Quo Vadis Content Marketing?

More and more companies are turning to content marketing nowadays. Creating this content provides the customer with real added value, which increases customer loyalty and retention whilst also boosting sales and revenue. However, to harness content marketing effectively, marketing departments require particular skills.

Thanks to the rapid development of communication technologies, companies today have countless possibilities for direct and reciprocal customer communication. At the same time, due to these increasing communication requirements, customers appear to be overwhelmed with media, and this manifests itself in significantly shorter attention spans, among other things. Communication messages from companies are having less and less of an impact on customers, or are seen as an annoyance.

One strategy used in the struggle to gain the customers’ attention is content marketing. With this form of marketing, the advertising message is not the focal point, but rather the creation of content that provides real added value to the target groups in the form of information or entertainment. This involves companies positioning themselves – from the vantage point of their customers – as a sort of hub for responding to their customers’ concerns and requirements, and providing content that meets their needs, using the very channels and formats their target groups prefer.

Content marketing is catching on

Content marketing has been a shooting star in the sky of marketing for some time already. But development is accelerating significantly at present. While the 2020 ZHAW Content Marketing StudyTarget not accessible concluded that 80% of Swiss companies still do not really use content marketing, the results of the currently unpublished 2021 study indicate the situation has changed drastically. Currently, more half of the approximately 800 companies surveyed claim to use content marketing. This trend is clear, regardless of the size of the company. Additionally, around 60% of those companies that don’t yet use content marketing plan to do so in future. More than half of the companies that use content marketing view it as both extremely useful and effective.

As such, content marketing fulfils a dual function. On the one hand, this is intended to boost customer loyalty, as well as to better position the company brand. On the other hand, content marketing is used to pursue sales and revenue-related targets, especially if content marketing tools are used in a targeted way during the different stages of the sales funnel.

Content marketing as a challenge

However, even though more and more companies are turning to content marketing, they are also discovering that it is not that easy to produce quality, and, above all, regular content. This is where most companies see the biggest challenges. Content marketing doesn’t just require detailed knowledge of the target groups’ interests, it also requires journalistic research, preparation and mediation skills. In many companies, these skills are still underdeveloped, which is why they often work with external service providers.
But high quality content is crucial to breaking through the media overload and to being perceived by customers as a company. Companies have realized it is worth investing in content marketing. The next stage is to build up the relevant skills within the companies in order to really use this marketing strategy effectively.

Due to the current situation, Connecta Bern will again be held as a digital event in 2021. Connecta is renowned for shining a light on the diverse nature of digitization and this year will be no different with content presented across the three formats of Connecta Blog, Connecta TV and Connecta Talk. Find out more here: www.swisspost.ch/connectaTarget not accessible