The Difference Between Content Marketing & Content Strategy

Over 80% of Singapore’s population is now online. For a business owner in the country, this necessitates a new approach to marketing. Digital marketing entails connecting with your target customers on the internet platform. If you have started researching digital marketing techniques, two of the most common phrases you encounter are content marketing and content strategy.

For a long time, these two aspects of digital marketing have been used interchangeably. They are among the many terms you come across when planning your campaign. But are they the same?

While content marketing and content marketing strategy are related, there are also crucial differences between them. As a digital marketer, you have to distinguish between these two digital marketing practices when planning your campaign. This will have a big impact on the success of your marketing strategy.

This post explores each of these practices in detail and highlights their relationship and differences.

What is Content Marketing?

So what is content marketing? This is a strategic marketing technique where a brand creates and distributes helpful, relevant, and consistent content to attract new customers and retain existing ones. A content marketer’s objective is to drive profitable customer action such as subscription, purchase, review, or referral.

In traditional marketing, campaigns focused on pitching and promoting brands and products/services. Content marketing in Singapore diverges from this approach by providing valuable, relevant, and useful content to prospects and customers. You create content for every stage of a customer’s journey.

By delivering content that helps your prospects solve their issues, you convert and build long-term relationships with your customers. Some of the most common strategies used in content marketing include:

• Blogging
• Social media marketing
• Video marketing
• Checklists
• Interviews
• Email
• Webinars
• Infographics
• Case Studies
• White papers
• Lead magnets
• Podcasting

Content marketing is a highly effective strategy. Research shows that this technique obtains 3x more leads as compared to paid search advertising.

What is Content Strategy?

So what is content marketing strategy all about? One of the most important principles in digital marketing is that great content needs a great content strategy. It is the simplest way to highlight the significance of a content strategy in digital marketing campaigns.

A content strategy answers the how and why of your content marketing plan. It looks at the bigger picture. For you to deploy your content successfully, you need an overarching plan and this is your content strategy.

The best content strategy answers critical questions about content marketing. For instance:

• What’s the importance of this information?
• Who do you want to reach?
• What content do you want to publish?
• Who’s in charge of creating and managing the content?
• How will you carry out your strategy?

A good content marketing strategy steers the ship. It is the roadmap you use for your campaigns, and comes before you create any content. For a successful strategy, you’ll need the following:

• Set your mission and your goals
• Define the specific and measurable objectives
• Target audience and their pain points
• Competitive analysis
• Audit your current content situation
• Define distribution and promotion channels
• Find the ideal content type
• Identify and allocate resources for your campaign
• Formulate a content editorial calendar
• Create high quality, relevant and meaningful content
• Distribute and promote your content
• Track, measure and analyse your content marketing campaign. Set the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART)

These steps outline your content strategy as a building blueprint that your content marketing plan needs to work. A good content marketing Singapore campaign starts by defining the objectives of your content and its delivery.

Content Marketing vs. Content Strategy

It’s easy to see why there’s a lot of confusion between content marketing vs. content strategy. While each practice is distinct, the two have to work together for a seamless digital marketing strategy. Some of the differences that emerge from this discussion include:

• Content strategy comes first
• Content strategy answers the how and why of content marketing
• Without a content marketing strategy, your content marketing campaign risks failing. The strategy defines the goals, objectives, audience, channels, performance analysis, and every other aspect of the content marketing campaign.
• Content strategy defines the content required for your content marketing campaign, from podcasts and emails to videos.
• Content strategy is planning, brainstorming, research that goes into establishing an effective content marketing campaign. On the other hand, content marketing refers to your planning campaign and comes after the strategy.

Wrapping Up

Content marketing and content strategy are common terms in digital marketing. While marketers throw these terms around loosely, they greatly impact your company’s marketing success. Simply put, you cannot have a successful content marketing campaign without a great content strategy. Your content strategy acts as the roadmap that guides your campaign. When you lay the ground properly with a solid strategy, it becomes easier to implement your content marketing campaign.