Content marketing and content marketing strategy definitely interconnect, but they are not the same thing, contrary to what many people think.
Content marketing describes the process of creating and sharing relevant brand information in hopes of engaging current consumers and attracting new ones.
Content marketing strategy is just what is says: a strategy for marketing your content. Whether you’re engaged in content marketing, blogging, ebook publishing, apps, or any one of numerous content ventures, you must have a strategy.
While the two terms are not the same, they are often used interchangeably. They do work in tandem and in order to be successful at content marketing, you need an effective content strategy. Let’s look at what marketers consider important and learn a bit more about their views on content marketing strategy.
A recent survey conducted by Econsultancy asked marketers questions that reveal their position on content marketing and content marketing strategy. The answers may surprise you.
When asked if they have a defined content marketing strategy, the results looked like this:
- 38% Yes
- 55% No, but planning one
- 8% No, and not planning one
When asked to name their 3 most important business objectives for content marketing activity, the response was:
- 52% Increased engagement
- 42% Increasing traffic to site
- 35% Raising brand awareness
And from there, objectives ranked as follows:
- 33% Increased sales
- 31% Improved SEO (link-building)
- 30% Generating leads
- 22% Improving brand perception
- 18% Thought leadership
- 13% Incremental revenue from content
- 11% Nurturing leads
- 10% Influencing key stakeholders
- 1% Other
When asked which of the following content marketing tactics were used to drive traffic to their content, the results were:
- 78% Social network engagement
- 57% Article marketing (e.g. ‘how-to’ blog posts)
- 36% Encouraging user-generated content
- 31% Tagging posts and images
- 30% Video sharing
- 22% Image sharing
- 16% Acquiring traffic from publishers
Overall, the most important thing to remember is that the best content marketing communicates with potential customers in a way that your audience enjoys and pays attention to, and most of all, demonstrates to them that you are a good person to do business with.