Content marketing is the best marketing.
Marketers use various ways of marketing their products/services. The medium might vary like print, television, audio, etc. but what remains common for all is the content. The underlying message is the most important thing from the marketers perspective as it will have a long lasting effect on the customers. Also, the content or strategy might vary according to the medium, but again what remains static is the product.
If you visit official website of Toyota the punchline says – moving forward. Now, if you visit Toyota India website, the punchline reads – Quality Revolution. Now in this case, the company is same, products are similar but the strategies are different (owing to demography and customer requirements). This was just one of the many cases where content becomes your trusted source to attract customers.
Content marketing is a term that has recently attracted lot of discussion. In simple terms, it is a collection of all the marketing formats to share the content to retain the customers. Unlike traditional marketing, content marketing is all about delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to customers to drive profitable action from them. Such products can take the form of custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or micro sites, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, email, etc. Also content marketing is cost effective and has a measurable ROI.
Many organizations that used to spend millions of dollars on marketing are looking for cost effective alternatives today. And with the recent financial crisis, marketers are directing their 2009 budgets toward content, according to a new study from online marketing resource and vendor-matching tool Junta42. After surveying its community of corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals, it quotes that:
- Around 56% of marketing and publishing decision-makers plan to increase their content marketing spending this year.
- A full 31% expressed their intention to increase spending on content significantly, while 25% said they planned to increase it slightly.
- Marketers would depend on subscribers (68%), followed by e-newsletters/email (60%), blogs (56%), case studies (55%), online video (51% ), white papers (46%) and micro sites (43%).
No matter who your targeted audience is, which region it is, what traditions they follow; one thing for sure is your audience is going to have many alternatives. And to attract and retain them, you need valuable and quality content; which not only will give information about a product but will also help in sharing and propogating your message through the community.
