Sunday, September 1, 2013

Traditional v.s Digital advertising: CONTENT MARKETING

At some point in my career, I was excited to work with a digital agency, I thought it must be the new dimension that I lack.
Eager to learn "digital", my experience started with words like "lead generation", "content", "traffic", "SEO" etc...
IT GOT ME OUT OF MY MIND! I was unable to grasp the meaning of these words and thought we didn't speak the same language...

After a while, I discovered that all there is to it  is to apply the same principle I have always been using in traditional advertising, online.

For instance, what we call "target audience" and base our communication platform on, is called in digital language "lead generation". It's a database that consists of the names and addresses (or emails) of individuals/ corporations to obtain information for the purpose of expanding the scope of business, increasing sales, conducting specialised research, etc...
In traditional communication you advertise where your target audience is.
In digital you buy "leads" or get them from unpaid sources and target your consumers directly.

In traditional advertising, you measure the ROI of your marketing i.e the contribution that the advertising campaign had on revenue and profits, plus the awareness it created among people.
In digital, you measure the effectiveness of content marketing: it is the intersection of awareness and lead generation.

So CONTENT MARKETING is a key in today's marketplace.
It certainly competes with traditional advertising. It has changed the way consumers research and buy products, that's why advertising agencies are increasing their budgets for content marketing because it helps them expand their reach online.

In advertising language :) to better explain Content, it can take many forms:
Articles, blog posts, editorials, email campaigns, newsletters, web content, info graphics, illustrations, photos, videos, tutorials, FAQs, webinars, e-books, etc....
The goal from all the above is to attract and retain customers.

An article that I read on marketo shows 4 reasons why companies should use content marketing:









Content marketing process in 6 easy steps: Source


1- Identify marketing objectives (benchmark)
2- Understand your buyers (define buying process stages)
3- Identify gaps (what is most appropriate at each stage of the buying process? what is more important for buyers? what assets are missing?)
4- Build content (key messages to deliver - set a standard for quality - consistency)
5- Organize distribution (select the right channels - facilitate social sharing - build landing pages)
6- Measure ROI (measure Web traffic, sales lead quality & social media sharing)




How can we measure the effectiveness of content marketing?

According to Pam Dyer, Common measurements include:
- Subscribers
- Fans
- Likes
- Traffic
- SEO: your ranking and visibility + search as a traffic source.
- Leads: Their quality and lifetime value
- Conversations: Sales, Subscribers and leads.
- Sales: Volume, financial value and lenght of the sales cycle
- Acquisition costs for users, leads and sales.





Bottom line, Content marketing grows your bottom line.
It builds awareness, exposes new people to your brand.
It inspires potential customers to engage, read, download, comment, share, etc...
It amplifies traditional word of mouth and grows organically with time.

To ensure the success of a content marketing strategy, we could measure the following:
- ranking in search engine results pages
- Number of first-time website visitors
- Total page views
- Visit durations
- Social metrics: Likes, follows, +1s, pins, etc...
- Social media referrals from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc...

The folks at BrandPoint illustrated it using the below infographic:



























































































If you come from the same background, and digital language at some point was a foreign language to you, I hope the picture is clearer now. Because Once you go digital, there's no way back.

Cheers!

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