Content marketing is a phrase that means many things to many people; but for all its ambiguity, one thing is for certain: it’s growing. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), content marketing spend has increased every year since the company’s first benchmark report in 2011, adoption has risen across B2B and B2C industries and more companies are searching for content marketers every year.
Yet, despite the fact that more than nine out of ten marketers utilize content marketing tactics, only 21 percent of B2B marketers and 23 percent of B2C marketers are successful at tracking content marketing ROI. It’s interesting that companies are not only continuing, but increasing, investments in a practice that the large majority of marketers cannot prove to be effective.
So is content marketing ineffective, or do marketers simply need to change their approach to proving ROI? There are three realizations content marketers must come to in order to begin proving returns.
Realization #1: Content Marketing is not Advertising
Much of the problem is rooted in the ambiguity of content marketing, which leads to its treatment as a form of advertising. According to CMI, “content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your prospects without selling.”
In that regard, content marketing is distinctly different from advertising. Advertising, more or less, is about telling (or showing) prospects how awesome your brand is. There’s a direct tie to a brand’s products or services through advertising, and the desired action is much clearer: become a customer. Content marketing, on the other hand, is about creating content that’s helpful or valuable for your prospects in order to encourage profitable consumer action farther down the road (or funnel).
