Content marketing is a strategic marketing method that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a target audience - and ultimately, to promote profitable customer actions.
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy in which companies create honest, transparent and educational content on a consistent basis for the customers that the company targets. Typically, the goal is to use publishing and promoting content to drive natural, cost-effective website traffic growth and increase the pool of qualified leads.
Both copywriting and content marketing utilize storytelling elements in marketing. However, copywriters mainly focus on advertising. They need the ability to create concise, compelling short-form content to attract the audience. Their writing style tends to be more short and direct. Content marketers, on the other hand, aim to build relationships with potential and current customers through more lengthy content. Although short-form content may be part of this strategy, its main goal is to educate the public about specific topics or services.
Recognizing this, the job roles companies need to hire for content marketing and copywriting duties will differ. Both content marketers and copywriters need proficiency in using language. While not all content marketing involves content, most heavily rely on written words. For copywriting specifically, written words are the foundation of it!
For content marketing, one needs a broader vision and focus on overall strategy. This means content marketers need to know how to write for various formats with a more specialized style. Copywriting requires creative writing abilities, intending to convey brand voice and sell products/services.
Some common examples of content by a content marketer include:
Some common examples of content handled by a copywriter include:
A Content Marketer identifies strategic visions for marketing blogs, emails and social media posts. To create high-quality written content, a Content Marketer will need writing skills to persuade their audience by thoroughly understanding the target's needs.
A Content Marketer's work often involves creating, managing and monitoring content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Therefore, creative writing and storytelling skills are necessary for this role to convince, change old perceptions, educate, and engage audiences in order to connect with them regularly and build and maintain those relationships.
Some roles that a Content Marketer needs to take on according to Aniday include:
A Copywriter's responsibility includes creative content creation tasks like a Content Writer, but they mainly focus on highly sales-oriented content like brand names, slogans, taglines or ad scripts.
Copywriters are responsible for both online and offline content. Their content is usually concise but powerful. Most of a Copywriter's content will be delivered to users through paid channels like Facebook or Google ads or billboards, helping directly drive revenue for businesses.
Analysis - A Content Marketer or Copywriter needs to gather and leverage target customer information as well as keep up with the latest trends in the market and opportunities in their pursued field to be able to create the most suitable content.
Writing and Creativity - With 74.2% of companies saying that Content Marketing is increasing the quality and quantity of their marketing teams' leads. And while AI and machine learning tools are becoming more prominent in marketing, nothing can compare to a human telling a story well.
Marketing Automation - This can significantly increase a business' campaign performance and must be a necessary skill for any professional in this field. Research shows Marketing Automation can increase sales productivity by up to 14.5% and reduce marketing costs by 12.2%.
User/Customer Experience - While companies often have a separate design team, marketing professionals should be proficient in basic design skills. They need to know a lot about target markets, so if they can work with the design team to help create a webpage experience catered to that market, the website is very likely to yield better results and engagement.
Inbound Marketing - Inbound potential customers cost 60% less than outbound, so inbound marketing is an essential skill to have. Using content tactics and SEO, Content Marketers must have the ability to bring potential customers to a website - and more importantly, Content Marketers need the ability to navigate customers through a website.
SEO - Every year we hear "SEO is dead", but SEO is never truly dead, it just changes. Being able to get your brand or client to the first page of Google - or top results - has astonishing benefits, as users are less likely to click past the second page of results. But Google is constantly updating and how customers search online changes, so Content Marketers can stay ahead if they regularly improve their SEO skills