Content Marketing Today
By: Devon Gabauer
What is Content Marketing?
The word content is thrown around more today than ever before. The explosion of social media has made it easier than ever for businesses and companies to connect with their consumers. These same companies and businesses can also use content to gain more consumers for their product.
Content Marketing is the use of that content to help meet a marketing goal for your organization. These marketing goals are easily reached by incorporating content in advertisements while using optimal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques.
However, Content Marketing is not as simple as just creating a random piece of content that you hope your audience will engage with. Any piece of content that is created should have a clear goal that can be tracked to see whether it was effective in engaging audience, or other potential consumers.
Luke Kintigh of AdAge says:
“Content’s rightful role is to influence consumers and create intent. By treating and measuring it that way, we’ll be able to shift our industry’s mentality away from short-burst campaign results and prove that the right content marketing strategy can build loyalty and value.”
Content Marketing can be used during various stages of the marketing funnel. There are different content marketing strategies for different parts of the funnel.
Discovery Stage
Blog Posts
VIdeos
E-mail Newsletters
Consideration Stage
Case Studies
Demo Videos
Conversion Stage
Testimonials
Reviews
Retention Stage
Special Offers
E-mail Offers and Follow-Up
The Growth of Content Marketing
As I mentioned previously, content began to boom around the same time as social media, so companies were wise to join in on the trend to expand their brands. Content Marketing is vital at a time like this during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Companies and Brands are able to keep their consumers not only updated but entertained by releasing content daily.
The majority of content is streamed through the use of mobile phones, so it is important for companies to keep a mobile first mindset while creating content.
Content Marketing is still no where near it’s peak. The past few years, content marketing worth has skyrocketed, and within the coming years Content Marketing is projected to be worth $412 BILLION dollars.
John Glenday of The Drum says:
“Spanning the period from 2017-21 the report singled out three key growth-drivers for the industry; building brand awareness, lower costs than traditional advertising and an increased conversion rate. This is set to power a total industry valuation of just $195.58bn in 2016 to $412.88bn by 2021, representing incremental growth of $217.3bn.”
Why is Content Marketing Important?
One of the reasons why Content Marketing is important is because content can be low budget to produce, while reaching larger audiences. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.
A great example of this is the “Walkumentary” ad used by Brita to help promote their reusable water bottles. Brita posted a 4-hour advertisement video that followed a woman on her daily walk to get water in Africa, which was rather cheap to produce. If you were to hit the “End Her Walk” button that was displayed, it would take you to the Brita site where you could browse through reusable water bottles. When you purchase the bottles, it provides clean for a person in Africa for one year.
Content Marketing also drives user engagement and relationship. It is said that through Content Marketing:
60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading content about it
78% of people perceive a relationship between themselves and a company using custom content
82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content
90% of consumers find custom content useful
(Photo: Demand Metric)
These numbers demonstrate how consumers find content to be a more effective way of marketing products rather than large scale ad campaigns.
Dollar Shave Club’s Usage of Content Marketing
Dollar Shave Club is a subscription-based men’s grooming company that delivers fresh razors and grooming tools to your home monthly. Dollar Shave Club epitomizes how businesses can use Content Marketing to expand their brand quickly. Michael Dubin, the founder of Dollar Shave Club has a background in comedy which he used to his advantage to turn his starting supply of 250,000 razors into a $1 billion company.
Dubin used the power of Content Marketing to connect to his target audience, which he said was “guys like him”. Dubin was criticized for some of the language and jokes that were included in this 90 second advertisement, but only one thing mattered; the video worked. Within the first 48 hours of the video being posted, Dubin received over 12,000 orders.
The brand was booming, so when it was time to expand the products they sold, Dubin went back to what worked so well for him the first time. The brand released another YouTube ad that told a story that included their newest product; butt wipes.
Dollar Shave Club began sending “The Bathroom Minutes”, a comedic newspaper, with every shipment of butt wipes. (Photo: Convince and Convert)
What Dollar Shave Club was able to accomplish through the power of Content Marketing is something that other businesses can learn from. Dubin did a fantastic job of knowing who his audience was and creating content for them, which made them want to use his product.
Works Cited
AdAge - Content Marketing: What You Need To Know
The Drum - Content marketing industry to be worth $412bn by 2021 following four-year growth spurt
Demand Metric - Content Marketing Infographic
Convince and Convert - How Storytelling Turned Dollar Shave Club Into a Billion Dollar-Brand