First of all, what IS content marketing?

It used to be that content and advertising were separate. When you watch TV you’re interrupted by ads. When you’re consuming internet content you have distracting banners on the side.

But the world has changed. Advertising is becoming less effective and companies are turning increasingly to content marketing. That’s where content and advertising are one and the same. You have a high-quality value-adding piece of content, which effectively advertises a product or service.

That piece of content can be a blog post or white paper.
For example:

• If you’re a bank you can write about “the benefits of a CD laddering investment strategy” or “investing in emerging markets” (if you’re offering wealth management products).

• If you’re an insurance company, you can write about “saving taxes with insurance products”.

• If you’re an IT Solutions company, you can write about “how to save 35% off your costs with digital transformation”.

• If you’re a startup, you can write some case studies that clearly demonstrate – ideally with hard numbers and pictures that show ‘before’ and ‘after’ – the benefits of your offering.

You get the idea… the content is educational and adds value, but at the same time highlights the benefits of what you’re offering.

We have a blog, is that enough?

NO! Content marketing is different from blogging. Your company may have a blog with interesting content. But if it’s not highlighting the benefits of what you’re offering, then it’s not content marketing… it’s just content.

Which can be useful for SEO purposes to drive traffic searching for that content. It’s just helpful to make the distinction so you can focus more and more towards content MARKETING.

Whenever you’re creating content, think first about your audience: what do they want to learn more about. And then about how to inject your value proposition in your content.

So where does video come in?

You can have the best-written articles on your blog, or a series of highly-researched white papers… but you must have noticed that it’s becoming extremely difficult to get your audience to notice your copy. The problem is “how to drive awareness” and “how to engage”. And that’s where your ROI breaks down. You invest a lot in content marketing but if no one knows about it it’s money down the drain.

That’s where video comes in. For two great reasons:

1. We don’t read anymore, but we still watch video. And tons of it! So you can convert your best content into video, or summarize it in video form and then link to the more in-depth piece. This creates a funnel for your audience. Drive awareness with your video, and then engage them with the full copy. The side-effect is that you’ll also build a great YouTube channel that will help you stand out from the competition as someone who invests in educating their clients. Video can showcase your authority and build trust!

2. Which leads to the 2nd reason: video is typically way too expensive. That’s because you’re probably used to working with agencies. And agencies are used to producing high-end 30-second commercials and charging 100s of thousands of dollars for them. They’re simply not set up to produce series or long-form video content cost-effectively. But if you crack that code – with our help! – then you’ll have a huge competitive advantage!

To wrap up

Advertising is over-saturated so costs keep going up so the more forward-thinking companies are shifting towards content marketing. They invest heavily in great content but have trouble engaging their audience with it, so the ROI there is longer-term. The solution is video but it can be very expensive. If you figure out how to do it cost-effectively and have a strategy behind it to boost your video ROI, then you can be the clear winner!