Content Marketing Myth 11
No, content marketing cannot operate independently of your brand campaign. There is no such thing as achieving goals in silos!
Yes, content marketing can drive traffic to your website.
Yes, content marketing can help you grow your email list.
And yes, it can help you generate leads too!
But if you, even for a minute, thought that it could replace your branding efforts, let me hold you off right there.
I have seen a lot of brands go awry and think that creating content can substitute the rest of their branding efforts. NO!
Content marketing shouldn’t be a replacement for branding. It should complement your branding efforts instead.
It’s very similar to how Apple follows a consistent strategy to launch their new products. The storytelling, the visuals – every piece of content they produce is a reflection of the brand image they have established over the years.
Similarly, when Rand Fishkin started Whiteboard Fridays to share his tips on SEO, he wasn’t building his brand independent of the product he founded – Moz.
They both worked together and that’s why, today, you correlate the two so closely that if someone even mentions one, you know about the other. And it’s really not so difficult to do either!
Here are a few things you’ll need to do to create a content marketing strategy that complements your branding efforts and creates a long-term impact on your audience:
- Get a clear understanding of your company’s branding goals and identify what you want to be known as/ for
- Review your branding campaigns closely to understand the underlying messaging and the impact it has on your company
- Make sure that every piece of content you create, irrespective of the format, supports the same messaging and is consistent across all your campaigns
- Ensure your content pieces are created by someone that understands your overarching brand goals and can also communicate the features of your products/ services while aligning with them
Sounds much simpler now. Doesn’t it?
And you know the best part of aligning all your branding and content marketing efforts?
You save so much time and money creating collaterals for various campaigns. You can simply reuse and recycle – I mean, repurpose your content and test different messaging, different offers, different targeting, in minutes (okay maybe a few hours).