Over the last few years, a considerably more effective marketing strategy has emerged. It’s usually referred to as “Content Marketing” and “Paid Advertising,” but as it becomes the dominant strategy to reaching an audience in the future years, we expect the notion will broaden into a much larger phrase.
Marketing in today’s time has changed its shape and form. There is a huge evolution in the world of marketing and changed its aspect totally. While looking at the conventional or traditional marketing system, the marketing was sales and profit-oriented. The communication message used was a “fit for all” approach and a one-way communication where the marketers’ only job was to promote and sell the product and services. It was hard to measure and collect accurate data and was also an expensive approach.
On the other hand, the new age marketing or digital marketing is now the talk of the town. It is the marketing strategy that is customer-centric. The marketing strategies are designed to keep the target audience in mind with equal involvement and interaction of customers. It is the most cost-effective way to reach to audience in one click. Digital marketing is an umbrella term and holds very different branches. But what holds both types of marketing is “Content”. Content is king, as it is rightly said because without content there’s no existence of marketing.
In recent times, marketers are focusing more on content marketing as a whole. It is said that content is the present and future of marketing. Content marketing and Paid Advertising are the recent blooming trends in digital marketing and all big companies are investing their valuable time, efforts, and money in creating valuable content and in paid ads or PPC (pay-per-click). The growing number of social media users has made these trends emerge and proves to be effective from the rest.
If you are someone who has not yet incorporated content marketing and paid advertising into their marketing strategy, then this is the right time. Let’s dive deeper into both the terms and look at the pros and cons for a clear understanding.
What is content marketing?
Let’s first understand what content is? Content is a piece of information that is used to express something through some medium to the end-user. Content can be in form of written text, images, videos, audio, or any animation.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique that focuses on producing and delivering valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and maintain a specific audience and, eventually, drive profitable consumer action. Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building trust and relationships with your target audience by constructing high-quality content. Content marketing was far there than the invention of the internet. It is all about storytelling through different mediums because people love telling stories and the attention is grabbed where there is a good story. While creating content, keep two things in mind and i.e the content should be relevant and consistent. Content marketing nowadays is not just creating content but expressing to your audience that you really care. Adding a personal touch to your content always helps and builds loyalty towards your brand.
Over the years, attention span has reduced and storytelling has changed. With lots of content available online, it becomes a task for a digital marketer to stay updated and stand out in the clutter.
What is paid advertising?
Content marketing is more of a free approach to drive traffic and awareness but now let’s move to the paid approach.
As opposed to owned or earned advertising, paid advertising is any advertising that you pay for.
Marketers pay the owner of ad space in exchange for the usage of such space with sponsored advertising. A bidding procedure between advertisers and ad space owners is frequently used to determine the price paid for ad space.
Pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-impression (PPI), and display ads are a few categories of paid advertising. Effective marketing campaigns make use of all available advertising platforms. While more expensive than owned or earned advertising, Paid advertising is an efficient technique to get your company’s name in front of a big audience. Paid advertisements are typically presented on the sides, tops, or bottoms of web pages to users. To enhance traffic, marketers might spend more to have their advertisements appear on more famous websites.
Marketers can further customize their campaigns by using other sponsored ads, such as PPC, PPI, and display ads. Due to the increasing popularity of social media, sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have recently become viable platforms for paid advertising.
Content Marketing VS Paid Advertising
If you are confused about which one to adopt or go for, then here are the pros and cons for both marketing approach.
Content marketing
Pros
- It helps in building trust, loyalty, and awareness. People who consume your content will form an impression of your company. Your company will be perceived as authoritative and trustworthy if you publish informative, well-researched content. The more information your audience relies on you for, the more inclined they are to buy from you.
- Cost-effective. There are no media placement fees, and the majority of the work may be completed in-house. As a result, your expenses will be kept to a minimum.
- Drives more traffic and increases conversion. Quality content attracts visitors to your website, increasing traffic. You can encourage them to register or make a purchase once they’ve arrived at your site.
- Supports other marketing tactics. Many other marketing methods, such as search engine optimization, social media, and public relations, rely on good content to succeed.
- Reach a larger audience. You can attract potential consumers who use ad-blocking software or purposefully avoid or ignore traditional advertising by employing content instead of traditional advertising.
Cons
- Long-term process. It is possible that content marketing will take a long time. Before you see results, you usually have to go through a period of trial and error to figure out what works best.
- Finding new content ideas. It can be difficult to come up with new topics and formats that are both successful and interesting. As you progress, you will be able to assess the impact of prior content.
- Hard to attribute results. The impact of your content marketing on-site traffic and online conversions is pretty easy to track. Determining the impact of your content on brand reputation, awareness, and loyalty can be difficult.
Paid Advertising
Pros
- Immediate results. PPC is the approach to use if you want to see results quickly. This strategy, unlike SEO, does not necessitate a great deal of patience. Setting up a PPC campaign using Google AdWords or other search engines’ equivalent channels is fairly simple.
- Tight budget control. When it comes to a paid advertising budget, we like how Google ads, social media ads, and other PPC choices allow you complete control over every dollar you spend. Setting daily ad spending limitations ensures you don’t go broke while attracting visitors, converting them to leads, and tracking your paid marketing ROI.
- Specific targeting. If you do decide to pay for traffic, make pay-per-click advertising as effective as possible by targeting your adverts. You have an incredible opportunity to get very particular about the population you want to reach with PPC Google advertisements, social media ads, and other similar platforms.
- Easy to track and measure. Because you pay for each click, it’s critical to keep track of your results to maximize your return on investment. Fortunately, PPC allows you plenty of opportunities to track and improve your results. With so much information at your fingertips, it’s beneficial to work with a marketing firm that can interpret the figures and decipher the vital stories they convey.
Cons
- Expensive for long-term strategy. While we appreciate that pay per click gives you instant visibility, the downside is that the day you stop paying for Google or social media advertising, the stream of leads stops. For many businesses, this makes PPC an unsustainable long-term strategy.
- Bidding competition. While PPC allows you to keep a tight grip on your budget, it is not always the most cost-effective solution. After all, everyone, including your competitors, wants to be at the top of Google search results. Bidding wars can occur when two or more companies compete for the same keyword ranking with their PPC campaigns.
- Ignorance by customers. In a nutshell, many consumers are oblivious to sponsored advertisements. Customers will often scroll over PPC advertisements and sponsored social media posts to get to the organic results, which are clearly marked by Google and social platforms with a “paid” tag.
Conclusion
The benefits and drawbacks of Content Marketing and Paid Advertising are obvious. Of course, the optimal strategy is a mix of the two. However, this combination must be done at the right moment: there is a time for PPC in marketing and a time for content strategy.
Both tactics have advantages and disadvantages in terms of marketing, but experience shows that when utilized with discretion, they both provide certain results.