Pontus Staunstrup

Content marketing

myths about 11

Don’t let myths hold you back

Content marketing could be the best way to reach your target audience. But there are a lot of myths and incorrect ideas surrounding it. Here are 11 myths that you should ignore, and some simple truths to replace them with.

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1. Content marketing equals blogging

Content marketing is a lot more than having a blog. Fundamentally it’s about creating relevant content for your target audience, How you distribute it depends on where you can interact with them. Relevant content can be a customer case, a list of tips and tricks, a demo video, and lots of other things. And mix up the formats – use text, images, video, sound and graphics.

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2. It’s digital only

Content marketing is a way of marketing, not a channel. It can involve magazines, websites, presentations and a whole lot more. The key question is in which channels you can interact with your target audience. And how you can get in early in the buyer’s journey.

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3. You need a lot of content

Content marketing is about quality, not quantity. The danger of creating too much content is that it becomes irrelevant and uninteresting, as well as expensive. And that does more harm than good. Make sure your content really helps your target audience solve problem and realize opportunities. That way the quantity doesn’t matter.

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4. It’s just a fad

Content marketing has been around for a long time. The reason why it’s used more nowadays is because it provides good results. So don’t ignore it, or assume that it will disappear. Try to find ways you can make use of it instead

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5. It can be automated

There are many tools out there that can help you get the right content to the right recipient, to keep track of leads and lots of other things, But they’re only tools. You can never do content marketing on autopilot. To get the best results you need to work with it all the time; adapting, adjusting and developing.

Content marketing costs less than a lot of traditional marketing. But creating great content and making sure you distribute it properly costs money. Use content marketing to get better results, not to save on your budget.

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6. It’s cheap

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7. Creating content is enough

Creating great content is important. Making sure it gets to your target audience is just as important. And it has to be done efficiently and for a reasonable cost. This means that you have to work really hard on packaging and re-packaging your content, and distributing it in the right channels – which can be anything from magazines to social media.

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8. It only works for “sexy” companies or products

Content marketing isn’t just for companies like Red Bull or Coca Cola – well-known brands with exciting products. No matter what business you’re in you have a target audience that wants relevant, useful content. Content marketing is about making sure they get that, so you can turn them into customers.

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9. It should be a separate activity

Content marketing isn’t something you should do separately from the rest of your marketing, PR activities or communication projects. You get the best results if you work with consistent messages in owned media (your own channels), paid media (advertising) and earned media (PR).

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10. It’s just for creating awareness or relationships

Content marketing isn’t limited to top-of-the-funnel activities or vague efforts at creating awareness. If you chart the buyer’s journey of your target audience you can create and distribute content that is relevant to them every step of the way. All the way to a purchase in some cases.

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11. You should just dive into it

In order to succeed with your content marketing you need a strategy. It should define who your target audience is, your goals, messaging, channels, what to measure etc. And what resources you have. Otherwise you might find yourself without content, without an editorial calender or a plan for distribution. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, and you want consistency in quality and effort.

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Finally

I hope this has cleared up what content marketing is and what it isn't. I believe there are great benefits to using it - to help you reach your target audience early on in their buyer’s journey, to gain their trust, and to help them navigate to a purchase.

Good luck with your content marketing!

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