Content marketing has become communication (and that’s bad news)

The whole world has embraced content marketing. Good news, you might say. On the contrary, I would say. Something has broken during the embrace. It sounds dramatic, and maybe it is a bit too dramatic. But brands engaged in content marketing do have a problem. 

Content marketing used to be about telling a good story well. However, a good story alone is no longer enough. To be a strong brand, you need to be more than just a story. Content alone is nothing. We need content and marketing. Content marketing has drifted away from what it should be. It has become storytelling—telling stories without marketing, without a purpose, without a brand. And that is not a good development. 

So, does content marketing still have a purpose? And if so, what purpose? The goal should not be just to tell stories. The goal should be to reach your target audience and achieve objectives from your brand and content. The more complex the content, the better content marketing works—in B2B, for example, or in finance. Sometimes this involves storytelling. Sometimes it involves other types of content. Sometimes you don’t need content at all. But creating content should never be the goal in itself. 

Content marketing is called content ‘marketing’ for a reason! And be careful. Marketing is not just about selling something directly. Marketing forces you as an organisation to think about what ‘sells’ and why your target audience should consider you. What is needed for your target audience to cross a threshold and commit to you? When do they want something from you? That is extremely challenging, especially if you are an engineering firm or a pension provider with a complex message. 

How do you stand out among the thousands of other brands and organisations that also want something from your target audience? As a brand, you must constantly think about your ultimate goal and how you will achieve it. It could be selling more mortgages, working on brand awareness, finding staff, promoting a proposition, or generating leads. You have a complex message and a goal, and then you work towards that goal from a content marketing strategy. Staying close to your content and brand while connecting with your target audience and their world. 

And this has slowly, very slowly slipped away. Brands have fallen into the communication trap. Content marketing has become too much about storytelling—telling for the sake of telling. The marketing aspect is increasingly forgotten. And marketing in this sense means: how do I entice the target audience? With (sometimes complex) content and creativity, of course. But not just with content, not just with stories. Otherwise, it becomes communication—broadcasting, telling. And this makes content marketing slowly, very slowly redundant. 

Every brand and organisation ‘does’ content marketing. And that’s where it went wrong. Everyone started practising content marketing without thinking about why. Content marketing is a specialism. It’s not just about making a video or telling a story. It’s an ingenious mix of brand, insights, complex content, creativity, and marketing. 

Content marketing is not (just) about storytelling. That was never the goal. Content marketing is not about communication. Content marketing is about reaching your target audience through content so that they eventually want something from you—like taking on a major engineering project, taking out insurance, or working for you.