By Chris Bradley
Over the years there have been many changes to the terminology we use in B2B marketing. Perhaps the best example is the transition from what was once called publicity to marketing communications. That was a good change because the publicity a company receives is not always controlled by the company itself, and often publicity outside of its control could be negative. Marketing communications relates specifically to a company's controlled publicity driven by its own marketing strategy.
In more recent times we've heard more and more about a term that was rarely used up until the '90s and even then didn't really start gaining traction until the 2010s. This is the relatively new phenomenon of content marketing. What's concerning is that suddenly it's the big thing. Everyone's talking about it and everyone's doing it, which is really good, except there's one potential pitfall that every company should avoid.
Firstly—it isn't new. And, it wasn't even new in the '90s. We've always been doing it, it's just that we didn't call it content marketing. And there's a reason for that. It's because it's PR! Content marketing is not some new discipline that's suddenly emerged in the modern marketing era. In fact, there's nothing even remotely new about it at all.
John Deere, the American agricultural machinery manufacturer, began publishing a magazine called The Furrow back in 1895, that contained educational and informative articles on farming for customers. The magazine needed content right? So the people who were producing the magazine were content creators! Except, back then that's not what we called them. Do we call the editorial team of a magazine content creators? More than likely the team that produced The Furrow worked within John Deere's PR department, that in itself, would have been part of the company's marketing department. There are plenty of other examples like this too, including the famous Michelin Guide!
So where's the mistake? Well it's potentially quite a big one. In modern day marketing we have more platforms available to us than ever before to disseminate editorial, photography and video to customers in a multitude of different ways. This includes a company's web site, email marketing, and social media. Of course, these platforms should be used and to do so we need great content, which is correct, but really it's PR.
I recently visited the web site of a company that describes itself as a digital marketing agency. I know the company quite well. Essentially they started out as a graphic design studio and then branched out to offer web design services. And they do a great job at that. But they're not marketing people. They're graphic designers. When social media began to be used by companies as a platform for broader marketing communications the company recruited a copywriter to provide 'content', and suddenly they were a digital marketing agency! All over the company's web site is information on content creation, content marketing and social media marketing.
Buried in a quiet corner of it's web site the company lists one of its additional services as PR. PR the company says is based around 'the press release'. No, it most certainly is not. This is the mistake, and it's a trap many companies are falling into. Web sites, email marketing and social media are simply additional platforms for PR. Content creation is PR! And, more to the point, content creation is not a PR plan in its own right, let alone a complete marketing communications plan!
On the Content Marketing Institute's web site it states that content marketing should be integrated into the marketing process and not treated as something separate. It states that quality content is part of all forms of marketing, including, amongst other things, PR. No, content marketing is PR. PR is the overarching discipline with content marketing being one of the many functions undertaken beneath the umbrella of PR. The availability of new platforms does not create new marketing disciplines. They create additional opportunities.
Our public relations plan would list, amongst other things, content marketing, and this itself would have its own list of subheadings. Other headings on our public relations plan would include press information including articles and news releases, exhibitions, video production and photography, free give-aways, newsletters, in-house company magazines, email marketing, meet the team or open days and so much more.
Placing content marketing as the lead discipline with PR as a subdiscipline skews our focus and risks taking our eyes off the ball, severely hampering our reach, particularly when it comes to potential customers. How many of a company's potential customers will visit its web site to see new content and how many will be following it on social media? How many potential customers' email addresses does a company have? To see tangible ROI we need to reach beyond the potential customers we know and not be blinded by thinking that content marketing is a complete marketing communications plan. It isn't. It's PR, and just one part of it.