Understanding Content Marketing

In this day and era, every business needs attention. They have a product or service to sell and they want to reach the right audience & get their attention.

But, you know that getting attention is not an easy task because the attention span of people is deficient these days.

I can see most businesses are trying to get attention with the wrong strategy. They try running a sales ad on Facebook or any other platforms, expect to reach the right audience, get their attention & sell their product.

It doesn’t happen like that. People just don’t go to Facebook, see an ad & instantly make a purchase. 

Today, in this article I am going to help you understand the concept of Content Marketing. 

If you are a business owner, employee, freelancer, or anyone who is planning to sell something in the future, then you definitely need to hear what I have to say.

So, without further ado, let’s start.

Where is the attention?

First, you need to know where the attention is. Where people give their attention, what they are attracted to.

A long time ago, traditional mediums like Television, Newspapers, Magazines, and Radios used to be famous because it was the only platform for advertising.

They used to create content & people used to be attracted to the content.

Why people used to watch TV, to consume the content.

Why people used to read newspapers, to consume the content.

Attention was on the content which publications created. Then, later they started monetizing their content by running advertisements.

Businesses don’t create content but they knew that attention was on the content that publications created.

So, they would pay publications to show their ad to people.

People used to consume content on TV, newspapers & Radios and see ads of different brands. Unfortunately, people at that time couldn’t skip the ad like we do these days. So, they had to watch or read those ads.

This is how advertisements worked before.

But, today publications that are dependent on advertisement only will not survive in the long run.

WHY?

Because people don’t like ads these days. They absolutely hate it.

We don’t click on ads that we see on the online news portal website. We have to struggle to even watch a 3 sec Youtube Ad. We simply ignore ads on Facebook & Instagram. 

If people can skip or ignore ads these days, then how can publications make money with advertisements.

This is something that every publication needs to think of.

How do we get attention?

Today, attention is very precious that everyone seeks. But, it is a really hard job to get. 

This is where Content Marketing comes into action.

Just like publications, every business needs to create content. Content that people love, content that can solve someone’s problem, content that is either entertainment or informational.

Let me give you an example of a company name “The Furrow Magazine”.

The Furrow Magazine did the first Content Marketing in 1895.

They are a company that provides farming equipment but they didn’t directly sell their product.

Instead, they launched a magazine which is called “The Furrow Magazine”. It was the journal for American Farmers and they focused on educating the farmers with the latest technology related to farming and solving the problem that existed back then.

Farmers loved the magazine because they were getting an immense amount of knowledge and information related to farming which they can implement in real life.

With the magazine (content), they started getting a lot of attention, and with that attention, they started selling their company products.

This is the oldest content marketing campaign launched in 1895.

The furrow is also called the epitome of Content Marketing because before content marketing was mainstream, they came up with an idea to market their product.

Just like The Furrow, if you look around the brands that are getting a lot of traction these days, they are also following the same strategy.

They are getting the attention from content and later they advertise & sell their product.

Even I got the attention from content which is my FREE Digital Marketing course. I run paid ads for my content, not for my product or service. 

Because of that, I got huge attention and have successfully enrolled more than 11k students till now in my course.

This is because I provided content that solves people’s problems to some extent. They wanted to learn digital marketing and I got their attention with my FREE course. 

Even before selling my product or service, I got the attention first with the content.

This is how every businesses should run their campaigns. Instead of directly running a sales ad and trying to get attention, we should focus on creating content that gets the attention and later can monetize that attention with paid product or service.

No matter what you sell, content is something that you should focus on. With Content Marketing, you will be a step ahead of your competitors.

It’s happening! Secure your FREE spot at my Digital Marketing workshop – register today.

I hope you learned how content marketing can grab attention rather than any product or service. This is the reason Bill Gates said “Content is King”.

Comment down if you liked the content or have any queries. I am more than happy to solve each and every query.

Cheers,

Saugat Basnet