Wait, isn't content marketing and copywriting the same thing? Not exactly. Copywriting is an important part of a good content marketing strategy, but only one piece of a larger puzzle. Before we can talk about how marketing copywriters can help their clients, let's take a look at what the difference between the two are and how they work together to generate leads and keep existing customers.
What is Content Marketing?
In a nutshell, content marketing is the strategy of creating and sharing different types of content for a specific audience with the goal of attracting new leads and retaining current customers. There are many different things that qualify as content including infographics, videos, blog posts, podcasts, ebooks, and social media posts.
The key word here is strategy. Everyone dumps content on the web but not everyone is doing it in a measured way with a precise goal. Forbes points out that when content is part of a marketing campaign it is valuable. In fact, the tell-tale sign of a content marketing campaign is the fact that people actually want to consume the content rather than ignore it like traditional marketing and advertising. Why? Because it is helpful, informative, entertaining, or otherwise useful to the reader.
What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is the actual writing of the words. It differs from other types of writing in that the goal of copywriting centers around sales. Journalists investigate and inform, novelists entertain, and technical writers teach us how things work. Copywriters present products and ideas and make them sound awesome.
Copywriters are experts at discerning the audience, finding the right tone to write in, and adapting their work to fit a wide variety of industries, voices, and perspectives. A good marketing copywriter is also an expert at creating copy that is interesting, informative, and engaging and not full of a bunch of advertising mumbo jumbo - while also still maintaining a bit of persuasion with their words.
How Do they Fit Together?
Let's go back to that key word: strategy. A marketing copywriter is skilled at creating written content that not only fulfills the needs of your business, but is also something that people want to read. This content will attract new leads to your website by promising them a solution to their problem and then delivering it. A marketing copywriter can help flesh out a content marketing strategy by providing:
- Blog Posts. Blogging works best when it is done regularly and consistently. Professional writers can make sure their clients stay on track.
- Fresh Web Page Content. If an "About Us" page or FAQs are putting people to sleep, perhaps some bright and clean copy will liven things up.
- Email Marketing. Boring, sales-y emails go straight to the bit bucket. A marketing copywriter can spruce up newsletters and personalize offers so people actually read them.
- Ebooks. These long-form pieces of content work as a great trade for contact information from prospective customers, but you better give them something great or they'll be sorry they gave up their email address.
Here to Stay
Content marketing is more than just a buzzword. In fact, 80% of business decision makers want to get company information from articles rather than ads and 70% of them say content marketing makes them feel closer to the company. As a content marketing copywriter, you can study marketing strategies and learn how frequently your clients neeod to blog, how frequently to update social media accounts, and how to identify your client's target market and ideal reader.
Writing copy, on the other hand, is a skill that is honed with a combination of education and experience and usually involves a bit of natural talent, too. Marketers who don't want to put their marketing strategies at risk with boring or ineffective copy will consider hiring a marketing copywriter to create words that get the job done.
