More and more companies are trying out online marketing campaigns and some of them are even switching from traditional marketing to content marketing as they see a greater ROI. In fact, it is said that inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound marketing strategies.
In today’s article, I’ll try to explain the difference of traditional marketing and content marketing and how you can benefit from the second. If you are a die hard believer in traditional marketing, you’ll see it is still time to consider online marketing campaigns!
Traditional marketing
To keep it simple, traditional marketing includes “tangible” items. These can be ads in newspapers, billboards, business cards, posters, and other kinds of printed ads, etc. Non tangible items are also part of our daily lives, such as TV and radio spots. People are more used to traditional marketing, hence the resistance to change from certain companies. If we should look at pros and cons, traditional marketing has the advantage of reaching local audiences better – even though this has a tendency to change, thanks to highly targeted social media campaigns. On the other hand, due to the “tangible” aspect of traditional marketing, results cannot easily be measured.
Content marketing
Online marketing, and especially content marketing, is a great way to market your product to your audience as the Internet allows you to get to know your target like never before. Content marketing is a marketing technique that consists in delivering valuable content to users with the goal of acquiring them and turning them into customers. Unlike traditional marketing that directly tries to sell a product, content marketing aims at raising awareness of a product by sharing relevant information to the audience.
Many think it is only about blogging, but actually, content marketing is more than just blog posts. If you are struggling with your content marketing, you may consider testing and reviewing your strategy.
Ask an expert…
. Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks with them. – Doug Kessler
We asked Doug Kessler, co-founder and creative director at Velocity to give us some advice to help you connect/talk with your audience and here is his answer:
“If you model great content programs on great conversations you’ve had, you quickly arrive at the importance of three things:
– Listening really hard - The best conversationalists are locked on to you when you speak. Not in a creepy way but just committed to hearing you.
– Responding with relevance - I love the way a great conversation is so in sync. Each response really does take off where the previous speaker left off.
– Honesty - Great conversations are built on total frankness. That’s why I’m on a bit of a roll with the idea of what we’re calling Insane Honesty as a marketing principle.
I have my best conversations with my best, oldest friend, Rex Palmer. He’s a seriously articulate, honest guy who listens hard and works hard with me to tease out exactly what we mean. Wouldn’t it be great if marketers were more like this?”
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