Content Marketing in the Digital Age
Written by: Alyssa Battaglia
First thing’s first…
In this digital age, marketing teams have gotten busier and busier over the years trying to keep up with the latest and greatest content marketing strategies. This may include advertising, social media marketing, making sure they’re practicing good SEO practices, keeping a mobile first mindset, all while maintaining a good reputation.
But, before you attempt to do any of these things, you need to start at square one, and that means figuring out who you want to target. Every company that has a marketing team has a target market or demographic that they’re trying to reach. For example, a car brand like Lexus would target upper middle class to upper class people who are looking to buy luxury cars.
According to Nathalie Nahai, “those who do succeed are the brands that understand their customers’ needs and can deliver the solutions to their problems in a frictionless way.”
“Whatever your business, whomever you’re targeting, to succeed online there are three fundamental principles you must be able to fulfill:
1. Know who you are targeting
2. Communicate persuasively
3. Sell with integrity ”
That is the very start of the way up the mountain to having the best content marketing practice for your company.
Why Content Marketing is Important
Most people in this world own a smartphone and spends hours a day scrolling through apps and social media. According to Julie McCoy, “American adults are engaged with multiple content channels for more than 11 hours every single day.” Since people spend nearly half of their day on media platforms, this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of this time to draw in your audience.
When marketing, your audience does not care about information that companies want to talk about. People are only interested in topics that they want to hear.
It is very important for companies to produce content that their market wants to hear. If a company only talks about information that they want to talk about, they will have little to no audience because audiences won’t respond.
Content Marketing in this Upcoming Decade
Over the past 10 years or so, new media platforms have appeared for marketing professionals to take advantage of. Some of these have included Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and the most recent one, TikTok. Professionals have predicted some new platforms that marketers should adapt during this decade including, podcasts, ebooks, TedTalks, videos, and webinars. These are just predicted now, who knows what other platforms will be available over a 10 year time.
The Golden Rule
In content marketing, there is a golden rule that every company should follow: don’t sell, inform. “It’s not about you. Unlike conventional marketing strategies that engage in hard selling and place brands at the front and center, content marketing positions brands as trustworthy and worth doing business with.” (Muwonge, 2018) Once again we are bringing up this topic. That just shows how important and necessary it is to be successful.
Another important key to being successful is publishing content frequently and consistently. “According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, the most successful B2B content marketers deliver content consistently, whereas the least successful content marketers publish less frequently.” (Muwonge, 2018) If you practice these tips, your marketing content will only increase.
As you can see, most organization’s see their content marketing success improving compared to the year before when their program was less than one year old. Rarely do you see companies say it is less successful.
How Chipotle Has Mastered Marketing Content
Chipotle’s brand has risen tremendously in the past 10 years or so and their brand is one that generates a lot of competition because of their marketing content. Chipotle’s company motto is “Food with Integrity”, and in the image below you can see how they want their products to be known for and how they want to differentiate themselves from the competition.
By Chipotle using all natural ingredients, raising meats without antibiotics or added hormones, pasture-raised dairy, and selling only non-GMO ingredients, they are really targeting their desired market segment. “For Chipotle, their ideal target market is college students and younger millennial professionals aged 18 – 28. Many of these people consider cooking a hobby, and will make a majority of their meals from their own kitchen, specifically using fresh foods and healthy meals.” (Alhadlaq, 1249) More reasons that Alhadlaq states why Chipotle has such a success with their marketing content is because of their online interactions with customers. This allows people to feel more connected to the company and also makes you respect them more because they really care what you have to say. I personally have had a great experience with their support team. One out of the many times that I have had Chipotle, I had a meal that was really badly made and didn’t get what I wanted. I went to Twitter and sent them a dm and they got back to me immediately, and sent me a free meal card! This just showed that they really care about their integrity and what is being given to their customers. They make sure to let you know how much they care about their customers and that is extremely important for practicing good content marketing.
“Chipotle’s social media platforms rarely feature official Chipotle content, but when they do, they make sure it’s worth your time. The brand focuses on creating exciting and animated content through the use of music and animation graphics.” (Tan, 2020)
Lastly, Chipotle has made its presence in the creative digital media realm of marketing. In 2012, they came out with a two-minute animated film called “Back to the Start” which generated more than 9 million views and thousands of retweets and reposts on social media. The film is about a farmer who started with humane farming techniques, then chooses to industrialize his farm using cruel and inhumane techniques. He then realizes that he doesn’t like that way of farming so he goes back to his old ways and actually enjoys farming again. This touches on Chipotle’s brand and how they are activists for humane farming techniques. This video really pulls at your heart strings and successfully uses ethos to draw in its viewers.
If you’re a starting company and is looking for examples and inspiration on how to produce successful content marketing, Chipotle is a great company to look at and study to get you to the next level. If you do your research and practice all of the tips in this article, you are going to be on your way to practicing the best content marketing!
Works Cited
Nahai, N. (2017). Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion (2nd ed., p. 9).
Tan, J. (2020, April 27). 9 Ways The Chipotle Marketing Strategy Kept It Real (And Won). In Referral Candy Blog. Retrieved from https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/chipotle-marketing-strategy/
Muwonge, N. (2018, April 19). Content Marketing Best Practices You Should Be Following in 2018. In Vertical Measures. Retrieved from https://www.verticalmeasures.com/blog/digital-marketing/content-marketing-best-practices-2018/
McCoy, J. (2020, April 14). What Is Content Marketing & Why It Matters. In Search Engine Journal. Retrieved from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-marketing/what-is-content-marketing/#close
Alhadlaq, I. (2016, February). Chipotle’s Strategic Marketing. In International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research. Retrieved from https://www.ijser.org/researchpaper/Chipotles-Strategic-Marketing.pdf