The marketing strategy goes by many names: Custom publishing, custom media, customer media, customer publishing, member media, private media, content strategy, branded content, corporate media, brand
journalism, native advertising, inbound marketing, contract publishing,
branded storytelling, corporate publishing, corporate journalism, and
branded media.
Perhaps nothing says it better than content marketing. But what
exactly is content marketing?
CONTENT MARKETING: THE FORMAL DEFINITION
Content marketing is the marketing and business process for
creating and distributing valuable and compelling content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer
action.
A content marketing strategy can leverage all story channels (print,
online, in-person, mobile, social, and so on); be employed at any and all
stages of the buying process, from attention-oriented strategies to retention and loyalty strategies; and include multiple buying groups.
FROM MANAGING CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is a strategy focused on the creation of a valuable
experience. It is humans being helpful to each other, sharing valuable
pieces of content that enrich the community and position the business
as a leader in the field. It is content that is engaging, eminently shareable, and, most of all, focused on helping customers discover (on their
own) that your product or service is the one that will scratch their itch.
CONTENT MARKETING: LESS FORMAL DEFINITION
Content marketing is owning media as opposed to renting it. 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.
CONTENT MARKETING: ELEVATOR PITCH
Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you’re a rock
star. Content marketing is showing the world that you are one.*
CONTENT MARKETING: FOR PRACTITIONERS
Content marketing is about delivering the content your audience is
seeking in all the places they are searching for it. It is the effective combination of created, curated, and syndicated content.†
Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to a target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing
customers.
CONTENT MARKETING: FOR NONBELIEVERS
Your customers don’t care about you, your products, or your services.
They care about themselves, their wants, and their needs. Content marketing is about creating interesting information your customers are passionate about so they actually pay attention to you.
This last definition is my favorite (with kudos to bestselling author
David Meerman Scott for helping to popularize this), and the hardest
for marketers and business owners to deal with. So often we marketers
believe that our products and services are so special—so amazing—and
we think that if more people knew about them, all of our sales problems
would be solved
0 comments