It is an accepted fact - consumers use the Internet to make purchase decisions. If you work in digital media, you are well acquainted with SEO and how to drive it. You've probably been instructed to "Write me a blog post so I can show up in Google." However, consumers are smarter than that. They don't appreciate an empty string of keywords. Instead, they appreciate usable content, or content marketing.
Attached Media published the below infographic in 2012.
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| Attached Media, http://visual.ly/traditional-publicity-vs-content-marketing |
As shown, traditional media interrupts consumers while content marketing engages consumers through valuable offerings. Valuable offerings may include educational videos and blogs, guides, lifestyle articles, coupons, or whatever else your target market finds interesting. Valuable offerings do NOT include selling messages or an overwhelming, obvious amount of product information.
Family targeted brands like General Mills, Fisher Price, and Play-Doh implement excellent content marketing strategies.
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| General Mills' tablespoon.com includes recipes for various occasions. |
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| Hasbro's Play-Doh website includes creation ideas and a sharing platform for other Play-Doh users. |
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| Fisher Price's Laugh and Learn includes play tips and webisodes to help babies learn. |
The key? Yes, content marketing may improve your SEO and eventually drive purchase decisions. But your foremost priority must be to create genuine value for your target - learn what they care about and show that you care about them.
I definitely agree that if you are engaging your consumer as well as creating genuine value for your consumers then you need to re-evaluate your content marketing strategies. Because Play-Doh was able to create engaging content to their consumers by utilizing a "Creative conversation" section as well as creating a "Play-Doh Community," they make their users feel as though they are a part of something while influencing them to talk about Play-Doh products voluntarily. As we learned in class, word-of-mouth is free and most influential, so if you can implement content marketing strategies that make this happen, it will be extremely effective and positively impactful for your company.
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