Content Is King. Check How?
Display advertising and content marketing have been in the discussions since digitalization dived into our lives but there’s always been confusion about which one is more powerful? We have attended all probable concerns for you to strategize your marketing needs without a delay.
Advertising has always been into one purpose – Fetch consumer’s notice and influence them to take action. Earlier, advertising techniques were wrapped in the form of television commercials, newspaper ads, prints, and radio ads but ever since digitalization has entered into our lives, advertising methods have been evolving. Now, for marketers, it has become the most effective way to reach out to consumers. However, consumers too have become smarter and they have full control over what kind of advertisement they wish to watch and hence, most of the times several ads fail miserably.
On the other hand, content marketing is subtler. It can be molded into any form, from blogs and articles to emails and videos, the purpose of content marketing is to draw the attention of the onlookers rather appearing unknown and unrelatable to them.
For example, You have invited your guests for a dinner party at your home and want them to completely drool over your food, Williams Sonoma’s blog might prove to be the one that can make everyone raving about your recipes. Similarly, say you want to go on a vacation with your family members and need a place to stay that well suits your criteria. The right place to hop on should be some hospitality services provider website like OYO ROOMS. You can go through the details of the rooms provided and find a perfect place for your rest. You might come across hundreds of videos on youtube but only a few find a place to stick to your mind. This is solely because the content provided in the video must have been too engaging to stay in your mind for long. This is the magic of content. It doesn’t need any kind of push to get on to consumers’ faces. People love to engage with it because they are naturally driven by it.
In this blog, we will discover why great content now has become an incredibly strong marketing vehicle, whereas the graph of display advertising is decreasing rapidly. Analysis of some surveys, mention here, can get you to hit the right chords for all your marketing goals and needs. Before that, let’s have a quick understanding of the identity of the two terms – display ads and content marketing.
So let’s get started.
What Is Display Advertising?
Display advertising is an interruptive form of marketing and can be anything from texts, digital banners, videos, audios, etc. that appears in distinct sections on a website. The main purpose of display advertisements is to generate high conversion rates by selling products to the consumers as marketers and advertisers pay to have their promotion displayed alongside the website content of that page. The focus of such marketing techniques is to reach out to consumers, regardless of their interest in such information.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing holds a permissive approach toward marketing with a wide area of formats including blogs, articles, videos, emails, newsletters, infographics, etc. The purpose of content marketing is to provide valuable and appropriate information to potential consumers by naturally drawing their attention toward it and indulging them in the art of entertainment and communication. Content marketing involves nonrobotic feels and gives consumers faith over the existence of the communicator.
What Makes Content Marketing Rule Over Display Advertising?
The best part about content marketing is, it never gets old and can be used over and over again. Moreover, it can take the shape of diversified medium- from texts to graphics to videos- and can prove to be the source of exchanging valuable information to consumers.
Here are several effective reasons that make content marketing a more powerful choice than display advertising:
Permission to Interact with Potential Consumers
In content marketing, marketers have permission to reach out to their potential consumers. It provides consumers full freedom to seek and consume their desired content, whenever they want. It gives more accessibility to consumers to come and get naturally engaged with the message provided in the content, unlike display advertising which often arrives as pop-ups, social media ads, and pre-roll videos, when consumers are doing something else like watching other videos, reading some other content on the website, etc.
Provides Applicable Information
Big companies like Coca Cola and Microsoft are shifting their focus more to content marketing because now it has become the most- preferred marketing approach, for educating viewers or readers about a certain industry. The aim of content marketing is simply not only to entertain viewers but to teach them, to provide them valuable information, unlike display advertising that mostly has a selling pitch.
Audience Owner
Content marketing is the owner of its audience. Consumers find the content on their own and engage with it willingly. This means, they themselves choose to be the viewer by commonly landing on the page, where they want to seek for the information. On the other hand, in display advertising, advertisers pay money to the media platforms to get their advertisement displayed to crowed viewers, upon whom there can’t be any ownership
Cost-effective
According to B2B content marketing, 2017 benchmarks, and budgets, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. And when it comes to choosing a marketing strategy cost becomes the major consideration. Billions of dollars are spent every year on display advertising but now marketers are switching on to content marketing because undoubtedly, that’s the most affordable choice for any marketing purpose.
Flexible in Nature
Content marketing strategies are flexible in nature. Marketers can easily find out in real-time which content strategy is working and which one isn’t so that they can invest their time and new ideas accordingly to get the desired outputs. And it can be easily analyzed with the help of analytics programs that can show deep insights into different marketing aspects including engagements, links, impressions, etc. Whereas, display advertising is difficult to tweak, once they go on board.
Two-way Communicator
Content marketing allows two-way communication between the consumer and the communicator. For example, if you have uploaded some video on youtube or written a blog on academics, high probability people would seek to communicate through questions or come up with suggestions on your content in the comment section, provided in the respective websites. By doing so, you will eventually establish a relationship of trust and faith with your consumers and make your brand have a significant entity in the market. While on the other hand, display advertising does not provide a way to communicate, because their main intention is just to sell the product or idea to consumers.
Why Is Display Advertising Becoming Less Relevant?
Interactive ads and video banners that disturb the viewing experience, tend to get ignored by the viewer for the distracting feature. Almost everyone can recognize an advertisement instantly and already familiarize with its greedy purpose of selling. In fact, according to Hubspot, 50% clicks on mobile ads are accidental. Yet another important factor is, a display advertisement hardly stays on a screen for 1.5-2 seconds. The display time depends upon the amount of fee a marketer is paying to the media platforms. This incurs less brand engagement and more spamming rate.
Now let’s have a look at some shocking surveys on display advertising:
- Display ad viewability rates did not budge between 2013 and 2014
- The average click-through rate of display ads across all formats and placements is 0.06%
- There are now 198 million active ad block users around the world.
- A 2013 study revealed that 28% of respondents admitted to hiding their activities from advertisers.
- A study revealed that only 2.8% of participants thought that ads on the website were relevant.
- 54% of users don’t click banner ads because they don’t trust them.
- 33% of internet users find display ads completely intolerable. –Adobe
Conclusion
Content marketing and display advertising – both involve the use of marketing strategy to hit the target audience but the former is assuredly a stronger choice if you’re planning for longer brand engagement with your potential consumers. Content marketing involves people, interacts with them and wins over them, while display ads are seen nothing more than a disruptive choice. But one thing for sure, the future of content marketing is irradiant and isn’t vanishing anytime soon. Because at last, great content is what people remember.
So, share with us the best content you’ve ever come across on the internet and do mention, what makes you feel that the content is worth a share?
We’re waiting!
