Content marketing

I was reading about B2B marketing when I came across Content Marketing. This topic interests me as it is relevant to what I do at work, but I thought this will be a useful information to share with the class. 

According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), Content marketing is a marketing technique of 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. Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with customers and prospects without selling. Instead of pitching products or services, we just deliver information that makes  customers more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if a company delivers consistent, ongoing valuable information to consumers, they ultimately reward the company with their business and loyalty.

According to Ad Age, content marketing is basically social media + other marketing channels. Typically, social media accounts for most of an organization's content-marketing activities. But content encompasses other channels as well: white papers ebooks, webinars, etc. that can reside on social channels or on the company's website. Ad Age reports that content marketing can significantly reduce the media spend associated with advertising. However, an effective content initiative requires significant investment in staff, production and distribution resources. My team in my company is involved with content marketing (creating white papers, technology briefs, webinars, etc), and I can vouch for the investment and effort.

According to CMI, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say that company content helps them make better product decisions. CMI also claims that marketing is impossible without great content. Companies send us information all the time, but most of them are not very relevant. Hence according to CMI, a good content marketing can make a person stop... read... think... behave... differently. Having done content marketing for a while, I can also vouch that a good content goes a long way in making the connection with the customer. Of course, there is no denying that it is a significant effort to generate good content for marketing.