In today’s fast-paced digital world, companies require an efficient strategy to outshine, capture potential customers, and transform leads into sales. Among the many strategies, digital marketing and content marketing stand tall as the most important in order to truly be able to make a difference in a business’s presence online. Though similar, both Content Marketing and Digital Marketing differ in the way they work and what they try to achieve.
In this blog, we’ll take deeper into the uniqueness of Digital Marketing and Content Marketing, how they benefit your business, and which one’s really best for you.
Content Marketing, being strategic, is primarily about creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain clearly defined audiences. The core objective is to drive profitable customer action through the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience aimed at driving profitable customer action through informing and educating the audience that later converts. In contrast to other traditional marketing tactics, content marketing does not rely on overtly promotional approaches; rather, it revolves around giving value through useful information.
There are so many types of content that can be used in the course of content marketing. These include;
Benefits of Content Marketing
Take a look at the benefits of Content Marketing:
1. More Engagement:
Content marketing is one of the most popular tools to engage your audience. Great, relevant content is driving users to engage for longer periods on your social media or website pages. The more the contents appeal to the actual needs and interests of the target audience, the better their engagement response through likes, shares, and comments, as well as a better stay time on your website. As an example, Buzzfeed maximised engagement to phenomenal heights by creating content that was connected and relevant to the audience’s lifestyle on listicles, quizzes, and shareable and interactive videos.
Case Study: Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” Campaign After the use of personalised content, Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign encouraged customers to engage by finding bottles with their names or those of their friends. This resulted in a 7% increase in consumption and an amazing jump in social media engagement.
2. Cost-Effective:
Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. Quality evergreen content like blogs, infographics, and social media posts doesn’t have to cost millions. Once created, minimal additional effort is needed to distribute and reuse throughout different channels for long-term benefits and ROI. According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing generates 3x as many leads than traditional outbound marketing while costing 62% less.”.
3. Builds Trust and Authority:
It is only through consistent, informative, and high-quality content that businesses will begin to position themselves as leaders in the industry. If the audience views your brand as knowledgeable and credible, then they would likely trust your products and services.
For example, HubSpot leveraged its content marketing to turn into a central hub of authority on inbound marketing. That was after HubSpot started offering educational content to people on various channels like blogs, eBooks, and webinars. They managed to earn a loyal customer base and grow their customer base dramatically. It helped them not only sell their marketing software but also create long-term trust with their audience.
Digital marketing refers to all marketing efforts that utilise an electronic device or the internet. It takes advantage of various web platforms by making use of social media, online search engines, email, websites, and so forth for great visibility. Digital marketing encompasses Search Engine Optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, and paid ads, among other techniques.
Common Types of Digital Marketing
The following are some common methods of digital marketing:
Digital ads are said to help boost brand awareness by as much as 80%. Here are the benefits of digital marketing:
1. Versatility:
Such an enormous number of channels and tools are available for marketers, including social media, email, search engines, and video marketing, which can actually be channelled into specific marketing campaigns that allow businesses to connect with the target audiences. Be it running adverts on Facebook, writing a compelling email campaign, or optimising content for SEO, the range of options for reaching out to customers is limitless. Such versatility gives businesses much space to try several formats, including videos, infographics, blogs, and many other things, ensuring they can connect their message in formats most relatable to their target audience.
Case Study: Airbnb’s Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy Airbnb uses a number of digital marketing tools- a range of email campaigns, social media ads, and user-generated content- through which they engage with travellers and homeowners. Through Instagram and other forms of broadcasting, Airbnb could inspire users to share accounts of their journey experiences, thus forming a very flexible marketing strategy that boosted brand loyalty and participation. This led to a growth in revenues of 340% within the years, thereby positioning Airbnb as the leading global provider of travel accommodations.
2. Flexibility:
One of the major benefits of digital marketing is the flexibility provided to business organisations to track the campaigns in real-time and, based on performance, make data-driven changes. Brands can hone their digital marketing strategy based on performance data. It enables businesses to focus on the best activities and refine a strategy quicker, which usually results in higher returns on investment (ROI).
Adaptation is one such characteristic that makes marketing dollars go the extra mile by optimising efforts, allowing brands to focus on strategies that deliver the highest ROI. Marketers can determine, thanks to analytics tools and A/B testing, which campaigns deliver and immediately change course to save both time and money.
3. Short-term and Long-term Success:
Digital marketing has both immediate and long-term results. On the one hand, businesses can balance between quick returns and sustained growth in this format. For short-term campaigns, it is suitable to choose PPC since it generates instant traffic, leads, and conversions. Meanwhile, SEO builds organic search rankings over time, which may lead to long-term visibility and sustained traffic. The combination of these two will ensure that the businesses attain not only speedy gains but also long-term profits to align the marketing activities appropriately with short-term and long-term objectives.
Long-term benefits are achieved through improved search rankings in SEO cases, while PPC will provide immediate traffic and lead generation. This combination allows businesses to strike a balance between the possibilities of generating immediate and sustained growth.
At first glance, Digital Marketing and Content Marketing seem to be the same; however, there are still notable differences.
1. Approach
Content marketing focuses on educating and building trust with the target audience through deep content. On the other hand, digital marketing is more concerned with directly achieving short-term outcomes.
2. Audience Interaction:
While content marketing seeks to inform and build long-term relationships with the audience, digital marketing employs tactics like paid advertisements and SEO to get immediate audience interaction and sales.
3. Scope:
Content marketing falls under digital marketing. All that falls in the ambit of content marketing falls under the broad scope of digital marketing. Still, digital marketing only encompasses content marketing because digital marketing encompasses many things beyond content creation, including PPC, SEO, and social media ads.
Even with such clear delineations, digital marketing and content marketing often complement each other. For instance, for a digital marketing strategy, blogs can be used as effective content to enhance the SEO rankings of such efforts. The same content – blog posts or videos – can be promoted with paid ads or social media advertising to gain more visibility.
A great content marketing strategy usually fuses the best of both worlds because valuable content is supported with effective and robust digital marketing tactics for driving traffic and engagement.
In order to understand how both digital and content marketing, one has to understand first what types of content are applicable in both strategies:
The choice should be made depending on the type of business, resources, and budget required, but combining these two strategies is sure to give a highly robust online presence. For instance, the use of educational content as part of content marketing and paid social media marketing as part of digital marketing can result in credibility for the brand with invitations of new leads.
A company that thinks in terms of long-term trust and authority creation is likely to appreciate content marketing. On the other hand, instant results and conversions will require PPC ads or SEO for digital marketing techniques. For instance, PPC delivers a 200% return on investment, generating $2 in revenue for every $1 spent.
Digital and content marketing are not mutually exclusive, but joining them is the real recipe for success. A perfect strategy would ideally include the following elements:
It is quite difficult to discern since, in reality, business organisations require both digital marketing and content marketing to have maximum success. Each plays its critical role in building a web presence, which attracts customers and, as such, generates sales. Around 80% of online shoppers have bought products directly through social media advertisements.
If you are looking forward to building a high-powered marketing strategy out of the best of both worlds, then iDigitalise India is your answer. Being a top digital marketing company in Navi Mumbai, we cater to global clients and specialise in SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and many more. Let’s help you reach the right goals for your digital marketing and grow your brand accordingly.
