Understanding Content Marketing
Episode #1 of the course Content marketing fundamentals by Courtney Goes
Hello and welcome to the course!
My name is Courtney, and I’m the founder of Marketing Emporium, an online resource hub and community helping entrepreneurs and small business owners succeed through smart, effective, and authentic marketing strategies.
Over the next ten days, I’ll be helping you understand the fundamentals of content marketing and guiding you through how to create a content marketing plan to boost your business.
Today, we’re going to kick off by taking a look at what content marketing actually is, how it’s different to traditional marketing, and in what situations you might use it.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Push vs Pull
Traditional advertising and marketing practices focus on what’s commonly referred to as the “Four P’s” of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. As in, you need to have the right product and the right price, and promote it in the right place to see success.
What this is really focused on is one-way communication, where a business is pushing their product to a customer. Times have changed, though, and with 615 million devices now using ad blockers, customers are no longer interested in being bombarded with ads for something they don’t want or need.
Content marketing flips this around and uses a “pull” approach instead, whereby a business or brand produces compelling and valuable content that a customer actively seeks out and through which, discovers their product.
Content Marketing in Context
Although many businesses have achieved huge growth from content marketing, it’s important to understand that it’s not a holy grail marketing strategy and isn’t right for all situations. One of the biggest factors that can influence success is price, because as price increases, so too does purchase consideration.
Let’s take an example. A business selling $5,000 yoga retreats in Bali could spend money on ads promoting the retreat to an audience they think could be interested. Or they could develop a content marketing plan that includes topics like, “Why Bali Is the Number-One Retreat Destination in the World” or “Top Ten Reasons Yogis Love Bali.” In the second scenario, they’ll start to attract potential customers actively looking for retreat destinations.
However, if you’re a business selling cardboard moving boxes, the path to purchase is much simpler. Your customer will generally know they need to move, search for businesses selling moving boxes near them, and buy without thinking much about it.
So, first of all, you need to consider when content marketing could be beneficial to your business: Do your customers think long and hard about your product before buying it? Are there questions you commonly get asked before they commit to buying your product or service?
And remember, you should always think of content marketing as an additional tool to add to your marketing mix, not the one and only answer. Tomorrow, we’ll explore the basic bones of a strategy to help map this out a little better.
Until then,
Courtney
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