Do you know the difference is between traditional marketing and content marketing? And which one fits your creative business better?
There is a quote that pretty much sums up the difference between the two major marketing strategies:
“Traditional marketing talks at people; content marketing talks with them” – Doug Kessler
Traditional marketing talks at people even when they didn’t ask for it. For example, a Youtube videos that starts with a commercial that you can skip after 5 seconds. Or a commercial on television, an advertisement in a magazine or a banner on a website.
It’s also called interruptive marketing: information reaches costumers when a business wants it, not when the costumer wants or needs it. You could say this method is old fashioned these days. People get tired of advertisement and commercials.
Traditional marketing is also very expensive, a good campaign, like a tv commercial or advertisement in a magazine, will cost a lot of money without being sure of the results because you can’t see who has actually read it.
Content marketing works the other way around. A business or small brand provide value information, like this blog, to build up a genuine relationship with potential customers to help them with their problems, fulfilling their needs or their purpose in life. It attracts customers in a natural way. It’s information that people are actually looking for.
The Content Marketing Institute sums it up pretty well:
“Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their loyalty.”
One of the greatest things about content marketing is that you don’t need a big budget to start. It’s super easy to start a blog, podcast, vlog or post interesting stories on Instagram.
It also builds trust when you’re writing transparent about the things you find important and what is going on with your business. This makes it very appealing for small brands and creative businesses like yours. And you probably already have a lot of interesting and value content that you can share and use.
But there is one little downfall: to really make it work it’s important to have a strategy behind it. Otherwise it’s just sharing content and stories. How do you set up a strategy for your content? We will talk about this in our next article 🙂
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