Book Description
This essay sheds light on what is content marketing, demystifies why content marketing is one of the utmost potent forms of marketing, reveals the benefits of companies implementing content marketing activities on social media platforms, and delineates the problems with companies not implementing content marketing activities on social media platforms. Succinctly stated, content marketing is a form of marketing that involves producing content for the prospect of driving profitable customer actions. “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer actions”. The different types of content that can be leveraged for content marketing purposes encompass articles, videos, archivable live-stream broadcasts, newsletters, webinars, images, and podcast episodes. Other types of content that can be leveraged for content marketing purposes encompass episodic content, guides, and infographics. Content marketing activities are not only able to amplify brand awareness and elevate product awareness, but can also play a pivotal role in helping companies to generate interest in their product offerings among the members of their target market. A surfeit of content marketing activities are often implemented by companies on their social media channels. In addition to implementing content marketing activities on their social media channels, companies also often implement content marketing activities on their websites. Even though content marketing activities are “promotional in nature”, insightful content that is produced for content marketing purposes can even be curated in an editorial format. The content that is produced for content marketing purposes is often not curated in traditional marketing content formats, such as in the formats of commercials and infomercials. An example of a content marketing activity entails “The Pokemon Company” releasing the “Pokemon Generations series” on its YouTube channel, “The Official Pokemon YouTube channel”. The “Pokemon Generations series is a Japanese-animated original net animation series” that features short stories that are derived from the fictitious Pokemon universe which are inspired by the “Pokemon video game series”. The overarching purpose of “The Pokemon Company” releasing the “Pokemon Generations series” on its YouTube channel, “The Official Pokemon YouTube channel” was to further elevate awareness of the Pokemon franchise and to further amplify interest in the Pokemon franchise among of the members of the target market of “The Pokemon Company”. The fictitious Pokemon universe is intriguing to fans of the fantasy genre since it is replete with interesting characters, compelling stories, and incredible settings. When members of a target market deem an episodic series that is derived from a mass media franchise to be entertaining, then they will be all the more inclined to purchase the product offerings that are derived from a mass media franchise. Some of the ample product offerings that are derived from a mass media franchise encompass video games, manga, movies, toys, garments, board games, and a trading card game. The utilization of content marketing activities can render a mass media franchise all the more appealing to the members of a company’s target market if they deem the content that the company produces about its mass media franchise to be entertaining content. Content marketing is a form of marketing that is not only able to raise brand awareness, but that is also able to cultivate interest in a brand among the members of a company’s target market without it attempting to directly sell product offerings to the members of a company’s target market in an unsolicited manner. Content marketing activities are the antithesis of the plethora of traditional marketing activities that involve attempting to directly sell product offerings to the members of a company’s target market in an unsolicited manner. Content marketing activities often focus on providing value to the members of a company’s target market either by having a company produce entertaining content or insightful content. Most customers have an aversion to being exposed to unsolicited direct marketing activities.