Everyone knows that content is king, but only the court fool would put their entire marketing strategy behind content marketing.
Content marketing is nothing new. Professional services firms have long used this approach and arguably lead the pack. It remains of the moment, with the marketing gurus and prophets telling us to drop everything and jump on the content marketing wave.
Talk of content being 'permanent real estate' and having a 'compound return' impact is just the snake oil salesman's patter. Ignore it.
There can be no doubt that for many businesses content marketing, or marketing communications as we used to call it, should play a role.
But, content marketing needs good content (the clue is in the name). If your business is selling cupcakes or car tyres then that might be a challenge too far. Knowledge-based businesses have far more to gain.
By all means embrace content marketing - we have - but it should be part of a wider marketing strategy, not your marketing strategy.
Most older marketing and advertising strategies have been based on short-term gains. For example, a direct mail piece might convert a handful of recipients, but once it's sent out, most of the batch gets thrown away and the design is scrapped in favor of next year's model. A billboard might work well for a few months, but eventually, the design will grow tiresome, and you'll need to purchase new space to see another influx. There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, especially if you're seeing a positive ROI, but if you want to be successful in the long term, you'll need a strategy with a little more staying power. Inbound marketing strategies, like SEO and social media marketing, are effective in producing a slow build of results, but for my money, there's no better long-term strategy than content marketing.
