In the marketing world, “content marketing” is one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean?
In its most basic form, content marketing is creating and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to attract and retain customers. It’s an ongoing process that can be used to achieve a variety of business goals, like building relationships with customers and prospects, increasing brand awareness, generating leads and sales, and more.
Content marketing is often confused with other types of marketing, like traditional advertising or direct marketing. But there are some key differences that set content marketing apart.
First and foremost, content marketing is not about selling. It’s about creating interesting and valuable content that helps your target audience solve a problem or answer a question. Selling is secondary.
Content marketing also differs from traditional advertising in that it’s a long-term strategy. It’s not something you do for a couple of weeks or months and then stop. It’s an ongoing effort that requires consistent planning and execution over time to be successful.
Finally, content marketing requires a different mindset than other types of marketing. With traditional advertising, you’re focused on creating messages that will get people to take action now – buy your product, sign up for your service, etc. With content marketing, you’re focused on creating long-term relationships with your audience by providing them with useful information they can use over time.
So those are the basics of content marketing – now let’s take a closer look at how it works.
