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Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. [1] It is often used in order to achieve the following business goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand their customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage an online community of users. Content marketing attracts new customers by creating and sharing valuable free content as well as by helping companies create sustainable brand loyalty, providing valuable information to consumers, and creating a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future. [2]
Content marketing starts with identifying the customer's needs. After that, the information can be presented in a variety of long form and short form formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc. [3] Examples of short form content include short blog posts and social media posts. [4]
Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a content marketing strategy. [5]
Traditional marketers have long used content to disseminate information about a brand and build a brand's reputation. Taking advantage of technological advances in transportation and communication, business owners started to apply content marketing techniques in the late 19th century. They also attempted to build connections with their customers.
Year | Author\Organization | Action taken |
---|---|---|
1732 | Benjamin Franklin | Issuance of Poor Richard's Almanack to promote his printing business [6] |
1888 | Johnson & Johnson | introduced a publication called "Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment" targeted to doctors that used bandages. They also released two publications that contained tips for the medical community. [7] |
1895 | John Deere | launched the magazine The Furrow providing information to farmers on how to become more profitable. The magazine, considered the first custom publication, is still in circulation, reaching 1.5 million readers in 40 countries in 12 different languages. [8] |
1900 | Michelin | Developed the Michelin Guide, offering drivers information on auto maintenance, accommodations, and other travel tips. 35,000 copies were distributed for free in this first edition. [9] |
1904 | Jell-O | Jell-O salesmen went door-to-door, distributing their cookbook for free. Touting the dessert as a versatile food, the company saw its sales rise to over $1 million by 1906 [ citation needed ] [10] |
During the golden age of TV, between the 1940s and 1950s, advertising took over the media. Companies focused on sales rather than connecting with the public. There were few ventures into content marketing and not many prominent campaigns.
During the baby boom era, Kellogg's began selling sugary cereal to children. With this change in business model came sociable animal mascots, lively animated commercials and the back of the cereal box as a form of targeted content marketing. This represented a new approach to make a brand memorable with the audience. [11]
In the 1990s, everything changed for marketers. The arrival of computers and the Internet made websites and blogs flourish, and corporations found content marketing opportunities through email.
E-commerce adaptations and digital distribution became the foundation of marketing strategy.
Internet also helped content marketing become a mainstream form of marketing. Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and TV started to lose their power in the marketplace. Companies started to promote and sell their products digitally. [12]
The phrase "content marketing" was used as early as 1996, [13] when John F. Oppedahl led a roundtable for journalists at the American Society for Newspaper Editors.
By the late 2000s, when social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were born, online content marketing was accessible, shareable and on-demand anytime worldwide.
By 2014, Forbes Magazine's website had written about the seven most popular ways companies use content marketing. [16] In it, the columnist points out that by 2013, use of content marketing had jumped across corporations from 60% a year or so before, to 93% [17] as part of their overall marketing strategy. Despite the fact that 70% of organizations are creating more content, only 21% of marketers think they are successful at tracking return on investment.
Today, content marketing has become a powerful model for marketers. Storytelling is part of it, and they must convey the companies' messages or goal to their desired audience without pushing them to just buy the product or service.
The rise of content marketing has turned many traditional businesses into media publishing companies. [18]
For example:
The rise of content marketing has also accelerated the growth of online platforms, such as YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more.
For example:
Businesses actively curate their content on these platforms with hopes to expand their reach to new audiences.
Part of transitioning to a media publishing mindset requires a change in structure and process to create content at "the speed of culture." Marketing content production is transforming from an advertising agency model to a newsroom model, according to one consultant. [25]
Metrics to determine the success of content marketing are often tied to the original goals of the campaign.
For example, for each of these goals, a content marketer may measure the different engagement and conversion metrics:
Businesses focused on expanding their reach to more customers will want to pay attention to the increase in the volume of visitors, as well as the quality of those interactions. Traditional measures of volume include the number of visitors to a page and number of emails collected, while time spent on page and click-through to other pages/ photos are good indicators for engagement.[ citation needed ]
Businesses want to measure the impact that their messages have on consumers. Brand health refers to the positive or negative feedback that a company gets. It also measures how important a brand is for consumers. With this companies want to find out if brand reputation influences their customers to make a purchase. [26]
Measures in this part comprise
For businesses hoping to reach not only more - but also new - types of customers online, they should pay attention to the demographics of new visitors, as evidenced by cookies that can be installed, different sources of traffic, different online behaviors, and/or different buying habits of online visitors.
Businesses focused on increasing sales through content marketing should look at traditional e-commerce metrics including click-through-rate from a product-page to check-out and completion rates at the check-out. Altogether, these form a conversion funnel. Moreover, to better understand customers' buying habits, they should look at other engagement metrics like time spent per page, number of product-page visits per user, and re-engagement.
Refers to companies that want to analyze whether their social media campaigns are generating commentary among consumers. This helps them to come up with ways to improve their product and service. This involves "high level of brand engagement and builds brand loyalty". [28]
Examples:
Digital content marketing, which is a management process, uses digital products through different electronic channels to identify, forecast and satisfy the necessity of the customers. [29]
Examples:
The supply chain of digital content marketing mainly consists of commercial stakeholders and end-user stakeholders which represent content providers and distributors and customers separately. [38] In this process, distributors manage the interface between the publisher and the consumer, then distributors could identify the content that consumers need through external channels and implement marketing strategies. For instance, Library and document supply agencies as intermediaries can deliver the digital content of e-books, and e-journal articles to the users according to their search results through the electronic channels. Another example is when consumers pay for the acquisition of some MP3 downloads, search engines can be used to identify different music providers and smart agents can be used by consumers to search for multiple music provider sites. In a word, the digital content marketing process needs to be conducted at the business level and service experience level because when consumers are accessing digital content, their own experience depends on the complex network of relationships in the content marketing channels such as websites and videos. The consumers interact directly with distributors in the big supply chain through various digital products which have an important role in meeting the requirements of the consumers. The design and user experience of these channels directly decides the success of digital content marketing. [29]
Electronic services refer to interactive network services. [39] In the electronic service, the interaction between the customer and the organizations mainly through the network technology, such as using E-mail, telephone, online chat windows for communication. Electronic services are different from traditional services and they are not affected by distance restrictions and opening hours. Digital content marketing through electronic service is usually served together with other channels to achieve marketing purposes including face-to-face, postal, and other remote services. Information companies provide different messages and documents to customers who use multiple search engines on different sites and set up access rights for business groups. These are some channels of digital content marketing. [29]
Permission marketing is a type of advertising in which the people who are supposed to see the ads can choose whether or not to get them. This marketing type is becoming increasingly popular in digital marketing. Seth Godin first introduced the concept in his book “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, And Friends Into Customers.”
Personalized marketing, also known as one-to-one marketing or individual marketing, is a marketing strategy by which companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers. Advancements in data collection methods, analytics, digital electronics, and digital economics, have enabled marketers to deploy more effective real-time and prolonged customer experience personalization tactics.
In promotion and advertising, a testimonial or show consists of a person's written or spoken statement extolling the virtue of a product. The term "testimonial" most commonly applies to the sales-pitches attributed to ordinary citizens, whereas the word "endorsement" usually applies to pitches by celebrities. Testimonials can be part of communal marketing.
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. It can be delivered by word of mouth, or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks.
Digital display advertising is online graphic advertising through banners, text, images, video, and audio. The main purpose of digital display advertising is to post company ads on third-party websites. A display ad is usually interactive, which allows brands and advertisers to engage deeper with the users. A display ad can also be a companion ad for a non-clickable video ad.
In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue, persuasively. It helps marketers to create a distinctive place in customers' mind, it can be either a cognitive or emotional route. The aim of promotion is to increase brand awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty. It is one of the basic elements of the market mix, which includes the four Ps, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is generally any form of content, such as images, videos, audio, text, testimonials, and software, that has been posted by users on online content aggregation platforms such as social media, discussion forums and wikis. It is a product consumers create to disseminate information about online products or the firms that market them.
Engagement marketing, sometimes called "experiential marketing", "Brand Activation", "on-ground marketing", "live marketing", "participation marketing", "Loyalty Marketing", or "special events", is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages them to participate in the evolution of a brand or a brand experience. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand.
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field. Influencers are someone with the power to affect the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original—often sponsored—content to social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok or other online channels. Influencer marketing is when a brand enrolls influencers who have an established credibility and audience on social media platforms to discuss or mention the brand in a social media post. Influencer content may be framed as testimonial advertising.
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. It has significantly transformed the way brands and businesses utilize technology for marketing since the 1990s and 2000s. As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people increasingly used digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones, callbacks, and on-hold mobile ringtones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.
Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer and an organization through various online or offline channels. According to Hollebeek, Srivastava and Chen S-D logic-Definition of customer engagement is "a customer’s motivationally driven, volitional investment of operant resources, and operand resources into brand interactions," which applies to online and offline engagement.
Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting.
Social network advertising, also known as social media targeting, is a group of terms used to describe forms of online advertising and digital marketing that focus on social networking services. A significant aspect of this type of advertising is that advertisers can take advantage of users' demographic information, psychographics, and other data points to target their ads.
Marketing buzz or simply buzz—a term used in viral marketing—is the interaction of consumers and users with a product or service which amplifies or alters the original marketing message. This emotion, energy, excitement, or anticipation about a product or service can be positive or negative. Buzz can be generated by intentional marketing activities by the brand owner or it can be the result of an independent event that enters public awareness through social or traditional media such as newspapers. Marketing buzz originally referred to oral communication but in the age of Web 2.0, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are now the dominant communication channels for marketing buzz.
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.
Internet branding is a brand management technique that uses the World Wide Web & Social Media Channels as a medium for positioning a brand in the marketplace. Branding is increasingly important with the advancements of the internet. Most businesses are exploring various online channels, which include search engine, social media, online press releases, online marketplace, to establish strong relationships with consumers and to build their brands awareness.
The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer-focused marketing model that illustrates the theoretical customer journey toward the purchase of a good or service.
Social media in the fashion industry refers to the use of social media platforms by fashion designers and users to promote and participate in trends. Over the past several decades, the development of social media has increased along with its usage by consumers. The COVID-19 pandemic was a sharp turn of reliance on the virtual sphere for the industry and consumers alike. Social media has created new channels of advertising for fashion houses to reach their target markets. Since its surge in 2009, luxury fashion brands have used social media to build interactions between the brand and its customers to increase awareness and engagement. The emergence of influencers on social media has created a new way of advertising and maintaining customer relationships in the fashion industry. Numerous social media platforms are used to promote fashion trends, with Instagram and TikTok being the most popular among Generation Y and Z. The overall impact of social media in the fashion industry included the creation of online communities, direct communication between industry leaders and consumers, and criticized ideals that are promoted by the industry through social media.
Word-of-mouth marketing is the communication between consumers about a product, service, or company in which the sources are considered independent of direct commercial influence that has been actively influenced or encouraged as a marketing effort. While it is difficult to truly control word of mouth communication, there are three generic avenues to 'manage' word of mouth communication for the purpose of word-of-mouth marketing, including:
In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is marketing with the intention of increasing conversions—that is, site visitors who are paying customers.