90% of marketing executives declare that they think content marketing will play a bigger and bigger role in the coming years (source : 2012 Econsultancy survey with 1,300 respondents) But what is content marketing and how different is it from traditional marketing?

1. The 7 differences between content marketing and traditional marketing
Traditional marketing Content marketing
Discontinuous
Series of campaigns
Permanent
Continuous effort
Media buying
To display ads
Brand is its own media
To broadcast content
Advertising
Ads, slogans, promotion
Storytelling
Stories, reports, testimonials
Interruption
Struggle to divert the consumer’s attention to the
brand’s benefit
Attraction
Struggle to be relevant to the consumer’s business or
interests
Self-centered
Discourse on the brand and its offerings
Consumer-centric
Discourse indirectly related to the brand and its offerings
Aimed at broadcast
The brand tries to broadcast its messages to the widest
audience possible
Aimed at conversation
The brand encourages the proliferation of its content and
of content produced by its fans
A result of the Marketing department
Designed, managed and produced by the Marketing
teams
A result of the company as a whole
Driven by Marketing but designed and produced by
experts & funtional teams in various departments
Source : Altimeter, Content: The New Marketing Equation, February 2012
http://www.smartwords.eu