522. Content Marketing, Unpacked 🧳
Thoughts about the definition of content marketing, which is different for everyone
Hellooo 👋 So happy to have you here. I’m Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now I’ve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, we’d love for you to join us.
Let’s unpack content marketing together
I’ve had content marketing on the brain this week.
In my previous newsletter, I shared a list of 40+ marketing channels for 2024. The list included “content marketing,” which brought up an interesting question: Is content marketing a channel, a program, a strategy, or …??
Here’s a great POV from Robyn Showers on LinkedIn:
Along with this conversation, I was reading through the latest issue of Ronnie Higgins’ Marketing Under the Influence newsletter, which contained a deep dive on today’s state of content and how it’s time to start “thinking like a broadcaster” when it comes to content.
The solution back then was to "think like a publisher" — a mantra that proliferated B2B businesses with the notion that the best ideas from newspaper, magazine, and book publishing were the new way to market to and get customers.
Content marketing owes its existence to the publishing mindset imbued by the extremely talented journalists-turned-content marketers whose shoulders you and I stand on today.
But at risk of ruffling some feathers, I need you to know the “think like a publisher” mindset that’s ingrained into the ethos of content marketing is no longer sufficient in 2024. Because we need to accept that it's time to "think like a broadcaster" if we want to overcome the challenges plaguing B2B marketing today.
Think like a broadcaster:
These perspectives made it very clear to me: everyone has a unique take on content marketing, and content marketing is a much bigger deal and hotter topic than most any other marketing channel (there I go, using that word again).
From my channel list, there was a much higher volume of chatter about content marketing than there was, say, direct mail.
(Although, could one make the case that direct mail is content marketing?)
And people have been saying for years that “content is king.” They haven’t been conferring royalty status on SMS marketing.
Content marketing has an outsized role to play in our marketing strategies.
So … how is a marketing leader to think about content marketing then?
Let’s go back to the channel menu I shared last week. The idea behind this channel menu is for marketing leaders to decide which mix of channels makes the most sense for its multichannel mix, for its short- and medium- and long-term strategy, and for the ways that it amplifies and distributes stories about its brand. Within the list, there are a lot of channels that depend on a content strategy to know what you’re even putting out there. Email marketing requires content. Ads require content. Multimedia is content. Content marketing, in theory, could encapsulate all this.
But I will often make a distinction in a couple ways when I’m strategizing about content marketing with my team:
A content strategy informs all your channels. (“Content strategy” is not the same as “content marketing.” It’s bigger.)
Depending on your business:
Your content marketing refers to your written content: blogs, websites, case studies, premium assets, etc. Other types of content fall under multimedia.
Your content marketing refers to content channels that drive leads or bottom-of-funnel conversion. Content for driving awareness and top-of-funnel is considered editorial content.
Content marketing shares more DNA with a marketing program than with a channel. Other marketing programs are things like lifecycle marketing (a combination of channels like email, SMS, retargeting, etc) or performance marketing, or communications.
It probably goes without saying that content marketers are brilliant people who have an amazing breadth of skill and impact. Some of the best content marketers I’ve worked with have gone on to become expert product marketers and comms leaders and heads of marketing. The expansive nature of content marketing—and how unique the job is from company to company—can shape a career in so many ways.
Because of all this, I don’t know that we’ll ever all agree on a single way to define or explain content marketing. And that’s okay! Especially so long as it brings about good conversation with folks like Robyn and Ronnie and others.
If you have thoughts to add, feel free to hit reply to this email and let me know!
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.
Each week on this substack, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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