Content Marketing vs Digital Marketing, what’s the confusion?
I have had to set people straight on the issue of content marketing and digital marketing. They overlap in the way they function but still wouldn’t agree when people suggest that content marketing is digital marketing.
The lines that differentiate them have blurred out because of how they work together. They are now lumped up together, such that content marketing is perpetually seen as a part and parcel of digital marketing. This assumption is wrong because it doesn’t acknowledge content marketing as a stand-alone plan that can be implemented on its own to achieve a particular goal independent of digital marketing.
For starters, digital marketing and content marketing are two different marketing techniques that can be carried out independently of the other.
Their similarities include,
· Both are marketing strategies.
· Both are carried out digitally via the internet or electronic devices. (content marketing can also be done through other offline means)
· Both have the same aim of reaching a target audience.
· They are both inbound marketing strategies.
What prominently differentiates them are their goals. While content marketing is to achieve brand awareness and engagement, digital marketing’s sole aim is to sell and convert.
What is content marketing?
When last did you sit through an advert? Do you find yourself skipping adverts or changing channels just to escape the torture of being sold to? Your answer is likely yes. That’s exactly the defensive mode we all get into when we think we are about to be/ being sold to. Sometimes, we make up our minds not to buy even before being advertised to. We condition our minds to prevent the message from affecting us.
That’s exactly what content marketing addresses. The ads are saying ‘come and buy’. Even though copywriters try to make it about the customers, customers still think adverts are all about the brand. Content marketing, however, convinces customers that they are important. It’s difficult not to be convinced because you get free information on how to better your lives daily from a brand that is out to make money and should be selling to you. It shows how magnanimous they are to actually think about helping you first and selling to you second. So let’s define content marketing, but I am sure you already get the gist.
Content marketing is the use of content to build brand awareness, and brand trust. It is a customer-centric method founded on the principle of reciprocity. The idea is to offer help through FREE, valuable content that is informative, educative, entertaining and motivating.
These content come in form of written texts in long and short forms, telling pictures, infographics, podcasts, videos, and eBooks. Content Marketing Is a super-duper way to build brand awareness and brand trust. The good part of it is you make customers, even loyalists out of people without them realizing. When they finally need the kind of thing you offer, your brand crosses their mind without even trying to advertise to them. They go as far as recommending you to others. you become a top-of-the-mind brand just by putting out useful content. It’s a concept of giving to receive.
Another important goal of content marketing is to engage customers. It has brought brands closer to their customers on a personal level. Imagine a brand like Apple engaging your comments on Facebook. Good content marketing can help add personality and humanness to a brand which is a good way to impress customers and win them over. Content Marketing is a subtle way to achieve great things for your brand.
Now let’s go to digital marketing
Digital marketing without sugar-coating is out to sell and convert. It has to do with,
Lead magnets: getting subscribers through an email list you get by offering them something in exchange for their email address.
Lead generation: a method of finding and converting people into prospective buyers through online inbound marketing.
Sales funnel: creating a step by step journey that a person goes through to become a customer
PPC: has to do with internet advertising. Where you pay per click
Social media ads: adverts ran on Social media platforms
SEO: the process of optimizing your website to rank on search engines through keywords and more.
Digital Marketing has to do with selling on the internet, targeting and retargeting your customers, and following up on them to close deals. It is more about what you can get out of your customers.
Where they overlap
True, in some areas of digital marketing, you need to incorporate content to lead customers through their buyer journey. These content serve as touchpoints to reflect, reinforce, and reiterate your core brand values. Remember you have a sales funnel.
So, you develop content to meet customers’ needs at every point of the sales funnel. This is to guide them in making the right choice and to get optimal VALUE for what you offer if they get to buy or not.
At other times, you can engage in digital marketing without content marketing. For instance, I could decide to sell shoes on Facebook. All I need is a Facebook page, a good media buyer, and a good copywriter. With a badass direct response copy and an efficient media buyer, I can make sales without a need for content marketing. The same goes for PPC. I can decide to sell shoes through my website. I optimize my site, pay Google to help my site rank, and get orders from there. Of course, I would hire a copywriter to do a mind-blowing web copy on my site and a good copy for my landing page. That’s exactly what digital marketing can achieve. You make sales but do not exactly build a lasting brand affinity.
When it also comes to content promotion, digital marketing can help get your content to a wider and suitable audience. You can leverage social media ads or internet ads (PPC). However, there are other avenues to promote content without going the route of paid promotion.
To get the best results, it is always good to implement both strategies in tandem. Like I always tell my clients, content marketing can form a bedrock of a successful digital marketing campaign.
