What is ‘Content Marketing’?

To be somewhat encompassing, content marketing covers the creation of content to engage both current and potential customers. Essentially, content marketing is custom-made media, appealing to an intended audience by distributing relevant and informative content, without the hard-sell .  Instead of flooding your potential client with sales patter that they can easily ignore, content seeks to encourage or persuade an them to make an informed decision with little pressure.

The backbone of content is trust – by informing your current and potential customer base with consistent and valuable information, the belief is that they will return and reward your business with their support. In turn, they will willingly share this content by following, retweeting, commenting, reviewing or downloading your carefully presented content.

To be specific what does content marketing cover? Well, content covers the more traditional mediums such as magazines, newsletters, printed publications or white papers. However, for the more en vogue and innovative amongst us, content can cover podcasts, online news, email marketing campaigns, videos and mobile content. The BBC’s iplayer mobile app is a great example of content marketing wrapped in a funky and fresh technology.

To contextualise, during our recent content marketing survey at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising Show (TFM), it was interesting to discover that 49% of marketing professionals hadn’t heard of the term, despite it being hotly tipped as the marketing phrase of 2010.

So are we too early in promoting ‘content marketing’? Not at all, as 100% of marketing manager respondents, both in small and corporate businesses, used at least one form of content marketing, particularly the uber ‘now’ social media. Strike while the iron’s still warming up comes to mind, as more companies will be seeking the services of content marketing specialists in the move away from traditional promotions.

So we may all raise our glasses to ‘content marketing’ – the new non-interruption marketing tool that may sound the death knoll for in-your-face, yet easily ignored traditional TV and magazine advertising.

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