Content marketing is selling of ideas, goods and services within a content to target market/audience in the simplest term.

First of all, a good content should bring together what the brand wants to transmit(as a message) and what customers want to get. We can imagine this as a intersection area, it is possible to say that ‘this is a good content’ when we find the area which is the midpoint between the brand’s and customers’ needs. It is also necessary to prepare a good content according to dynamics of media to be published. Therefore people who prepare the content should also know the media very well.

On Storytelling

Content marketing is actually does not have new and different steps as a marketing technics. The large part of stages of conventional marketing is followed in content marketing as well. This process comprises of analysis, formulating strategy, establishing creative solutions and evaluation.

Unlike advertising and public relations, content marketing has more detailed and more technical steps. We start an analysis with planning team. We analyze the brand, competition and then the target market. We assess the brand as a publisher, not as a good or service supplier anymore. We also prefer to consider the target audience similar to target audience of a television or magazine. After all, we face with content areas which can be owned by brand’s propositions which are presented to its target audience. After examination of target audience, we face with personas. These personas are human stereotypes of target audience. At the end, we analyze that on which media we can publish and convey this content.

After these, we determine the forms of content. This is a sort of complicated project management stage for us. Because our job is not only to present creative solutions. Sometimes we set up a website and sometimes we have to deal with 12-13 different departments of a company. For this reason, project management is a vital process for us.

Afterwards, we have evaluation and reporting services. We make evaluation by using different software and conventional research technics. Unlike other marketing communication tools, one of the most important feature of content marketing is that it is a never ending process. Our job is not done after executing an advertising campaign as if we are an advertising company. It is a continuous work and we learn new things and have a reproduction process all the time.

Relation of Content Marketing and Storytelling

In recent days, customers purchase life styles instead of ideas, goods and services. Because the quality of goods and services are starting to be similar in today’s world. We could say that there was a quality difference between two brands 30-40 years ago, but today there is no significant differences among most brands. For this reason, stories and life styles presented by brands have become important. Content marketing makes a great contribution in creating these stories and life styles.

When we look today’s lovemark brands, we can see that their advertising campaigns are based on storytelling. I am going to tell a story, it is an enjoyful and adaptable example. Hasbro Co. launched US toy soldiers at standard height as a new toy series in 1950-60 but it failed. After that, they decided to promote this series with a comicbook series, GI Joe. They characterised each soldier with different features. The product line was linked to a story and this story was taken at that time. This has become a popular technique in toy sector. We can see similar examples from toy industry such as Ninja Turtles, Transformers, etc. The promotion of this toy series with a good story brought about sales boom.