WHAT DOES CONTENT MARKETING DO?
According to Jacqueline Loch, executive vice president, customer innovation, SJC Content, said, "There's still a tendency for content marketing to be viewed as pretty pictures, snazzy videos, and storytelling."
So, what is content marketing, and what are the differences between a content strategy, content marketing, and a content marketing strategy?
What is a Content Strategy?
"A content strategy, in general, and a core content strategy statement specifically help organizations say no to content ideas that fail to serve the audience or the business." - Meghan Casey, Content Marketing Institute
Watch the video to understand the difference between different types of marketing, including social media, digital, product marketing, and advertising.
What is a Content Marketing Strategy Framework?
Picture Content Marketing Strategy as a neighbourhood:
YOUR HOUSE
This is your brand or your company.
Within your house, you have a distinct interior style (which is your tone and manner), your furniture (which are your content executions), and your house structure (which are your content pillars).
Content Strategy
ROADS
These are your distribution channels.
Roads allow people to get to your house, as well as to other houses.
This includes things like social media platforms, websites, podcasts, and more.
Content Marketing
MAP
This is your funnel.
A map tells people how to get to your house instead of other houses. This includes your paid efforts such as advertisements and SERP, collaboration and influencer content, and organic methods such as SEO, hashtags, and more.
Content Marketing Strategy
Content Strategy vs Content Marketing
Content Strategy and Content Marketing are different things.
Content marketing and content strategy work hand in hand to bring in traffic. If they are not properly in place, whatever traffic comes by are likely to be bounced or are low-hanging fruits. That means they would have climbed a mountain to get to anyone’s house anyways because they are dying of thirst. There are only so many low-hanging fruits, and if your competitor is a block closer to them than you are, you don’t stand a chance in competing.
What is a Content Marketing Funnel?
All of your traffic, or as my analogy states, your guests, who arrive at your house are different. It might be the first time for them to be here, or they might have become a regular visitor. To do content marketing right, these people should be fed different content to cater to their needs and drive their respective actions.
So, unless you have proper sets of content to greet your guests, which are created based on your content and content marketing strategy - content marketing on its own is just not enough.
Step-by-step guide to create your own effective Content Strategy
Watch the video and access the recommended blog posts below on building content strategies for beginners. Enjoy the benefits of content marketing without having to engage with top marketing agencies in Hong Kong.
Invest in a Documented Content Marketing Strategy
Whether as a document, timeline, or excel spread sheet, a documented content marketing strategy should include:
In JTCM's services, this is covered in the Content Strategy
In JTCM's services, this is covered in the Social Media Strategy
In JTCM's services, this is covered in the Digital Marketing Strategy
1) Goals and Objectives
2) Target Audience Persona
3) Brand Key Messaging Platform
4) Content Pillars
5) Content Distribution
6) Content Calendar
7) Platform Strategy
8) Paid and Organic Tactics
9) Measurement and Analytics
10) Content Optimization
Why Content Marketing Matters
Content is important in marketing because each piece of content you create is an asset that can continuously help you achieve business goals if they were executed with a comprehensive content strategy. This video here does an excellent job explaining the idea.
Content marketing is important because people value authenticity more than ever. The regular sales message or advertisement is no longer cutting through the noise. Everyone is online, creating countless pieces of content every day. For any business to be noticed, it must learn to cut through the noise.
Content Marketing is therefore an investment, not an expense.