The content explosion: content marketing explained
Adrian Abrate
Are there new, more engaging avenues of reaching and conversing with your customers?
You may have tried promoting your organisation through TV commercials, print ads, radio and other traditional forms of marketing but with the increasing clutter of creative advertisements vying for your customer’s attention, consumers have learned to simply tune it out.
However there is a different way of achieving your marketing objectives. This method not only drives sales, but enriches your customers with valuable information, ultimately making your consumer more appreciative and loyal to your brand.
This new form of marketing is known as content marketing. Content marketing helps drive sales and develop customer loyalty and trust by cementing your company as thought leaders in the market because you are offering ongoing, valuable information that end up making your customers more intelligent.
The Content Marketing Institute defines Content Marketing as “owning, as opposed to renting media. It’s a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance a consumer behavior.”
According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, Content marketing was a top priority for businesses in 2012, and it is going to remain so in 2013. Realizing its significance to achieving their marketing objectives, companies are allocating more of their budget to this new form of marketing. Meanwhile, If 2011 and 2012 were the training period, 2013 is the championship game where companies seek more creative ways of engaging customers through content.
A great example was the 2012 Felix Baumgartner ‘jump from the edge of space’. Felix broke the record of highest manned balloon flight as a publicity stunt for Red Bull. In a first, it was also shown live on YouTube with more than 8 million people watching. This represented a breakthrough moment for the movement towards brands publishing quality content over disruptive push advertising.
Your customers may care about you, your products, or your services, but above all, they care about themselves, their wants, and their needs. Content marketing is about producing interesting information your consumers are passionate about so that they end up paying more attention to you and your brand.
Traditional marketing disrupts and yells at prospective customers, whereas content marketing converses with them. This is not to say that traditional ways of advertising aren’t still an effective way to grow your business, I like to describe traditional marketing as the pudding, while content marketing provides pudding as well as the proof of the pudding.
Adrian Abrate is the founder of Mohawk Media, a provider of content marketing services for local Sydney businesses. Contact Adrian if you would like to talk about a content strategy for your business.