It’s just past 12PM on a Monday afternoon and a group of co-workers are gathering inside a company break room for lunch. As more people begin gathering one by one inside the large room, yours truly quickly brings up the much-anticipated topic of the day—the outcome of the Super Bowl, which had taken place the day before.
“The game was okay. But to me, the commercials that aired during the breaks were the most entertaining part of the Super Bowl.” Said one employee as she excitedly voiced her opinion about the big game. “Yeah, but each ad cost $5 million dollars to air during the game—and only a few of them were worth it!” Said her disheartened supervisor (whose team lost the big game).
As I stood there listening while more and more people entered the room and joined the discussion, I quickly noticed that only a few comments were directed towards the actual game; while the vast majority of comments were aimed towards the ads that aired throughout the Super Bowl.
Unlike ads, which are obvious to everyone who views or hears them, when it comes to content marketing, the same cannot be said (which is probably why you've never heard about a piece of content marketing being discussed around an office water cooler at work).
What separates content marketing from common content
How would you feel if throughout the rest of this article I proceeded to tell you how great of a branding guru I am? I’ll do you one even better. How would you feel if I spent the entirety of this article going on an absolute tangent about all of the things that I dislike?
You’d probably label me a narcissist and would feel that I deceived you with the title of this article. And you certainly wouldn’t be compelled to do business with my company, am I right?
Well, not only would doing that be a bad reflection of me for doing that. It would also be a bad reflection of my company as well because I would have made this article entirely about myself. Which brings us to the major differences between content marketing and ordinary content.
What separates content marketing, and for that matter, content marketers, from ordinary content and content creators is that while the objective of content marketing is to drive profitable customer action for your business—it must also help customers as well. While ordinary content has no defining purpose as it pertains to positively impacting a business.
3 things your content marketing must do for customers
Let’s face it, these days, just about anyone with an opinion, a smartphone or laptop, and a social media account could become a content creator overnight (which is why so many people currently have the title as one in their social bio).
But in order to become a content marketing professional, the content marketing pieces that you create must ultimately serve the purpose of driving profitable customer action for your business.
“What makes content marketing different from simple content is that content marketing must do something for your business.” Writes entrepreneur, author, and Godfather of content marketing Joe Pulizzi, in his book, Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less.
In order for content marketing to be effective, your content must help customers who come across it by doing at least one of these three things for them with the objective of eventually driving profitable customer action for your business:
Inform them.
Engage them.
Amuse them.
If your content doesn’t do any of the aforementioned things for customers, it’s simply content. But if it does do those things, it has crossed the chasm between common content—to content marketing.
Final words
Studies show that in 2022, the global content marketing size was valued at $413.2 billion with a projected growth to $877.66 billion by 2032. Now, it doesn’t take an expert in economics to understand that content marketing could have quite the impact on your company’s bottom line for the foreseeable future.
But that’s only if your company utilizes the power of content marketing the right way.
Which is exactly what we do for our clients at Decryption. We’ll not only create contemporary culture-relevant content for your startup, we’ll also help your company distribute that content on the most effective platforms—which will lead to a direct increase in sales revenue for your company.
By now you’re probably wondering just how your company could become the next Decryption client. Well, to do that, simply email us today to schedule a complimentary client call and we’ll take it from there.
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