If you’re looking at increasing awareness, web traffic and revenue for your business you might have come across the words ‘content marketing’ and ‘digital marketing’. They are often intermingled together and although they generally have similar goals, they require different skillsets and strategies for success.
Businesses usually employ a combination of both content marketing and digital marketing to boost their marketing efforts. So what are the main differences?
Content marketing primarily focuses on engagement and building trust, whereas digital marketing is more direct and centred around driving action, that is, sales and generating leads. Content marketing can be anything from blog posts to infographics, e-magazines, videos, and podcasts. On the other hand, digital marketing is advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. This includes, SEO, PPC, and social media ads.
Knowing how to use digital marketing to support your content marketing is crucial for the success of your brand or company. Digital marketers need to have a good understanding of technology, platforms, as well as data analysis and tracking tools that can help a business achieve success through paid spend. Content marketers should understand your company’s target audience and focus on the creation and distribution of content that tells engaging stories to attract that audience.
The key to excellent content marketing and digital marketing is to examine your overall marketing strategies and when you’re planning your content marketing, look at your digital marketing strategies and data to support it. Digital marketing should enhance content marketing.
As a general rule, content marketing should never replace your digital marketing and vice versa. They should mesh seamlessly together to help you achieve your company’s marketing goals. Think of it as a holistic approach to increase your conversion rates, improve engagement and help you retain customers.
Here are a few statistics to support this crossover:
· 72 per cent of online marketers describe content marketing as their most effective SEO tactic (Junto).
· Blogging is one of the most common forms of content marketing and adding a blog to your website can increase its chances of ranking in search engines by 434 per cent. (Blue Corona)
Did you know? 61 per cent of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. (HubSpot)