Content Marketing versus Content Production. You can’t have one without the other, however, it’s worth a discussion to distinguish these two very different things.
If content marketing is a tactic utilized by your marketing department (it should be), then you must make a decision of whether or not you will be marketing the content that you create or if you need outside help to facilitate the production.
As implied above, you can’t content market without the production of that content. Then once you have the content in hand, it isn’t enough to just distribute that content and call it “content marketing”.
You have to actually market that content as if it was the product itself. Once this happens, an organization will be able to invest their funds in the most efficient and effective way to generate desired results.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing can be defined in two ways.con·tent mar·ket·ing | \ ˈkän-ˌtent \\ ˈmär-kə-tiŋ \
- noun. A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
- verb. Applying marketing skills and techniques to written, video, audio, or social content in order to provide the greatest possible reach, longevity, and effectiveness of that content.
In short, content marketing is the creation and distribution of informative or entertaining media as a means of increasing visibility, reach, and audience engagement for a brand, product, or service.
Content production is the hands-on creation of consumable marketing media such as graphics, text, video, audio, and social media. It is the first and most crucial phase of content marketing and we will go deeper into this below.
As a traditional example: content production is the equivalent of you writing a well-researched article, while content marketing is having that article printed in a newspaper.
To take it a step further, content marketing is researching the best newspapers and other places that would best fit and distribute your paper in order to get your article in the most places and garner the most feedback.
Marketing Content Types
You’ve heard the saying that “Content is King.” While this saying may be somewhat dated, its meaning is still solid. Content is the foundation for every type of digital form of marketing.
For business, there primarily 5 Digital Marketing Content Types That Drive Business:
- Long-form Articles
- Video Content
- Downloadable Content
- Native Social Content
- Podcast and Audio Content
Marketing Strategy
Merely creating content and hoping for the best, will not do. To be successful you must have a content marketing strategy. Several factors need to be taken into consideration when producing content.
Identify the Purpose of Your Content
The first thing that you need to do when producing content is to identify its purpose. Content can have multiple uses such as being entertaining, informative, or educational, among others.
Now, regardless of its meaning, your content also needs to be easily digestible for your audience and needs to be in the proper format that’s in accordance with the channel that it is being used in. Also, it is crucial to
In addition to identifying the purpose in regard to how it is perceived by your audience, you must also understand the content types that will best drive business for your company.
Is it Lead Generation, Website Traffic, or Brand Recognition? These all require different approaches when creating content.
Know Your Audience
In addition to the point above, you will also need to know who your target audience is before you start producing content. The whole point behind content marketing is to create an ongoing relationship with customers and prospects, which means that you need to tailor your content in accordance with your audience, and not the other way around.
Consider these important factors when choosing the right marketing content for your audience:
- How do they consume content? Do they prefer video, text, or audio?
- Where do they consume content? Desktop, mobile, while traveling, while at home, while working out?
- What topics will resonate with them the most, even if it isn’t a direct reference to your product or service?
Provide Value Through Your Content
You will have to provide value through your content so that it will have maximum impact. It means that you will have to, first, identify what your audience’s pain points are, as well as their wants and needs, and produce content that’s able to address these.
How-to content is a good example here, as it provides your audience with the necessary information to quickly pick up a new skill or use your products and services.
With each piece of content that you produce and market, you have to consider the “what’s in it for me” from the consumers’ viewpoint. When they consume your content they are trading their time and attention for what you are offering, so you better make it good.
When placing content behind a form [gated content], the stakes are even higher. You must make sure that the value that you are giving is perceived as greater than the time it takes the person to consume the content.
What is Content Production?
Content production is the hands-on creation of content from nothing to something. This content does not necessarily have to be original content and can consist of creating new versions and iterations of existing content.
The production of written, video, and audio content can be approached in multiple ways. Some larger companies may be able to produce their content in house, while smaller organizations may be better off outsourcing their content production.
Additional articles on content production:
Video Production and Video Marketing
Video Production Outsourcing
How Technology Has Changed Video Production
Audio Production / Podcasts
How to 1000x Your Content Production
Content Production and Content Marketing
As shown above, content production is not only the beginning, but an integral part of content marketing, and neither can be viewed in a silo nor considered without the other.
Content marketing cannot work without content, nor can it work effectively with poorly or uninspired material. Therefore, good content production is best achieved by understanding your audience and with proper market research – both of which are key aspects of content marketing.
In conclusion, content production and content marketing are two separate sciences and skillsets. People who produce content don’t necessarily know how to market it.
Those that know how to market it, in many cases don’t possess the skills to produce it. Together, they create a constantly-improving feedback cycle in which you create content, market it, gain new insights from and about your audience, and start the cycle again with improved data and more impactful content.
Want to learn more? Talk to a professional Content Monsta!
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