George Stenitzer, chief content officer of Crystal Clear Communications, explains the difference between content marketing and advertising
Some marketers who relied on advertising and promotion are struggling to tune into content marketing. Content has much more in common with journalism than advertising, so content marketing calls for a profoundly different mindset.
If you’ve been able to count on 30-second spots, digital advertising and promotions to ring the cash register, it can be challenging to shift to a “content-first” mindset.
I hear these concerns in the questions marketers raise during my content marketing workshops, among them:
“How do I make my content seem genuine rather than sales-y?”
“How do you push content marketing to consumers without pushing too hard/selling?”
“How do we make a content plan that targets users’ interests (and keep it relevant)?”
To address these questions, let’s sound out the 3 big differences between content marketing and advertising.
Content marketing helps before it sells; Advertising sells first.
Great content marketing starts with real questions from real buyers, prospects and customers, using the words they really use.
Buyer questions reveal a lot, which is why marketers need to capture them verbatim. These questions tell you which information buyers are seeking, what obstacles they encounter on the path to purchase, and where they are in a carefully considered purchase process.
Early in a buying journey, customers ask questions that help them establish whether there’s a need to change:
Is there a better way to do this?
Is the status quo good enough?
If I make a change, how bad is the pain, versus the gain?
How can I sell this idea to my boss?
Early in the buyers’ journey is when marketers must magnify the buyers’ problem. Show buyers how big and bad the problem is today.
Then show them how much worse it will get over the next few years, if they do nothing. Content that shows the price of ignoring a problem can make buyers uncomfortable with the status quo, and move them along the buying journey.
In the midst of a buying journey, customers ask questions to help them compare their options. How do sellers compare in terms of performance, quality, service and price?
That’s when marketers need to help buyers compare their choices. Be bold – help them compare not only the choices that your company offers, but also the choices they can get from other sellers.
Great content marketing helps buyers – even when it means they may buy from someone else.
Be helpful like the Santa Claus in the movie Miracle on 34th Street. That Santa wanted kids’ Christmas wishes to come true so much that he even sent buyers across the street to a competitor. His remarkable behavior only increased customers’ loyalty – all because he helped customers solve their problems.
Late in the buying journey, customers look for people like themselves who will confirm their decision. They’ll ask questions like:
Who else bought the product?
How did it go for them?
Are there testimonials, customer reviews, case histories or videos from customers like me?
Capture customers’ questions by sitting with customer service people and writing down all the questions they hear. Go to trade shows and events and note the questions customers ask. Persuade sales to help you capture customers’ questions.
Then load customers’ questions into a spreadsheet and analyze them by topic, buying stage and the ready availability of a great answer. If that sounds like a lot of work, it is! But the payoff can be enormous: relevant content, answers to buyers’ questions, captured in the buyer’s own words.
Useful answers to customers’ questions are the ultimate soft sell. The questions you capture can provide topics for your content marketing. Capture 52 questions, and you can write a weekly blog for the whole next year.
Answer all your customers’ questions in a blog and in an FAQ on your website. No question is “too stupid” to address. When one customer asks a question, probably 100 more are hesitating to ask a similar question.
Answer buyer questions in a way that answers the question, “What’s in it for me” (WIIFM?). Don’t focus on the features of your product. Instead talk about the problems and pain points buyers need to address and how your offering helps them solve those problems.
Help buyers think through what an ideal solution would be like, what benefits they’d get. Enable them to see how your product fits their needs.
For great content, “speak like a person, not a corporation,” as GE CMO Linda Boff advises. Especially in social media and on your website, be human – a person with a photo and profile – rather than a corporate logo.
Include bylines on your blogs and articles so people know who wrote them. Enable real people to answer customers’ real questions by email or chat. Building the authority of your employees only benefits your content marketing.
Since buyers are seeking content, content marketing doesn’t feel like an interruption.
Advertising is rarely sought out, so it’s almost always an interruption. To avoid the interruption of ads, people fast-forward, change radio stations or flip the page. Not so with content. Buyers genuinely engage with useful content. The more useful your content, the more engaged they’ll be.
Content marketing takes an ongoing commitment to do whatever it takes to help buyers by answering their questions and making them wiser buyers. It’s more than just a “campaign” that comes and goes.
Information that’s useful to buyers needs to be always available. Most content has no end-date. Some of the most powerful content is timeless, evergreen – just like your buyers’ questions.
Show up where buyers are looking for your content: in search, on social media and on your website. Build your content assets primarily on the ground you own, like your website. Avoid building on borrowed ground such as social media, since they can change the rules and wreck your marketing in a heartbeat.
“Become the best answer on the Internet for your customers’ questions,” as Michael Brenner says. When you have the best answers to questions real customers are asking, they will seek out your answers.
The winning formula: offer the content buyers seek.
“[Content marketing is] all the marketing that’s left,” as marketing guru Seth Godin said back in 2008.
Studies show that 57 percent to 80 percent of a customer’s buying process happens online, often well before a buyer contacts your company. Buyers, especially millennials, are inclined buy things in their own way and on their own terms, often using mobile devices. They research everything they can find online before talking to sales.
By the time your phone rings, most buyers have already formed distinct preferences. Their phone call may be mostly to confirm that you’ll do what your content said you’ll do:
What’s the price, including taxes and shipping?
How long is the guarantee? What does it cover?
When can you deliver?
To get a handle on the content marketing mindset, observe your own behavior when you make a carefully considered purchase – a house, car, mortgage or investment plan. Or when your business makes a carefully considered purchase. Ask yourself:
What are your burning questions?
Where do you go for information?
What obstacles do you encounter? How do you overcome them?
Who helped you the most with useful information along the way?
Great content helps before it sells. That’s the mindset that will help you succeed with content marketing.
Great content appears where buyers search, answers their questions, shows satisfied customers who look like them and makes them smarter buyers. It’s fundamentally different from advertising.