What is Content Marketing?
More and more customers and consumers these days have become savvy enough to ignore traditional marketing and advertising. When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad? What was the last billboard advertisement that resonated enough to take action? Do you use your DVR to skip through commercials? (Or do you not even deal with commercials by using streaming services like Netflix and Disney+?) Do you have an ad-blocking program installed for your web browser?
How can you reach a new audience if that audience is immune to traditional marketing techniques? Content marketing!
Reach a New Audience
Traditional marketing, at times, has become less effective over the past several years. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a way to reach customers by offering informational, educational, and entertaining content – but this is done in a way where the customer is not “sold to”. The goal is to attract and retain a highly-targeted audience who will eventually trust your brand and reward you with their business.
By consistently creating and curating content, as part of your overall marketing strategy, you’ll be able to position yourself as a leader in your industry. Content marketing is a method of communicating directly with your customers, but without directly attempting to empty their pockets. Your prospective customers will eventually come to know, like, and trust your brand. Just think of the possibilities if your audience began to actually look forward to receiving your company’s content offerings, as opposed to being annoyed with sales pitch after sales pitch. Great content marketing captures the attention of your audience.
You might already be engaging in content marketing without realizing it. Do your pay-per-click ads point to content-rich landing pages on your company’s website? The same goes for social media. Do your tweets and Facebook posts link to your content as well? These are just a few examples of content marketing, but the sky is the limit. Here are a few examples of brands who are taking advantage of content marketing:
Content Marketing Examples
These are all examples of brands creating and sharing content, without attempting to directly sell to their target audience. This type of marketing leads to new potential customers becoming fans of a brand. It’s these fans who are much more likely, as a result of enjoying the informational, educational, and entertaining content, to eventually become passionate paying customers in the future.
We’re just scratching the surface of content marketing. The only limits are one’s creativity and imagination. If you have questions or comments, contact us about how we can help you with a content marketing strategy for your company.
About the author:
Christopher Rhines
Partner, Director of Development
Christopher is the Director of Development and one of the partners at Torx. In addition to keeping Torx's Richmond office firing on all cylinders, he can often be found deep in the trenches, building custom content management systems and WordPress-powered websites. He still remembers how to write Basic computer programs on Apple IIs and Commodore 64s.