by Emily McAuliffe, Marketing Team, Ephox

I am a content marketing dummy and I need to change that, fast.

I start out by looking it up on Wikipedia.  They say content marketing is “an umbrella term that encompasses all marketing formats that involve the creation of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases.”

Ok, I kind of get it, but I need more. I understand that content marketing is essentially creating content in various forms with the goal of eventually getting customers to purchase from you.  So how is that different from advertising?

I head over to Junta42’s definition of Content Marketing.  According to them, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Junta42 explains further that Content Marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent.

So content marketing is not that annoying, old, interruptive advertising. It’s a subtle way to get people to buy your stuff.  So is it like subliminal messages? I am not very good hypnotizing people. How do they do it?

According to the Content Marketing Institute 9 out of 10 organizations market with content and the most popular tactics are social media (79%), articles (78%), in-person events (62%) and eNewsletters (61%) and case studies (55%), blogs (51%), white papers (43%), and webinars (42%).

Hey, we do all of that at Ephox!  We tweet, write case studies, newsletters, white papers, and we have a new blog program.  We content market all the time!  In fact, I just realized I am content marketing right now.  Maybe I am not such a dummy after all.