Content Marketing: A Way to Win Over Customers?

A term I hear often at my internship or during classes is content marketing. Some of my teachers have touched upon it briefly, but I don't think I've fully been able to grasp it. I came across an article on Forbes that explains how companies can use content marketing as an edge to stand out from their competition. In today's extremely cluttered world full of marketing and advertisements, companies are always looking to have a competitive edge.

I thought it was interesting when the article discussed that companies who think that they'll be the best just from having a great product or service are "naive to think that simply being good is enough to win in business". From this article, I'm getting the gist that a company's content marketing can be through blogs, social media posts, pay-per-click advertising, and websites. I'm sure there's more to it, but those are a few ways companies can incorporate content marketing into their IMC plan.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, "content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action". Storytelling seems like it could play a huge role in content marketing. As we've discussed in class, storytelling is the key to a strong, creative marketing message. 

This article focuses on analyzing the content marketing utilized by your competitors. By doing this, companies can see successes and failures. The article noted that content marketing is easily accessed because it is very public. Your company can avoid making the same mistakes that your competitors make by doing this. The article also recommends that companies subscribe to competitors' newsletters or blog watch. I was surprised by this, because wouldn't this be providing your competitor with another "fan"? Many marketers focus on engagement on social media and how big of a following a company has, and by doing this it seems like you're increasing their numbers, and in their eyes, maybe even their success. 

The article also discussed how you can find out who your competitor's strongest brand influencers are. We have talked about influencers a lot in class, as they are important assets to companies and their brand equity. The article suggested that companies find out who competitors' influencers are, follow them on social media, and let them know when you publish something that may interest them. In a sense- this is a way to steal customers from your competitors through the use of content marketing. 

Overall, reading through this article and analyzing the different concepts mentioned has given me a better understanding of content marketing and how it can be used to have an edge over the competition!