How Far Has Content Marketing Come From Its Existence?

Everything has an expiration date; and the evolution of content marketing should not come as a surprise. Content marketing has been in this world for ages. We are talking about cavemen making cave paintings that are still fascinating to us. The first advertisement in the newspaper or when the advertisements made their way into the wide world of the internet or when social media becomes a world within the world, the content has this everlasting effect on us, and yet, we can’t stop ourselves from ignoring how different these mediums are from each other. Content marketing and communication practices change as the preferences and adoption of technology change.

Change is inevitable, be it content or technology. There isn’t an end to it. And like it or not, to stay in the game, you gotta play by the rules.

Is content marketing worth?

Sometimes we turn blind to the things that are happening in front of our eyes. Content marketing is no exception. We have witnessed it over a 100 year, evolving, changing, triggering us but yet, unnoticeable. Not until now, has content marketing been given its due credit. The talk of the market has helped then start-ups today’s biggest brands. Don’t trust us to look for yourself.

What are the content marketing examples?

1. John Deere

Infiltrating the market with its big green tractors, John Deere is the world’s biggest example of content marketing, bringing it into practice in the year 1895. Fascinating! The brand is known for starting a lifestyle magazine for farmers called “The Furrow”. The amazing thing is it didn’t sell their products rather introduced farmers to better practices in agriculture. Now can we beat that?

Adding value to your customers VS direct selling. It gave them global brand loyalty and increased revenue.

2. Jell- O

Another exemplary brand known for its early adoption of content marketing started their recipe book for users to create concoctions using Jell-O. This was back in 1904. You can call it placement but, did it work? Hell Ya! The idea made history by solving the company’s biggest problem “their customers didn’t know what to do with the jelly-like substance they were selling”. Once they did, the rest is history.

Of course, with time they changed their practices but the point is content marketing works! How do you do it for your business? Just remember these points.

What is a content strategy framework?

The fundamentals of content marketing have not changed. They have stayed the same always and will stay the same as ever. While creating a content strategy for your business just remember these three things:

Who is your audience?

What are the business goals you want to achieve with content?

How do you want to promote your content?

So, what has changed and what does a content strategy look like? (The modern version)

Let’s take Coca Cola as an example. We choose to take Coca-Cola because the brand has been practicing content marketing since 1895 and to date, they have aced it. They have evolved from their image 100+ years old image of a medicine and become people’s favorite beverage.

Are you surprised to know that coca-cola was confused as medicine? Then you will be more surprised to know that it was used as a cure for morphine addiction, and an alternative to impotence. How did they come this far? Was there some magic? Believe it or not, they injected the right message to their consumers through content and there was no looking back.

Some of the highlights of the Coca-Cola content marketing journey are their 2012 campaign where they created a digital platform for the users to connect on topics and discuss social issues and news. The platform became their way to provide information to people about the company and learn consumer trends.

Then the unforgettable #ShareACokeCampaign where they encouraged people to share the drink with their friends. With this came changes in their brand image which has played powerfully in their favor with millions of shares on social media.

How do you develop marketing content?

Incited with inspiration as you are, we are sure you are itching to try out the magic spell called content marketing. But clueless as you are, we will help you reach there.

Get to know the good old AIDA way

AIDA has been in practice since 1898 and was developed by E. St. Elmo Lewis. The acronym stands for

Attention: Grab your audience attention
Interest: Make them interested to know more
Desire: Pike up their desire to engage with you
Action: Finally, allow them to make a move

AIDA worked, AIDA works, and AIDA will work for you because it is well-curated and covers every important aspect of brand communication.

Sell them a problem to bank upon with PAS

PAS or Problem-Agitate-Solve is not that old but is a good method to sell upon. It is very simple, all you have to do is introduce a problem out there in the market, boil it until people start agreeing with you, and then present a solution.

Which companies use content marketing?

Every big brand you can name is using content marketing today to reach their ultimate goal. We are talking about the internet here, communicating with people has become so much easier and better with analytics, different types of communication tools that you use for content outreach and so much more. You can track down your potential user sitting in the other part of the world and present your products or services.

Make them curious enough to cause them to take action. Allow your consumers to provide their feedback. Generate content that causes two-way communication. Gauge your progress and improve with content marketing tools.

What are content marketing tools?

The worst part of content marketing back in the early days was there was no way to measure the impact of your ad campaigns or content. But not now. There are content marketing tools available on the market that allows you to find your audience, create content on interesting topics, manage your content across different platforms, and finally provide you an end-to-end performance report. This comes as a big help if you are using different types of content types to market your brand.

Why the original content is important?

Ending our discussion from where we started, we want you to understand, originality of content is very important because people are feeding on millions of bytes of data every day. People are staying online 12 hours a day and if they don’t find you unique, they are not going to persuade you. You need to seduce your audience to follow your lead to an extent of evoking the desired action. Be original, be genuine, and stay ahead of the curve.

Wrapping up

Content marketing has survived 100+ years and there is no looking back. Use the modern content marketing hack, use different tools to help you make informed decisions, stick to fundamentals to create great content and you are all set to go.

Also, keep experimenting with the content that will allow you to understand what is liked by your audience and perfect it over time. Learn from your audience’s behavior.