brochures for reaching the consumer, content marketing uses digital mediums such as blogs, social media, online articles, e-mail bulletins, videos or podcasts, electronic books and web seminars.The content plays a role that effects the information need about the product or service and purchasing decisions of the consumers to a great extent. Even if both two methods have been using for announcing and telling your products or services, their mediums are different. This difference is important for specifying the target audience and pinpointing during reaching the consumer. Consumers can a positive/negative reaction to the content immediately, thus the consumer trends can be measured quickly without waiting for the sales.
- Perfunctory or informative?
Traditional marketing adopts the attitude of telling an enterprise, a product or a service to the consumers. It displays the visuals of a product or a service and gives direct information about everything they sell.Content marketing is not direct. Instead of telling about “things”, it presents an interesting, useful and valuable content for the target consumer. Namely, content marketing becomes a way for you to show the consumers that you are informed in your sector and that they can trust you for the useful information about their products or services.
- Talking to the consumer or Talking with the consumer?
Traditional marketing talks to the consumer, namely, the communication is unilateral and there is no dialogue. Only the products or services you sell are shown to the consumers and it is praised their benefits.In content marketing, the digital contents provide more opportunity to establish a bilateral communication for the consumers. The consumers can leave comments to your blog articles, interact with you in your web seminar or podcast, interpret your social media publications and like them. The content enables you to respond the consumer comments, thus enables you to know your potential customers and supports the customer loyalty.
- Towards the general or towards the target audience?
Traditional marketing is for enabling you to reach your message to maximum person. Exposing the audience who are not related with your product or service to oft-repeated advertisements causes your advertisements to be ignored and overlook for a while.Content marketing reaches your message to the right people and targets the customer audience who are related with the subject. Content marketers work for producing the content that is wanted to be read/seen mostly by their potential customers. Since they examine the consuming trends of the target audience and the trends in digital media, they can research the most effective reaching channels to the determined target audiences as regards the product or service, thus they can convey the content to right places.
- The consumer is steered by the company or by the acquaintances?
In traditional marketing, the company manages its own advertising “show”. The companies take their decisions by themselves about where and when their advertisements will share. Consequently, traditional marketing methods make the customer feel that they are trade-oriented, and continue to show the advertisement and impose the product or service without knowing that the advertisement is accepted or not.In content marketing, the content usually is shared by the customer willingly, and this makes the content marketing consumer-driven. In case of someone who is known and trusted by the consumers or the majority of the consumers advises the content in digital media, it is highly possible for the consumers to research the products or services of the company. Because of that digital contents are easily sharable, this makes the content marketing a perfect consumer-driven marketing tactic.
- Allowed or disrupter?
Traditional marketing methods can intervene and interrupt the actions of the consumers without their permission while they are listening music or watching movie on television. In other words, in traditional marketing, the action of the consumers on that moment is interrupted without their permission and consent, and the companies imposes the advertisements of the products or services they want to sell by intervening the people’s lives.
Content marketing does not push the consumer and does not cause any interruption in their actions during natural pace of life because the content is searched and explored by the costumers. The customer is free in reaching the content at will when needed and in using the information when and how they want. As a result, in content marketing, the consumers already allow the marketing of the products and services to them by entering their personal information and keywords in digital media by themselves.Traditional marketing is like the advertisements which suddenly cover the screen when the consumers are reading a news and in which the close button moves without stopping. Content marketing provides an attractive content about tennis with a sign of ‘sponsored’ in a part of the screen allowed by the person who watches a tennis match in the computer. The person clicks on the content by herself/himself if she/he wants.
- A gained audience or a rented audience?
Content marketing gains your audience by presenting a valuable thing. The people who explores and uses your content chooses to do this because they want it. This volunteering means that you owe that customer audience.
On the other hand, traditional marketing tactics are usually seen by a “rented” audience. Traditional marketers show their messages to a certain group who are there actually for another thing. The rented billboard surface, the purchased radio airtime and the television commercials are the best examples of how the traditional marketers convey their messages to a rented audience.Well, is there any disadvantage in paying money for renting on the purpose of reaching an audience? When you rent something that does not belong to you, you have to give back at the end. When the traditional marketing campaigns are completed, the “rented” eyes are no more on your message.
Creating your own audience is more effective in establishing a trust bond between you and your customers. Consumers trust the content that they search and find for their own needs more than the advertisements imposed through the written and visual media.
- Dynamic or static?
While content marketing gives an opportunity to organize real-time marketing campaigns, the solid and static structure of traditional marketing disenables that. The dynamic and flexible structure of content marketing makes you sure about that the marketing investments produced a successful result in a short time. Analytical measurement tools in digital media let you to evaluate the effectivity of content marketing (clicks, links, purchase, etc.) and then redistribute the time, money or energy correctly.In traditional marketing, the campaign opens to the world and the results are analyzed when the campaign is completed. Traditional marketing can be updated for the next campaign or be discontinued broadcasting but it is impossible to turn the unsuccessful commercials into more effective ones especially for the television and printed media.
