The AdCode - What is Content Marketing?

1. What is Content Marketing? The AdCode A Digital Marketing Solution

2. There has been a lot of buzz around content marketing recently and almost every organization big or small is talking about it. Every other job vacancy is revolving around ‘content’ and is expected to grow exponentially. As assessed, content marketing costs 65% lesser and delivers 3x when compared to other prospects. This is the reason ‘Content Marketing is set to be an industry worth $412.88 Billion by 2021’. Big players like P&G, Cisco, Microsoft etc. are investing great deals in content development. Having said that, the big question arrives, What is Content Marketing? “Broadly speaking, content marketing is state of the art marketing approach to deliver valuable and relevant content to a particular audience, engaging and attractive enough to drive the consumer to desirable actions.” In a nutshell, rather than chasing the buyer for business, you provide information to the buyer and make him more informed about the services or products one has to offer. This can be in the form of “FAQs” or as a guide “how to install so and so product you recently bought” etc. This approach has been a boon for businesses as it. Saves the company’s efforts to let’s say, arrange a call to the buyer and explain to him how to go about the new product. Reduces cost Makes the buyer more informed

3. Why Content Marketing? Well, this sector is very slow-paced as it takes a lot of time to climb up the Search Engine Ranking ladder and to show actual results plus there has been a lot of ambiguity about it being a boon or bane. In the mid-2010s when mobile phones were reaching masses and internet usage began to climb exponentially, internet started to impact people’s buying behaviour and not constrained to that, it also started to become a deciding factor about what to buy. Urban consumers are using internet for almost everything A) Information and news B) Education C) Entertainment

4. D) Shopping etc. Thus, content marketing has seen explosive growth. Rather than confining themselves to a certain type of niche, people are buying everything one can think of, from personal care products to home-furnishings to business machinery to ticketing to everything. Reasons for Content Marketing: Informed buyer- one of the prime reasons to provide content is to enable the buyer to behave in an informed manner. This has reasons, companies have a lot to offer, most of the products are built around “it’s better” and for rapid adoption, one has to have a mindset of audience that is open to change and to explore. For eg- Before the introduction of smartwatches, there wasn’t even a need of it as well but the ground for it was being prepared (we’ll discuss it shortly). But since it emerged, it opened the gates to numerous

5. businesses. It monitors sleeping patterns so the mattress industry has the opportunity, it monitors health so the F&B and sports industry gained the edge, so on and so forth. Influence- Internet creates buzz around the minds of consumers in regard to their likes and dislikes. Like Apple Inc. has been able to earn the title of “Brand Statement” in the eyes of people, earlier when phones from prominent brands were introduced they wouldn’t sell even 10% of what Apple is able to sell today, like BlackBerry Porsche Design back then would much lesser than today’s iPhones but no one dared to buy them. iPhone is expensive and is positioned in a manner that only ‘rich’ use it, has earned it such stature in the market. Creating ground- Companies plan in advance about what they are about to offer and start to build an audience around it. Like Marvel, back in the days introduced its comics to boys aged between 5 and 12 and within a short time, they were able to assess that at least 2 in every group of 5 boys owned some Marvel Toy. So the aim was to sell toys but the ground for it was prepared prior. Cost-effective- Do it yourself (DIY) has become the new norm for the industry, as it on the part of the company helps them to save a lot of money. Making a video tutorial on YouTube or giving a picture representation article allows the buyer not only to understand the processing of the product better but also enables him to engage in the product so much so that in case anything goes bad, prior to seeking customer support they step forward to troubleshoot themselves.