Marketing is the voice of your brand. Without marketing and advertising channels, no one would know who you are, what your brand stands for or how your products and services can help to solve their problems. But nowadays, there are different ways to get your message in front of a consumer.
While a comprehensive marketing plan requires both, traditional marketing and content marketing are drastically different. This creates the challenge of choosing the right strategy to meet your needs.
What Is Content Marketing?
Also known as inbound marketing, content marketing is a permissive marketing technique. This means that your content is based on people coming to you and seeking out additional information. Basically, content marketing is when potential consumers seek you out to gain insight and learn something new.
The type of content you create in content marketing is less about promoting products and services and more about emphasizing the delivery of helpful information. With content marketing, your job is to show potential customers how your products and services can be the answer to the problems they have.
Content marketing is unlike traditional marketing in that it remains on its digital channel forever, and your goal is to attract customers to it, rather than pushing the content on a variety of different audiences through promotional tactics. Typically, those who consume content marketing already have identified their needs and are looking for the right solution to their problem.
Examples of content marketing include:
- Website landing pages
- Social media posts
- Blogs and articles
- Infographics
- Videos and graphics
- Email newsletters
- White papers
- E-books
What Is Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing is marketing that has been actively pushed onto a consumer. These advertisements are shown to consumers when they are doing something else, like driving, listening to the radio or reading the newspaper. Instead of a consumer coming directly to you to seek out information, traditional marketing techniques interrupt the reader in the middle of their current task.
Additionally, traditional marketing tends to focus on promoting the benefits of a specific product and/or service that your company offers and is generally aimed at consumers who are at the bottom of the marketing funnel.
Most people see traditional marketing as the original forms of marketing that were promoted before the rise of the internet, such as television ads, magazine and newspaper ads, direct mail, billboards, radio adverts and the like.
The Key Differences Between Traditional Marketing and Content Marketing
Let’s go into a bit more detail about these two marketing tactics.
Branded Versus Educational Content
While both mediums try to encourage conversions in any way they can, traditional advertising generally focuses on the brand as a whole, and content marketing’s goal is to add value to the reader and act as an example of thought leadership.
Traditional Marketing Example
In June 2014, Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke With a Friend” campaign. This included names on each bottle and was advertised via multiple television slots. The goal was to tie this advertisement into Coca-Cola’s brand story of creating social connections. As a result, the company experienced a 2% increase in soft drink sales, bumping from 1.7 million to 1.9 million servings of Coke being sold per day.
Content Marketing Example
Moz, an SEO marketing platform, created a video film series about SEO trends, techniques and industry news to further reach audiences. Known as Whiteboard Friday, Moz’s SEO specialists create a new YouTube video every Friday that explains a new trend in SEO. As the series is created for consumers who know about the need for SEO, the Whiteboard Friday videos are a great example of how content marketing can show how a business’s services can be helpful to a consumer, without being overly promotional.
Reaching the Masses Versus Personal Connections
Oftentimes, traditional marketing focuses mostly on amplifying brand awareness and increasing conversions on a larger scale. Advertisers in this space tend to cast a wide net to attract consumers at the top of the marketing funnel, so their ads are a bit generic.
Comparatively, content marketing is much more personal or authentic. As the consumers usually seek out specific information, content marketing allows for more of an intimate approach, whether it be through a consumer’s email inbox via newsletter or by a well-thought-out white paper.
Interruption Versus Value
As stated before, traditional marketing interrupts users when they are going about their daily lives. On the other hand, the information presented with content marketing is often sought out by users to help them with a challenge they are facing. Approximately 71% of decision-makers are using thought leadership to stay up to date in their respective fields, and 65% are using this kind of content to understand how trends may affect their organization.
Monolog Versus Dialogue
It’s best to think of content marketing as an interactive form of communication. Because of the nature of the internet, content marketing gives consumers a platform on which to speak directly with business owners. There can be a back and forth, and with the rise of social media, most businesses make it easy for consumers to reach out to them.
Traditional marketing is very one-sided, as a business will be sending out information to consumers with the hope they will continue the conversation. There is no venue to directly communicate with the brand with any questions, concerns or comments.
Benefits of Content Marketing Compared With Traditional Marketing
Content marketing has taken over as the most popular, and most useful, marketing strategy. Below we cover the value content marketing brings.
Content Marketing Allows for More Personalized Interactions
There’s so much data on the internet nowadays, so content marketers can create extremely personalized advertisements meant for their target audiences. This is meant to create a personal connection with viewers, while putting the content in front of the right audience, at the right time.
Plus, content marketing is a conversation. Instead of telling viewers how to think about a specific product or service, content marketing engages with an audience by showing a new point of view, while demonstrating how a product actually works.
Content Marketing Is a More Welcome Form of Advertising
There’s a lot of advertising noise out there, with digital marketing experts estimating that the average American is exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements every day. So, not only do businesses want to stand out among this noise, but they want to provide relevant, meaningful information to their target audience. And since users are actively seeking out their information on their own, content marketing as a form of advertising often feels less intrusive.
Content Marketing Promotes a Better Customer Relationship
Consumers don’t want to go fishing around for the information they crave. By directly addressing the issues that your customers and prospective consumers are facing, you will build more meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your entire customer base.
Content Marketing Provides Better Bang for Your Buck
Traditional advertising fees can add up quickly. Paying for a newspaper ad or a billboard may be a big expense to your business, and there’s no guarantee that they will even work. Luckily, content marketing generates great leads and costs about 62% less than traditional channels while bringing in three times as many leads.
Content Marketing Is More User Friendly
Business leaders shouldn’t just think about how content will help their business grow. Instead, they should think about how the customer will receive and digest their content. Considering that 70% of consumers would rather get to know a company through articles rather than advertisements, content marketing is likely to be much more appreciated by customers than traditional methods.
Working Together: Traditional Marketing and Content Marketing
While different, traditional marketing and content marketing can work incredibly well to drive consumers to your business. It's safe to say that many marketers could benefit from leveraging both strategies to drive both awareness and establish better relationships with their consumers.
Final Thoughts
Are you interested in leveraging content marketing to help grow your business, but aren’t sure where to start? The NYTLicensing Group has a variety of content marketing packages and solutions to work with your brand’s needs, and we’ll do all the heavy lifting for you. Use the power of our world-renowned journalists and storytellers to bolster your brand’s content marketing offerings. Learn more about how we can help you by contacting us today.
