Content is Not Marketing — It’s Communications

Your con­tent is not marketing.

If you’re a PR or com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­fes­sion­al like me, cre­at­ing online con­tent for brand chan­nels is an every­day con­cern. Stakeholders need con­tent; influ­en­cers need con­tent; the pub­lics need content.

It’s a nev­er-end­ing story, but it’s also fun. Most import­antly, it’s neces­sary for a digit­al-first society.

But the mar­ket­ing part… makes it less effect­ive. And less fun.

I’ve been pro­fes­sion­ally cre­at­ing online con­tent for 18+ years, and I find the mar­ket­ing part of con­tent mar­ket­ing to be one of the stu­pid­est ideas in cor­por­ate communication.

Why?

Keep read­ing to learn how to turn con­tent mar­ket­ing into con­tent com­mu­nic­a­tions and get bet­ter res­ults from your digit­al PR efforts.

Here we go:

The Confused State of Content Marketing

We live our lives on the Money Web now. I’m not against people mak­ing a liv­ing, but I’ve nev­er seen the point of blur­ring the lines between advert­ising and edit­or­i­als. Yes, I’m old-school PR; trust must be earned. Then you sell.

But any­where you turn online, there’s con­tent mar­ket­ing. Everyone’s try­ing to sell you some­thing. Stone-cold sales pitches are mas­quer­ad­ing as edit­or­i­al con­tent. Back in the day, we used to frown at such practices.

Do you think I’m exag­ger­at­ing? Email’s nearly des­troyed by con­tent mar­ket­ing. The lines between edit­or­i­al con­tent and advert­ising emails are so blurred that keep­ing your inbox free from all the soli­cit­a­tion is almost impossible.

Worst case scen­ario? We won’t be able to com­mu­nic­ate with each oth­er via pub­licly avail­able digit­al chan­nels since all trust will have been eroded so com­pletely by aggress­ive mar­ket­ing tac­tics on autopilot.

There will be ways around this for indi­vidu­al users by only allow­ing approved senders — and keep­ing con­tact details secret. But this will spell dis­aster for those of us who make a liv­ing from reach­ing out to audi­ences on behalf of organisations.

Content is the Future of Practical PR

I’ve dis­cussed the issue of mud­dling the bound­ar­ies of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tion with many mar­keters. But they don’t see a prob­lem; what could be bet­ter if advert­ising can be con­veyed as edit­or­i­al con­tent, they insist. And if this prac­tice neg­at­ively impacts edit­or­i­al prac­tices — what do they care?

But mar­keters aren’t the prob­lem here: Marketers should do mar­ket­ing. Marketing should push products and ser­vices. Via sales, mar­ket­ing makes our soci­ety go around; it funds our salar­ies, insti­tu­tions, and pro­gress. The prob­lem is us — the com­mu­nic­at­ors of the world.

Communication depart­ments have con­tinu­ously oper­ated on a frac­tion of the budgets of mar­ket­ing depart­ments. PR agen­cies have always stood in the shad­ow of the mighty advert­ising industry. But this is a rem­nant of a cen­tury with tra­di­tion­al mass media. In our digit­al-first soci­ety, trust is the major chal­lenge. And you build trust with com­mu­nic­a­tion, not marketing.

So, the world’s com­mu­nic­at­ors have an essen­tial role in organ­isa­tions. We must com­mu­nic­ate to estab­lish trust and main­tain good extern­al and intern­al rela­tion­ships. But we can’t turn to mar­ket­ing (or any­one else) for help. We’re the experts; we have the tools needed.

In short: It’s up to us, not others.

Communication is indeed a smal­ler industry than mar­ket­ing. We live in a soci­ety where every­one wants to sell their products and ser­vices to make a liv­ing. That’s fine. But com­mu­nic­a­tion is essen­tial, too. And being a minor dis­cip­line, we must fight harder to prove our importance.

Content is Not Marketing

With the risk of sound­ing ancient, I remem­ber when pro­du­cing in-house edit­or­i­al con­tent was a low-status spe­cial­isa­tion in com­mu­nic­a­tions. These PR spe­cial­ists pro­duced magazines for employ­ees, part­ners, and cus­tom­ers. I thought that edit­or­i­al con­tent deserved a high­er status then and surely deserves high­er status in com­mu­nic­a­tions now.

But instead of think­ing about defeat or lack of suc­cess, I don’t mind being the under­dog, the smart minor­ity. We have less to lose and more to win.

I pre­dict that advert­ising will have to find new ways to per­suade. They can’t keep push­ing aggress­ively in every digit­al chan­nel forever. In the mean­time, two-way com­mu­nic­a­tion, build­ing trust, and estab­lish­ing rela­tion­ships will only grow in importance.

The com­mu­nic­a­tion industry is per­fectly equipped to tackle today’s and tomor­row’s digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tion chal­lenges. In the future, con­tent mar­ket­ing and con­tent com­mu­nic­a­tions can co-exist.

If you work in a com­mu­nic­a­tions depart­ment today, you’re likely already respons­ible for the organisation’s web­sites, apps, news­let­ters, and social media chan­nels. Because mar­ket­ing doesn’t want to run chan­nels, it wants to run cam­paigns. As com­mu­nic­at­ors, we must step up and lead the way.

The Red Bull Content Machine

When I think of con­tent, I think of Red Bull. Red Bull is object­ively just one sports drink among many. What sports, in gen­er­al, have to do with car­bo­hydrate drinks, I don’t know. But there’s noth­ing spe­cial about its ingredi­ents, fla­vours, or packaging.

Red Bull could, of course, take the route of tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing. “Here’s our sports drink, Red Bull. It’s awe­some. Buy it, and you can be awe­some, too. Look at these slick visu­als of back­lighted cans sprayed misty for your view­ing pleasure.”

Instead, Red Bull has opted for edit­or­i­al con­tent that’s worth watch­ing. Not only are they pro­du­cing con­tent that the extreme sports com­munity loves, but they’re also spon­sor­ing their pas­sions, allow­ing them to pur­sue their dreams. I don’t know how they came up with the strategy, but we can all see that it’s dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tion­al advertising.

It takes edit­or­i­al bravery to pro­duce con­tent that people love, and it doesn’t take bravery to aggress­ively pro­mote products and ser­vices. In this sense, Red Bull is a brave company.

Today, Red Bull is syn­onym­ous with the world of extreme sports. They’re the archi­tects behind thou­sands of spec­tac­u­lar influ­en­cers who cre­ate con­tent wear­ing their logo, and oth­er com­pet­ing brands must try to fol­low their lead.

Red Bull still does reg­u­lar ads; they still sell energy drinks. But by focus­ing not just on mar­ket­ing but on edit­or­i­al com­mu­nic­a­tion, too, their brand has reached an icon­ic level in their niche.

Enter: Content Communications

Now, pro­du­cing extreme sports videos was the route that Red Bull took. Regarding con­tent, video is just one of many pos­sible routes to take. Perhaps you’re work­ing for a B2B IT com­pany? Ask your­self: How do you pro­duce con­tent that B2B IT buy­ers would con­sume not just will­ingly — but eagerly?

Here’s a mind­set for you to get started:

Will con­tent com­mu­nic­a­tions ever be as big as con­tent mar­ket­ing? Probably not. Will people keep refer­ring to con­tent com­mu­nic­a­tions as con­tent mar­ket­ing? Yes, prob­ably. However, we who have dis­covered this dis­tinc­tion can make it work in our favour.

Being the under­dog has its advant­ages, too. ⁴Silfwer, J. (2016, August 25). The Stupid Majority PR Strategy: How Underdogs Dominate. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​t​u​p​i​d​-​m​a​j​o​r​i​t​y​-​p​r​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in the PR- and mar­ket­ing industry.

Historically, many PR- and mar­ket­ing depart­ments have argued:

“Why should we spend our PR- and mar­ket­ing budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”

The truth is — it’s the oth­er way around.

Instead of “spam­ming” non-exist­ing audi­ences, pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing can do much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ⁵Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

Drawing a line between those who know you and those who don’t know you is noth­ing new:

• Pull mar­ket­ing vs push mar­ket­ing
• Hot leads vs cold leads
• Permission mar­ket­ing vs tra­di­tion­al marketing
• Internal com­mu­nic­a­tions vs extern­al communications

This inbound shift is the online equi­val­ent of draw­ing the line between those who know you and those who don’t know you:

• Inbound com­mu­nic­a­tions vs out­bound communications

If your Inbound Shift PR Strategy is good, you might not need to pri­or­it­ise out­bound PR strategies — because your inbound audi­ence will attract out­bound publics.

Learn more: The Inbound Shift PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.

PR Resource: Free Content PR Course

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Doctor Spin’s PR School: Free Content PR Course

Unlock your poten­tial with this Free Content PR Course. Learn effect­ive digit­al pub­lic rela­tions strategies and elev­ate your career to new heights today.

Content Communications

• Content is Not Marketing — It’s Communications
• “For Content!” — The Infamous Influencer Battle Cry
• The AI Content Explosion
• Mediocrity is Slowly Killing Your Corporate Content
• My Content Marketing Experiment (That Failed Miserably)

Content Messaging

• The Core Message

Content Structures

• Content Themes: The Power of Focus
• Content Packages (And What To Include)
• Content Skyscrapers: Better Inbound and SEO
• Deep Content: Win By Going Deeper

Content Strategies

• The Superhero Solution: Become the Obvious Answer
• Evergreen Content: Forever Is a Long Time
• The Surround Message: Making the Box Smaller
• Level 5 Content: Go Big or Go Home

Learn more: All Free PR Courses

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.