Over the past few years, content marketing has overtaken all other tenets of digital marketing. As a field, it has managed to seep into every little aspect of online marketing. Even for running a simple paid search ad, companies hire copywriters to provide the write content narrative to push a marketing campaign forward.
The importance of having the right kind of content has sunk into the mind of every marketer in these past few years. Whether it’s finding success through organic search discovery or running a good social media campaign, a strong foundation can only be laid if the right content is backing the effort.
Along with content marketing, there is one other part of marketing that has gained in popularity – content strategy. Often, marketers used content marketing and content strategy as interchangeable terms that have the same meaning. This is not true. Just ask any student from one of the top digital marketing institutes and you would be given a thorough analysis of the differences between content marketing and content strategy.
In this article, we seek to establish the difference between content marketing and content strategy.
What is the Difference Between Content Marketing and Content Strategy?
Dissecting the difference between content marketing and content strategy requires a finer level of thinking.
Content marketing, at its core, is restricted to the creation, publication, and promotion of content.
It doesn’t involve the background activities that go on behind the scenes to ensure that the content created and published is strategically viable to attract a large enough segment of the audience. Content marketing only deals with ensuring the quality of the content and that it suits the goals set out at the beginning of content creation.
Content strategy, on the other hand, is the beacon that drives content marketing.
If content marketing the a car, a content strategy would be the map determining in which direction the car moves. The role of a content strategy is to make sure all efforts in content marketing are driven towards meeting the overarching campaign objective.
A content strategy answers a lot of questions marketers have regarding the content they are creating.
- i) Why is this content being created? The first question answered by a content strategy is why a given piece of content is bring created and published. The reason should ideally be based on the goals set out in the campaign.
- ii) What type of audience is being targeted? The next question a content strategy helps answer is the kind of audience a given piece of content seeks to target.
iii) What type of content is being created? Based on the audience data, a content strategy also helps figure out the type of content that needs to be created in order to meet the goals of a marketing campaign.
In Conclusion
There are some fundamental differences between content marketing and content strategy. One thing clear beyond a reasonable doubt is that there is a need for both to run a successful digital marketing campaign. In this article, we explore these differences while explaining the importance of both content marketing and content strategy.
About the Author – Rishi Suman is a content marketing consultant currently working as a guest trainer at DelhiCourses.in. Of all the training institutes in the region, DelhiCourses.in is considered the best place offering a digital marketing training in Delhi.