Content Marketing vs. Product Sales Marketing
Some companies might confuse content marketing with product sales marketing. Product sales marketing is sales collateral, such as flyers specific to a product line or item, or advertising via any method such as video, radio, online, etc.
Content marketing focuses on education and can include:
- Informative articles, blog posts or white papers
- E-books
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Webinars
These all are designed to answer specific questions people might have or provide them with something they cannot find elsewhere. Content marketing done right serves a purpose, is useful and practical, informative and if possible, enlightening.
A content marketing campaign builds a company’s reputation as an authoritative resource on topics that matter to potential customers. A business is more likely to gain their audience’s loyalty and trust, strengthen customer relationships and grow its subscriber base. But how does this lead to sales, you ask?
- Content marketing first helps attract a qualified audience.
- Ongoing content engages with that audience to build brand trust.
- That trust and industry authority eventually leads to a sale.
What Are My Peers Doing?
Overall among companies of any size or type, 70% of marketers currently engage in content marketing strategies and 72% say that a good content strategy is one major key to their success.
For smaller companies, one author argues, content marketing is a much more critical piece of the marketing pie than for larger corporations. Small companies cannot command the same marketing budget as larger firms and some studies show that content marketing, when properly done, delivers some of the “highest overall ROI for every marketing dollar spent.”
In fact, small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without.
Content marketing, according to one survey, achieves the following goals for B2B marketers in rank order of the percentage of marketers reporting success for:
- Create brand awareness *
- Educate audience(s)
- Build credibility/trust
- Generate demand/leads
- Nurture subscribers/audiences/leads
Whether your company’s personality leans towards the humorous, helpful or technical, well written content builds a good foundation for long-term brand loyalty and helps move your customer base along the continuum towards a purchase. At Proximity Marketing, we specialize in helping Cleveland area business-to-business companies promote their brands, products and services through content marketing and other integrated strategies. Ask us about our success stories building brand awareness, loyalty and the ultimate goal of moving the audience along the buying continuum.
