Sometimes it’s easy to get confused. The key difference between content marketing and social media marketing is simple: content is what you present to potential customers, and social media is where you interact with them. And it all falls under the loose banner of digital marketing.
As a novice or even experienced marketing professional, there is no need to worry about choosing ‘either/or’: the very best marketing strategies employ every tool in the marketers’ toolkit for optimum results.
For content marketing, you first need to understand your buyer personas, then develop compelling, targeted content for each stage of the buyer journey. Reach out to them via every channel available, including social media, and make sure you include social media buttons on your website content pages.
Quality content that helps engage the prospect during the ‘consideration’ phase (when they are weighing up their options) includes relevant content that answers their key questions. When your content matches their queries — using the same keywords that your customers use — potential customers will find it, and if they like what they see, you can guarantee they’ll be back.
Over time, meaningful content marketing makes you the authority on the subject and a trusted advisor that attracts interest and new prospects to your website. If it’s really good, it can convince them to convert, and even encourage them to spread the word within their own networks about your brand.
Social media marketing works best if your business already has a profile, and is trying to increase brand engagement and loyalty. While content marketing increases loyalty by making your firm look more knowledgeable, social media increases loyalty by showing how responsive, personable, and relatable you are.
By using sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to engage your audience, your business builds a customer-centric image and gives consumers more confidence that you’ll deliver the experience they want, while giving you another channel to share ideas, thoughts, and experience.
Marketing on-demand
For business owners and marketers who are already drowning in their BAU, need to manage costs and see some measurable results, an experienced, cost-effective, business partner who can ‘join the team’ or take over their complete digital marketing effort – on-demand - is a bit of a dream come true.
Xplore Digital was conceived in response to a rapidly changing global environment. A ‘pivot’ for the founders amongst the turmoil caused by Covid, but also born of a deeply-held belief that the marketing industry itself needed a shake-up. Xplore Digital’s Sebastien Faelens and Cécile Loire believe that for too long, traditional agencies have been over-charging and under-performing without consequence or accountability. In-house marketing teams have struggled with under-staffing or lack of professional development. Many still sit in a sales support role which is out-dated and ineffectual.
Xplore Digital is a breath of fresh air - an on-demand marketing agency that is nimble, experienced, cost-effective and accountable. Its growing team of UK and European-based experts can augment an existing strategy or customise a marketing plan from scratch – using earned, owned and paid content to make digital marketing work smarter and harder right across EMEA.
We are experts at conversion optimization, and can help drive lead-generation with high-quality content marketing and outstanding social media engagement. To succeed, all we need to do is to give people a reason to listen, a reason to believe, and a reason to keep listening – using a layered communication approach to create content that connects.
