Content Marketing Is Not As Narrow As You Think
Time to bust some myths
While I was thinking about my next blog topic at work today, I had a sudden, random musing — People are SO wrong about Content Marketing. And the more I thought about it, the surer I was that this was not a random thought after all. Rather, it was an aggregation of my interactions with my colleagues, friends, fellow marketers and countless blogs that I read on the internet. So I wanted to give my $0.02 and try to clear the air around this. You might try to hide behind conventional Internet wisdom and argue that I’m wrong but that’s fine. Opinions are like assholes…
This is what comes up on top when you do a Google search for ‘content marketing’. And now, here is how leading Marketing Automation platform, Marketo, defines Content Marketing:
“Content marketing is the process of creating high-quality, valuable content to attract, inform, and engage an audience, while also promoting the brand itself.”
Notice anything weird?
Yes, they’re contradictory! Google’s default definition (which I’m sure it picked up from someplace reputable) and the definition of someone who’s expected to be an authority on marketing, are polar opposites! One says that Content Marketing is not or should not be used to explicitly promote a brand while the other says it does. Who’s right?
Let me throw a couple more wisdom nuggets your way. Both of these are from people who supposedly know their shit:
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” — Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute
“Content Marketing is creating or curating non-product content — be it informational, educational, entertaining, etc — and publishing it to contact points with customers to get their attention, to focus on the topic around your solution, and pull them closer to learning more about you.” — Sam Decker, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Clearhead
So. Many. Words.
If you go through the other 25 results that come up, you’ll find 25 other definitions of Content Marketing. If you’re someone who’s new to this, you might get lost in the maze. Worse, you might feed your brain with useless rhetoric and theory which you’ll never be able to understand and implement. Like, for when you get a real job, you’ll be expected to do Content Marketing but if you have 25 different versions of it, you’ll be out the door faster than the time it takes you to say ‘Content Marketing’. Of course, I exaggerate but that’s the sorry state of affairs right now that nobody knows exactly what Content Marketing is all about. People think it’s just a fancy phrase for blogging or making informative slideshares, infographics, whitepapers and the like. Everybody has their own definitions and vague understanding that’s ever so slightly different than everybody else. So who’s right?
I don’t claim that I am. But where everyone is trying to complicate things and trying to make Content Marketing a science, I found one of the earliest uses of the term ‘content marketing’ to be the most illuminating. And complete. Author Jeff Cannon, in 1999 (way before the proliferation of online marketing), had this to say about Content Marketing:
“Content created to provide consumers with the information they seek”
Simple. No-nonsense. All-encompassing. I’d go as far as to say that ‘all marketing is content marketing’. Yes, it flies in the face of the ‘push vs pull’ model that is used to categorise Marketing but I don’t see the need to create unnecessary boundaries. Any kind of content, be it subtle or overtly promotional is meant to provide consumers with the information they seek, so why are we creating all these borders and new concepts like Affiliate Marketing or Paid Marketing or App Store Optimisation? Everything revolves around content and we should not be reluctant to call a spade a spade.
Just think about it. Think about the marketing activity you undertook today. Could you have done it without quality, persuasive content?
Shot over a journalist pitch or a press release? Content Marketing disguised as PR Outreach.
Sent a lifecycle email to your users asking them to subscribe? Content Marketing disguised as Email Marketing.
Improved your app description to attract more users to install your app? Content Marketing disguised as App Store Optimization
Tweaked your ad headline to make it more click-worthy? Content Marketing disguised as Inorganic Marketing
Convinced a user to rate you 5 stars? Content Marketing disguised as Product/In-App Marketing.
Joined a Reddit/Slack community discussing pain points that your problem solves? Content Marketing disguised as UGC.
Call it whatever you want, the success of your marketing efforts ultimately depends on the strength of your content, be it through text, images or videos. If you are not able to communicate your value proposition succinctly through your copy, no kind of Fancy Marketing is going to save you. There’s a reason we’re supposed to be story-tellers. We’re meant to weave magic through our words.
