As you know, I am big on content marketing and believe you should create content before an ad campaign. I feel that it is vital to the success of your overall marketing plan and affects your traditional advertising, social media posts / ads, SEO and more. When I talk to people and they tell me, yeah we have content, we write blog posts, I always ask them how often they publish blogs and are they creating content on other pages of their website. When I first got started in marketing I thought I knew the concept of content marketing and what had to be done; content marketing referred to blogs and traditional marketing was everything else being TV, radio, newspaper, billboards, etc. Bottom line, I was under the impression that content marketing started and stopped with blogging, but there is much more to it than that. I then changed my strategy and started creating content on every page of the website, creating “guides” and experiential content that was both evergreen and niche targeted.
In recent years, we have seen the rise of content marketing grow in popularity, and yet I still find brands, and tourism organizations, whose websites lack content. They don’t tell the story of their products or dining options. In today’s marketing world, it is extremely important that your organization has a content marketing strategy. The key is to spend some time on figuring how to do it right.
Why Brands Should Create Content Before An Ad Campaign
Longevity
By creating evergreen content and even a timely piece of content that is targeted to a niche market, your content will still be indexed by search engines and appear for consumers to view long after a campaign ends. Most campaigns last about 6 weeks (give or take), but what happens after that? The traffic slows down because there is nothing running anymore. Where as with a strong content strategy, you can keep users coming to your site throughout the year, even during your slow times.
Builds Momentum Before Your Campaign Starts
Content marketing is a momentum building marketing strategy. You are able to tell your marketing story before you even start the campaign. Before the campaign, the goal to create content for every item that you are talking about in your ad campaign’s messaging. So by the time your first ad launches, you have already built up visitor loyalty, grown your blog followers, increased your social media numbers, and multiplied your newsletter subscribers, basically you have already gotten the ball rolling and once it is rolling it is extremely powerful. By having that content already in place, it is going to make your ad campaign that more successful.
Creates Conversation
Content marketing is meant to start a conversation with the consumer. Engage with them on social media, through your newsletter, etc. It allows a brand to provide the customer with an answer to their question almost immediately and gives them information on a topic that they are already searching for. You can find that out in your Google Analytics. Unlike you ad campaign which my feature a TV commercial or billboard that people may see, but it doesn’t ask consumers for an immediate response. Content gets consumers engaged with your brand so that they trust you and when they are ready, they will make a purchase from you. Your ad campaign then re-enforces the messaging that you already started.
Earns Loyal Customers
When you are developing content, your audience is coming to your site because you are offering something of value. Consumers who are discovering your from a Google search and consuming your content are doing so because they chose to. They consumers will keep coming back to your site well after your campaign has ended because they see value in what you are producing. Where as your ad campaign is bringing in a rented audience for a short period of time to view your content and entice them to keep coming back. Once the campaign is completed, those rented eyes are no longer on your message. When you create content before an ad campaign, you are creating excitement, anticipation of what’s to come, so when you campaign launches your crowd of potential customers will have grown. You will have a better chance of keeping those rented eyeballs with strong engaging content.
I could go on and on about why you should create content before an ad campaign, but these are the top 4 reasons right now. I am by no means advocating that a brand should just do content marketing and scrap their traditional advertising. The best marketers are the ones that can blend their online and traditional (inbound and outbound marketing) seamlessly. In the end, when you are creating you marketing plan, you need to include content marketing with your traditional marketing to increase the effectiveness of your advertising.
One side note, If you work in the travel and tourism industry, check out my friend Gathan D. Borden’s post on, Why Destinations Should Create More Content and Less Campaigns. It is a fantastic read.
