Content marketing is one of the most powerful tools businesses have for growing a brand and generating long-term success. Still, this form of business marketing isn’t for everybody.
This blog post will compare content marketing vs traditional marketing techniques, including the types of strategies they involve, their key differences, and the kinds of results you can expect from both marketing methods.
This way, you can understand how both marketing strategies work and make an educated decision about which is best suited to meet your marketing goals. Let’s dive in.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is an inbound marketing strategy that focuses on non-pervasive outreach through the creation of high-quality content.
Many marketers rely on this approach to build a long-term relationship with their audience, with it being used by an estimated 90% of businesses globally to stimulate interest in their brand without explicitly promoting products.
In practice, marketing content takes a variety of forms, from digital channels like blog posts, social media posts, and video content, to physical content like brochures, magazines, and flyers. The most common and beneficial of these are digital marketing mediums.
The key to content marketing that differentiates it from traditional channels of advertising is that it doesn’t directly promote the brand’s product. Instead, it addresses common questions, concerns, or interests of a specific target audience most likely to benefit from and want the product.
It creates multiple touchpoints with target audiences throughout their buyer’s journey, leading to a nurturing rapport that builds trust and authority.
By distributing valuable and engaging content, businesses can improve audience engagement and foster a more meaningful connection with decision makers. And when it comes time to make their purchasing decision, you will stick out as a familiar face in a sea of competitors.
Understanding Traditional Marketing Techniques
Traditional marketing refers to those advertising methods that we are all familiar with and see on a daily basis:
- Television ads
- Radio advertising
- Print ads
- Direct mail
- Social media advertising
The goal of these marketing strategies is to reach a broad audience at a larger scale.
The problem is that while traditional marketing techniques have more immediate results, they are also indiscriminate.
Whereas you target specific audiences with content marketing, traditional techniques relies on getting as much attention through strategic placement in high traffic areas.
This can result in receiving broad brand awareness but doesn’t always yield as many leads for your business. The trick to doing it right is to know where your target audience spends their time and buy ad spaces in those areas.
Key Differences Between Content Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
Focus on Value vs. Interruption
Traditional marketing, like television and radio ads, is seen as an interruptive strategy. This means they interrupt whatever content their audiences are engaging with. This can come off as pushy and leave a poor brand image when mismanaged.
After all, how often have you been put off a product after the same ad interrupts your video stream for the hundredth time?
With content marketing, your advertising is the main event. Your audience has sought an answer or a piece of valuable information and landed on your blog post or social media as the solution. In this regard, you have their entire attention.
Personalized Interactions vs. Mass Media
Traditional marketing campaigns emphasize volume over quality when it comes to lead generation. It involves ad placement in areas of high traffic, like television shows, podcasts, or highway billboards.
The problem is that not everyone who sees the ad may be in a position to take advantage of the product or service it is promoting.
To do traditional marketing right, you need to be strategic in your placements. Ensure each placement is in an area with high relevancy to your product or service and gets enough traffic to make it worthwhile.
Content marketing, on the other hand, takes a highly targeted approach. That isn’t to say there isn’t potential for a lot of traffic. After all, what gets more traffic than a Google search?
What I mean about a highly-targeted approach is that most people who find your content will likely see a use for your product or service. You will create relevant content that resonates with your industry and target audience, resulting in higher conversion rates than traditional marketing.
Cost-Effectiveness vs. High Costs
Neither content marketing nor traditional techniques are cheap. But content marketing promises a long-term ROI that can’t be beat.
In fact, content marketing offers three times as many leads as traditional advertising, costing about 62% less on your investment.
This is because traditional techniques only work as long as you pay for the advertising space.
With content marketing, you own the website or social channel hosting the content. As a result, it stays there for as long as you want after your initial investment, generating leads while requiring no additional maintenance fees.
Long-Term Growth vs. Immediate Results
Another of the most significant differences that should direct your decision between content marketing and traditional marketing is your target timelines.
By its nature, content marketing takes longer to get started. This is because you have to conduct extensive research to create, execute, and optimize a content marketing strategy.
Then, you must wait for Google and other search engines to pick up your online content.
You may generate some quick win traffic early, but content marketing comes into full effect after a year of consistent content publication.
Still, most of my clients experience significant traffic boosts around the three-, six-, and nine-month intervals, followed by exponential growth after that one-year mark.
Content marketing requires patience before revelling in its ROI, regardless of the exact timeline.
If you are looking for a quick win, traditional marketing methods are the way to go. Proper ad placements get you immediate views and conversions but can be expensive to maintain.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Due to its focus on building relationships over forcing a product, content marketing is often seen as the more engaging form of promotion compared to traditional marketing.
As a result, potential customers are much more open to these indirect forms of marketing, with a reported 70% of consumers preferring to learn about a company through articles than ads.
Of course, content marketing carries a few other key benefits that make it the more attractive option for businesses, including:
- Allowing personalized interactions for target campaigns.
- Boosting visibility on search engines.
- Improved nurturing channels for increased conversions.
- Developing brand awareness and loyalty with your target demographic.
- Building topical authority, establishing you as an industry leader.
- Improved ROI for long-term success.
- Attracting a wider audience through evergreen content.
Creating Effective Content Marketing Campaigns
If you are committed to the long-term success of your company, content marketing is by far the best way to guarantee your future. However, doing it right takes a lot of planning, strategizing, and skill. Here is a brief overview of the five most important steps of creating an effective content marketing campaign:
1. Define Your Audience & Goals
Defining your audience and goals is the first thing you must do for any marketing campaign, whether through content or traditional advertising methods.
Start by creating buyer profiles for your ideal clients. Include information regarding common concerns, questions or interests. This gives you a good idea of what content you should make. Focus on crafting educational content that answers these queries.
Finally, you need to set your goals. Do you want to focus on optimizing for traffic or conversions? How much growth are you expecting, and what is your timeline? Setting realistic goals and writing them down in a document shared with all stakeholders is essential to ensure everyone is on the same page.
2. Conduct Market Research
With your audience and goals defined, you then need to conduct extensive market research.
Start with your audience. Where do they spend their time online? If it’s Google, focus your content on blog posts. If it’s on social media, create content for their preferred platform.
It is important to stay current with market trends.
A great way to do this is by monitoring your competitors. Through competitor research, you can see how other companies excel and how you can do it better.
Through this, you can create content that becomes the go-to resource for its query, positioning you as the leading authority in your industry.
3. Find the Right Keywords
This is the most important step for reaching your audience. Having the best content in the world means nothing if no one can find it.
By conducting keyword research, you find search queries that your ideal customers are typing into Google and other search engines.
If you are new to content marketing, you can start with Google Keyword Planner. However, KeySearch is an excellent, cost-effective tool that provides a few more insights.
Start by searching for relevant competition and long-tailed keywords. These may not generate a ton of monthly traffic, but they are excellent at attracting highly qualified leads and are relatively easy for new websites to rank for.
4. Create Your Content Calendar
With your list of keywords in hand, it is time to start generating content ideas. There are a few ways to do this.
The first and easiest is to take your buyer profiles and begin immediately addressing the questions, concerns, and interests they detail. Just be sure to target a few relevant keywords before you start writing.
The second and most effective way to generate content ideas is to take your list of keywords and group them into similar clusters. You can then base your content topics around these clusters. The trick to this strategy is in grouping your keywords.
With a few ideas ready, you then need to create a content calendar. Include as much information as possible, including titles, due dates, primary keywords, supporting keywords, and responsible writer. This way, you ensure a steady production schedule.
5. Execution, Promotion, and Analytics
With everything planned out, you can then get started on the writing. Be sure to incorporate the primary and supporting keywords throughout the content and include this on-page SEO checklist when you upload it to your CMS.
Now, your job isn’t done after publishing. You must now promote your content across your marketing channels and monitor its performance.
The first step is to repurpose the blog post to social media. This is as simple as breaking it down into bite-sized packages and sharing it on relevant social platforms.
Finally, you need to monitor its overall performance, tracking metrics that include rankings, traffic, and conversions. Make adjustments over time to ensure you are getting the maximum ROI for each piece of content you produce.
Combining Content Marketing with Traditional Advertising
Due to their contrasting performance goals, content marketing and traditional advertising work best when combined.
For new campaigns, traditional advertising is ideal for generating quick leads and building brand awareness. This exposure boosts branded searches, which help search engines recognize your authority.
While traditional ads deliver immediate results, content marketing supports long-term strategies. This ensures consistent growth as you wait for the incubation period of three to twelve months for content marketing to fully take effect.
Content Marketing vs Traditional Marketing: Finding the Right Fit for Your Business
Ultimately, choosing content marketing versus traditional advertising comes down to your business goals. Are you looking for long-term success or an immediate short-term boost to revenue?
While there are moments that call for traditional marketing methods, content marketing complements these efforts by building trust and authority over time. Incorporating content marketing ensures your business remains relevant and establishes meaningful connections with your audience.
Set your brand up for long-term success with a proven content marketing professional.
Contact Kurt’sCopy today for a free consultation and content calendar proposal.
Kurt Norris is the founder of Kurt’sCopy, where he helps B2B, e-commerce, SaaS, and local businesses craft compelling content and SEO strategies that deliver measurable results. With over six years of experience, Kurt specializes in creating data-driven campaigns that drive traffic, increase conversions, and establish brand authority.
