Content Marketing vs Digital Marketing | DoodleDigital

Digital marketing is a broad term that means the use of any digital medium for marketing purposes while content marketing revolves around developing written and visual content to attract and engage the audience.

Let’s dig deeper and see what you should know about content marketing vs digital marketing.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of consistently creating and distributing relevant content to increase brand awareness, improve rankings on the search engine, and generate audience interest.

Your business should have a content marketing strategy to nurture leads and increase sales with the help of keyword research, site analytics, and targeted strategy guidance.

Advantages of Content Marketing

1. Build reputation and authority

Content marketing helps you build brand authority and reputation. People are more likely to buy products from your brand when you become the source of information in a specific market. This is because they consider your brand trustworthy.

2. People like it

Audiences want to see content anyway; so, they are less resistant to it compared to traditional sales pitches and advertisements.

You enjoy more audience engagement and build a better relationship with your audience with valuable content.

3. You have control over the conversation

Selling products becomes easier when the customer looks for the product you sell.

Some customers may have plans about what they will buy before they walk into your store but you may want to talk to them about the benefits of a much premium product.

Having control over the conversation while your potential customers are learning about the product is invaluable no matter what you sell.  

4. Options to scale

Content marketing is easily manageable for both large and small businesses.

You can work on developing the reputation of an international brand or just a single product depending on your goals.

5. Content marketing is easier for the sales and customer service team

You can collect data from your sales team about the questions they are frequently asked and write useful content on those topics. You can then share these articles with your sales team and ask them to upgrade the content based on what they have found.

Your customer service team may also have to answer the same questions every day. That’s why you want to take the time to answer those questions.

Compile those answers into a blog post or create a series of blog posts so that your team can share with customers when those questions come up.

Disadvantages of Content Marketing

1. Results aren’t immediate

Quality content production isn’t an easy task. You need good knowledge and research skills to find useful content.

Developing and promoting content for the different social media platforms is also a time-consuming process. This means you won't have instant results.

2. Coming up with content ideas is tricky

You always have to look for fresh ideas and you may hit creative roadblocks sometimes.

Finding topics that are useful and relevant for your audience is a challenging task when you try to work around researched keywords.

3. Things change rapidly

There are always new trends and changes in Google algorithms that influence content marketing’s best practices.

The struggle to stay competitive and relevant to the audience is hard when you can’t allocate time to keep pace with the updates.

Different Types of Content Marketing

1. Blogging
2. Infographics
3. Visual content
4. Video
5. Social media posts
6. Whitepapers
7. Podcasting
8. Courses
9. Ebooks
10. Webinars
11. Slideshare presentations
12. Checklists
13. Email
14. Quizzes/tools
15. Free apps
16. Slide decks
17. Lead magnets

What Is Digital Marketing?

The term “digital marketing” refers to marketing methods that are conducted through electronic devices. It’s a form of marketing to promote and sell products or services on the internet and is often compared to traditional marketing such as billboards, magazine ads, and direct mail.

Digital marketing helps you find and communicate with people who are interested in your product or service offerings and build trust with your audience.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

1. Increase customer loyalty

You have to spend a lot more to attract and convert new customers compared to what you would otherwise spend on retaining existing customers. 

Repeat customers are important because 40% of online shopping revenue in the U.S. is generated by the existing client base but they are only 8% of total site visitors. ^[1]

• Personalized emails 

Emails with personalized offers such as exclusive access to unreleased products or codes to seasonal discounts make your customers feel valued and help make repeat sales.

• Engagement through social platforms

Encourage your customers to follow your brand on social media channels and keep them engaged with inspirational content.

They will be eager to get your product or service again whenever they need it in the future.

2. Multiple strategies

You have the option to choose from different types of digital marketing strategies. 

Your business may be benefitted from SEO and content marketing or ad campaigns depending on what you are trying to sell. The key here is to analyze the results and update your tactics over time. 

A well-executed strategy adapts quickly when a business transformation is required.

3. Easy to learn tactics

Digital marketing has many aspects that you need to learn but it’s not hard to start. 

The complexity depends on the nature of your goals and the scale of your campaigns. All you need to do is find the strategy that works best for you. 

4. Easy to share

Campaigns and articles are easy to share with multiple followers on most digital marketing channels. This feature helps you create an amplifying effect and impacts your sales result directly.  

You want to think about what types of content are shareable on different platforms when you create them. 

Humorous posts on the Instagram page or sharing your latest blog on Facebook with a catchy title will be effective in most cases.

Disadvantages of Digital Marketing

1. Negative feedback and responses

Digital platforms let everyone provide feedback or criticism about your product or service that is visible to your audience through review channels and social media networks.

Negative reviews will have a damaging effect on some part of your client base unless you have built strong brand loyalty and satisfied them with efficient customer service.

It is a challenge to provide an effective response to negative feedback to maintain your brand image.

2. Easy to copy your promotional strategies

Copying information from your promotional strategy campaigns for misuse takes only a few minutes. 

There are hackers who will track and copy your strategies and you need to do online marketing with awareness and make sure that your valuable efforts remain protective.

3. Online digital marketing may not be acceptable for your products

The targeted audience for some of your products or services may not be reached by the different digital platforms. The bad news is you are wasting time and assets in those cases.

You need to identify your business type first and make strategies and plan accordingly since digital marketing is done completely based on them.

Types of Digital Marketing

1. Social media marketing
2. Instant message marketing
3. Virtual reality marketing
4. Mobile marketing
5. Influence marketing
6. Audio marketing
7. Paid advertising
8. SEO
9. Email marketing
10. Affiliate marketing
11. Video marketing

Content Marketing vs Digital Marketing: How Do They Differ?

1. Direct vs indirect marketing 

Content marketing 

Content marketing is an indirect marketing strategy and it rarely attempts to convert your traffic.

Your content may have links to other pages that are aimed to convert users into customers but the main purpose is to help the audience with valuable information and build a trusting relationship with them.

Digital marketing 

Digital marketing strategies may be indirect but their attempts to convert users are often more direct.

You want to use a digital marketing strategy since your landing page aims to pitch your product or service and convert users into buyers.

2. Short-term vs long-term investment

Content marketing

Digital marketing strategy has the flexibility to work on any timeline but content marketing requires a long-term investment.

A well-funded content-marketing campaign may take a considerable amount of time to get started, but it pays off in the long run when the content reaches a big audience.

Digital marketing

There are other digital marketing campaigns that offer instant signups and sales but they lack long-term growth. 

The advantage of taking the time is that you provide real value to the audience. As a result, your chance to get more loyal customers and drive more organic traffic is higher. 

3. Skill requirement 

Content marketing

Content marketing is done through storytelling. 

You have to create infographics, social media posts, articles, webpages, videos, images, webinars, and more to connect with your customers for a lasting relationship. 

This is the reason you should get skilled in refined writing, interviewing, and research for content marketing. You also need to create storyboards to visualize content structure and author scripts for video-focused content marketing. 

Digital marketing

Digital marketing requires you to be a tech-savvy person and have a broad knowledge of how different platforms and algorithms work or how each medium interacts with another.

Content is just a single piece of a larger puzzle that digital marketing constructs. You will benefit from an advanced understanding of marketing principles once you become a digital marketer.

Similarities Between Content Marketing and Digital Marketing

The objectives, duties, and work environments of content marketers and digital marketers often overlap. 

As a marketing professional, you have to work with employers and clients to understand their intended messages. 

You want to use that information to create advertisements that stick to client wishes while suggesting better design, language, and graphics when appropriate.

The common goal for types of marketing is to create compelling content for audiences to boost your business profit.

How Does Content Marketing Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

1. Content is the foundation of digital marketing campaigns

A solid content strategy is crucial to making your digital marketing campaign effective. 

You have to work on search engine optimization so that the content of your pages gets ranked in search results. PPC also relies on your content since it forms greeting pages that pull traffic from advertisements.

2. The content reflects the skill of your brand

Content is a great way to showcase your brand and your expertise. 

You have the option to respond to the same customer inquiry using a blog, e-book, whitepaper, podcast, or video.

3. Content informs your audiences

A well-written content informs your potential customers by addressing fundamental questions they have.

Not only does good content reveal fascinating facts but it also helps your audience make the right buying decisions and simplify their lives.  

4. Content makes you an industry authority

Creating content for your site is a way to tell the world you are an expert on a certain topic.

You can advise on how to upgrade a product or what trends are currently ongoing in the market when the topic is your industry.

This is a viable option since it demonstrates your expertise in the industry and others will reinforce the idea when they link to you or mention you on their site. 

Content Marketing vs Digital Marketing: Which Is Best for Your Business?

Does Digital Marketing Work for All Businesses?

B2B digital marketing

Your digital marketing strategies will mainly revolve around online lead generation if you have a B2B business. Your marketing strategy should be able to attract and convert high-quality leads for your sales team through your website and other supporting digital channels. 

You may also have to try out different business-focused channels such as LinkedIn where your targeted demographic spends their time.

B2C digital marketing

The objective of your digital marketing efforts is likely to attract people and turn them into customers where the assistance of a salesperson is not required.

You may have less focus on leads and more on building an accelerated buying process. This also means your product will be featured in the content higher up in the marketing funnel compared to a B2B business strategy and you may need to work on stronger CTAs.

Does Content Marketing Work for All Businesses?

Content marketing is a great strategy for all sizes of businesses and all niches of products or services. The level of demand for the strategy depends on the type of your business and your business model.

Tips:

• Use content marketing strategies to support a broader digital marketing strategy. The concept also goes the opposite way.
• Create blogs to answer frequently asked questions and provide value to the audience of your industry. This will help develop an effective digital marketing strategy such as SEO. 
• You also need to make sure that your content reaches a broader audience with the help of digital marketing tactics. One way to do so is to run a paid campaign on social platforms that promotes the post.

FAQs:

1. Is content marketing a digital marketing strategy?

Ans: Content is used to promote your brand online and attract new audiences to your business site. Since the strategy involves marketing your products or services online, it is part of digital marketing.

Sources:

https://business.adobe.com/ca/resources/digital-economy-index.html