It’s hard to believe that the 3-part series that Aimee Savran and I have been writing about common marketing myths is wrapping up! Did you miss part 1 or part 2? Check them out to see how we debunk general marketing myths and social media marketing myths.
Today we’re focusing on content marketing specifically. First, let’s be clear about how we define “content marketing” in 2024. This type of marketing centers around creating content that educates one’s target audience on one or more topics. Content comes in many forms, including blogs, social media posts, videos, white papers, ebooks, webinars, and more (including physical content such as books or brochures). The intention for doing this is so an organization or individual can share their knowledge, opinions, or a combination of both with an audience interested in those topics. Ultimately, the desired end result is to build trust and gain a loyal following of people who view you/your company as an expert and the go-to resource.
On that note, today we’re debunking the following common content marketing myths:
- Myth 1: It is important to always put out fresh and unique content.
- Myth 2: Building new content is expensive.
- Myth 3: You don’t need to create awareness content if your main goal is to drive leads.
Let’s dive in for insights as to why these beliefs are myths that should be put to rest.
Myth 1: It is important to always put out fresh and unique content.
Truth according to Aimee: This is something that many marketing teams struggle with nowadays. There is this belief that people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and so we as marketers have to be churning out the next new shiniest piece of content otherwise we risk being seen as boring. And when your company is viewed as boring, people stop paying attention. No attention = no sales.
The truth of the matter is, people don’t actually have short attention spans; if they did, why would some of the most famous YouTube influencers nowadays be creating videos that are 45+ minutes long? Instead, people have short attention spans when they find the content itself boring. However, marketers have equated “not new” content with “boring” content. Just because it’s not new to you (the person/team who produced it), it doesn’t mean it’s not new to your audience.
Think about this with your consumer hat on: you download an eBook, skim through most of it, read in detail certain parts, then close the tab in your browser. An hour later, how much of the content do you remember? Chances are, not much. The only way for messages in the content to stay stuck in your brain is if you’re exposed to it over and over again. In fact, research shows “that we need to see information between five to seven times for it to transition from short-term to long-term memory.” So what is not new to you, is definitely new to your audience for a long while. Plus, in content marketing, each piece of content typically contains multiple nuggets of value, which increases the shelf life even further.
Remember: fresh and unique content stays fresh and unique as long as the message of the content is still relevant. My rule of thumb: I give more pillar pieces of content (such as en eBook, and important blog post, etc.) an initial shelf life of 3-6 months, then give it a rest, refresh it after another 3-6 months have passed, and then start promoting again.
Truth according to Elena: Your marketing team may not have as many human resources to build new content in-house or big budgets to create new content through outside vendors and agencies. Even if you do, it is important to focus on quality rather than quantity. Rather than feeling like you always have to create net new content, which can be time consuming and expensive, I suggest investing in creating derivative content from your top assets. There are so many different content types that you can create from existing content. You can take a top ebook and turn it into a webinar. You can take a webinar and edit it into shorter segments for YouTube or to post on your social media channels. You can package your customer testimonials or case studies into a blog series. You don’t always need to reinvent the wheel to create content that is going to resonate with your target audience.
There are always going to be new people discovering your brand and starting their journey with you that haven’t seen your content yet. If you are running paid media and change your target account lists, you can reach a ton of net new prospects with older content. They won’t necessarily know it is older unless it is out of date or has a past year in the title like “2023 Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Extortion Report.” This is a bit of a spoiler of my response for the next myth, but you can get around this by refreshing the asset and updating the year in the title to the current year. Voila! You now have a current asset to promote with way less work than building something totally new.
For determining if it is worthwhile to put time and resources into creating brand new content, I suggest that you build a content map of your current offers by journey stage to see if you have any gaps. As I was collaborating with my team to build out the content map for one one of our products, we found that we had a ton of mid-funnel, gated content. However, we didn’t have very much ungated, high level awareness content to help our prospects learn more about us. We invested time and budget strategically to create the content that our prospects needed, but that we were currently lacking.
Myth 2: Building new content is expensive.
Truth according to Aimee: Content marketing is arguably the cheapest form of marketing. All you need is a WiFi connection and a computer, and you can even get the WiFi for free by going to a local Starbucks (well, it might cost you a $5 latte). Social media marketing is one of the most common forms of content marketing nowadays because a social media post is, you guessed it, content. LinkedIn allows users to create newsletters, so you no longer need to even have a Mailchimp to do “email marketing” per se. Not all content needs to be an eBook with a cover designed by an expensive agency, or a research report that costs thousands of dollars. If you can turn on the webcam on your laptop and you have something valuable to say, you can make a video and then use the free editing software on your computer to add subtitles and an intro and outro.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, content is anything educational that can be distributed to an audience. For your marketing efforts, start by thinking about which distribution channels are free and what the format is within those channels for how your content is presented to audiences, then you can decide what doesn’t break the bank while also being seen by your target audience.
Truth according to Elena: Building new content doesn’t have to be expensive. When I worked for VMware, we often collaborated with internal and external influencers to write blogs and create videos promoting our big events. In exchange, we offered them access to exclusive briefings, invited them to events, and amplified their content via our own blog channels and paid media.
Building off of my point from the previous myth about repurposing content, it is often a lot faster and more affordable to update existing content than building something new from scratch. At Palo Alto Networks, we have several reports that we refresh every year. While we want to make sure the content is the most up to date, there is quite a bit that can be reused. AI has also made it a lot easier to do certain content marketing tasks quickly and affordably. AI can be a great content marketing assistant. It can help you brainstorm blog topics, research what your target audience is interested in, or create outlines for blog posts.
Myth 3: You don’t need to create awareness content if your main goal is to drive leads.
Truth according to Aimee: A prospect never reaches the stage of being a “lead” unless they trust you. No one is going to inherently trust you just because you say you’re trustworthy. Trust is built over time, and content marketing can’t escape that fact. Awareness content helps your audience make sense of the problems they’re facing and why those problems need to be addressed sooner rather than later. It’s meant to be relatable by demonstrating to an audience that they’re not alone in dealing with the identified problem, and they’re not alone in searching for a suitable solution.
For example, take a skincare brand. If the skincare brand only talked about how they’re the best skincare on the market because they have XYZ ingredients, potential consumers would ask themselves, “But why do I need those ingredients?” This is where awareness content becomes essential. Perhaps the brand could have made an Instagram reel explaining why dry skin causes patchiness, irritation, and faster appearance of aging, and how certain ingredients help keep skin moisturized. In that reel, their own specific product isn’t mentioned at all, but they’re driving awareness towards a particular problem and becoming the expert on solving it.
Truth according to Elena: You have to date before you get married! You need to build trust and offer value before you ask a prospect to fill out a form and provide their phone number and email address. A large part of my current role is building out full-funnel, brand-to-demand marketing strategies. Many people may not be very familiar with your brand or product. It is important to give them opportunities to learn more about you. Show them that you are an expert in your space. Provide resources to help them understand what you offer and how you can address their pain points. Give them plenty of ungated content they can consume. This not only improves the experience your prospect has with your brand, but it helps make your lead gen efforts more effective.
Here is an example: my team recently ran a connected TV campaign on LinkedIn promoting our brand videos to our target network security personas. We then retargeted the video viewers with subsequent lead gen ads. The video viewers drove an 80% higher lead form completion rate than people who were not exposed to the brand videos. When you are building your content strategy, make sure to consider all of the phases of the customer journey and what content is most useful for your prospects to consume at each stage.
Thank you for following along with our marketing myths series! Aimee and I would love to know what you’re interested in learning about next when it comes to modern marketing strategy. We encourage you to connect with us on LinkedIn (my profile and Aimee’s profile) to keep the conversation going.
Stay tuned for further articles and thank you again for following this series, we hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed writing and sharing it!
