“Your customers don’t care about you, your products, or your services. They care about themselves”.

This is how Joe Pulizzi makes the introduction to his book “Epic Content Marketing”. As counterintuitive as it may seem to start a business book this way, pretty quickly you understand the point he is trying to make as he gets into more detail about content marketing and its role within the customer purchase journey.

Before we actually get into the main subject of this post, the difference between content marketing and social media, what exactly is this trendy concept that we keep calling ‘content marketing’? It seems to me that it has become a buzzword in the business world where executives keep giving directions to their subordinates to take advantage of content marketing in order to increase leads. But what exactly is it? In a nutshell, I believe that it would be an accurate description to say that it is the type of marketing that focuses on the customer rather than the product/service you are trying to sell. It is about satisfying the informational needs of your target customers or prospects. And let’s make one thing clear; although content marketing may seem like a new idea, it has existed since the beginning of time. It is about conveying important information to one another in a compelling and interesting way. Taken out of a business context, this is how we human beings interact with each other on a daily basis. We seek information, we look for solutions to our ongoing challenges and we want a reliable source that will provide us with the answers.

You may have noticed that so far I haven’t mentioned anything about hard sells or call to actions and it is not because I forgot about them. Content marketing is not about pitching your products; it is about creating and nurturing a relationship with your target market through sharing relevant information that they are seeking out there in the cyber space (or whatever other medium you are using). How does that help you improve your business or increase your leads? Let me answer that with a well-known example. Most of us have heard of the agricultural giant John Deere & Company. The firm has been manufacturing agricultural equipment since the 1800s and has a very strong and loyal customer base around the world. What you may not be aware of is that they have been using content marketing techniques since 1895, the year they launched The Furrow magazine. This publication was solely about providing information to farmers about how they can improve their businesses, maximize their profits and overcome the challenges they face. This way, John Deere started connecting with all these prospective customers in a well-defined segment, forging the association as the company that genuinely cares about the needs and success of the farmers. The magazine was only about sharing knowledge, without a single piece of promotional item in it. So when the time came for the farmers to buy new agricultural equipment, what was the company that they first thought of? John Deere. So as you can see, content marketing is not a quick-fix solution, but rather a long-term commitment for long lasting results.

Now that we defined what content marketing is with a real-life example, let’s talk about how it differentiates from social media. At first sight, they may seem almost identical and there is definitely a lot of overlap between the two. Having said that, they are not interchangeable, but rather complimentary.

“The difference between content marketing and social media is huge. Social media is a new channel. And it competes with other media channels like TV, radio, print and all the digital channels available to us. Content marketing and storytelling are as old as human beings. We have always needed to find ways to convey important information in useful and entertaining ways.” – Michael Brenner (VP of Marketing and Content Strategy, SAP)

Elaborating on Michael Brenner’s statement above, one of the main differentiators between social media and content marketing is the focus of the marketing activity. When you are working with a social media channel, your marketing activity is focused (and limited) to that particular channel. Say, if you are running a Twitter campaign, you are essentially operating within the confines of the Twitter ecosystem. Not to mention the chosen social platform’s own restrictions such as the character limit on Twitter. In content marketing, on the other hand, your operating platform can be whatever you want it to be; a website, a microsite, a landing page or even print media. In other words, you have more freedom and control over the distribution of your content.

In my opinion, the main difference that sets social media and content marketing apart is the steps they focus on in the customer purchase journey* (or customer purchase funnel as some call it). Although you can design your content to serve various purposes, social media mainly revolves around creating awareness and customer retention. (Steps 1 and 5).

* Customer Purchase Journey

The objective of content marketing is to help and guide the prospects through every step of this journey providing the relevant information that they look for in each stage. The focus is then to identify and understand the specific interests and expectations of a particular segment in a given step of their journey with your brand. Consumers in the awareness stage will likely be looking for very different information than those in the preference or purchase stage. What is crucial is to provide the right information to the right prospects, in the right place and in the right time. Of course, this is easier said than done. This is why we are witnessing the rise of marketing automation, a series of technologies that are designed to help marketers more effectively target consumers with relevant communications in each step of the purchase journey.

In achieving the objectives of content marketing, the quality of the content you are publishing becomes critical. While there are opposing views on it, social media channels tend to be more about frequent and easily digestible quick updates as opposed to elaborate content. This contributes to a company’s online presence from a ‘search engine optimized content’ perspective. However, what’s more important is to understand the customer journey, identify the needs at each step and then provide keyword optimized, SEO friendly content that will not only boost your rankings, but will also deliver your prospects the exact information they are looking for.

Although they have their differences, social media and content marketing are meant to work together as interconnected parts of your marketing system. They compliment each other rather than work in different directions. What is important is to understand each channel’s purpose, identify your customer journey process and take advantage of these resources to meet the consumers in the right place with the right information. It is going to be very exciting to see this all working together with marketing automation systems so synchronized that the information that your customers want will be there waiting for them before they even get to that step.

As marketers, we are all driven by one simple goal: how do we convince our potential customers to buy our products/services and eventually turn them into loyal users of our brand? In doing this, we try different channels, different techniques and strategies to see what works the best. Companies have been spending tons of money in buying advertising space, trying to create awareness of their brands and conducting market research in hopes to get a better understanding of the purchasing behaviour. As a marketer I have always been fascinated with the latter. I always felt that understanding what drives the customers’ buying habits would be the key to launching a successful marketing campaign. It is the key to spending our marketing dollars on the right areas where we are confident that we will get a return. To explore this interest further, I took all the market research courses I possibly could during my MBA and I got involved in actual real-life market research projects for local firms to get a better understanding of how it’s done. As valuable as I think this experience was, I have always felt that something was missing. We were crafting surveys, conducting in-depth interviews to really understand what makes the customers tick. But I was never sure whether we were getting the right answers. And this was not because I thought people were lying to us or deliberately holding back crucial information that would help us. I simply thought that often times people did not actually know the real answers to our questions. They didn’t know what they wanted or even if they did it was not easy to articulate it in words. More importantly, I thought that a lot of the real answer were in fact hiding beneath the conscious mind so even if the interviewees wanted to give us honest answers, they just weren’t aware of them on a conscious level. Then I stumbled upon the concept of neuromarketing. Frankly, it sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie where people used mind control devices to manipulate others, which I guess it could be used in such a way if that was the intention. But what intrigued me was the potential of this fairly new field as it pertains to market research. Our customers may not be able to articulate their true feelings and opinions about a brand in words. But if we could somehow retrieve this information from its source –the brain- then they wouldn’t have to! This entire premise is of course limited to our current and incomplete understanding of the human brain. But with the recent developments in neuroscience, we are now able to generate neurological maps that can pinpoint the specific areas of the brain where neural activity is present. Although this technology is primarily used to enhance our understanding of mental illnesses and unlock the mysteries of human brain, its extensions into business management are starting to make a significant impact in market research.

This amazing partnership between neuroscience and marketing is executed through the use fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) procedure where the brain activity is measured through the detection of associated changes in blood flow. This information is then processed and mapped out on a computer screen that allows us to see the brain areas that register activity during specific actions. This way, researchers can identify what areas of the brain are activated when a subject is watching a new commercial, the pilot of a new TV show, or even when different sensory impulses are activated. And thanks to our current understanding of the human brain, we can tell what emotions are associated with the activated brain area. Whether it is a pleasant experience that will result in a marketing success or just a horrible scheme that is doomed to fail.

Since it is still an evolving field, it is not very easy to find countless resources on the subject. However, If you are interested in finding out more about the potential in neuromarketing, I would highly recommend checking out ‘Buyology’ and ‘Brandwashed’ by Martin Lindstrom, ‘Brainfluence’ by Roger Dooley, ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini and ‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely. I am looking forward to seeing the evolution of this field and how it is going to change the face of market research.