The History of Content Marketing

CAIRO - Oct. 23, 2016 - PRLog -- According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is defined as:

… a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Their definition is solid, in my opinion, but could use some clarity.

It means that content marketing is a long-term strategy, based on building a strong relationship with your customers, by giving them valuable content that is highly relevant to them on a consistent basis.

Eventually, when customers make a purchase decision, their loyalty already lies with you and they will purchase your product and prefer it over competitors' options.

In contrast to one-off advertising, content marketing shows that you actually care about your customers and today, more than ever, they sure want to feel cared about, because the world is louder and noisier than ever before and attention is our most valuable resource.

Keep that in mind, while we take a look at what types of content marketing there are.

Overview

When Joe Pulizzi founded the Content Marketing Institute, in 2010, I don't think he knew exactly how spot on he would be, let alone how successful CMI would become.

In 2015, they were one of the top resources, when it comes to content marketing statistics.  And, they've created a great video overview of the evolution of content marketing:

The History of Content Marketing:

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You can already see that the activity has been around longer than the term itself, since it's predicated on storytelling.

There's still plenty to learn from those first offline content marketing activities that pre-date the internet.

However, the online part can hardly be ignored for any successful content marketing campaign today.

Because storytelling has changed over the years, the attention of people is found in more places than a few years ago and marketers have to make sure that they tell stories in the year we actually live in.

Now that you have a good idea what content marketing stands for, you probably wonder: "How can I succeed at content marketing myself?"

I'm glad you asked!

There are 3 major categories where you can put content marketing efforts these days: online, offline and hybrids.

The best way to learn how to be a great content marketer is by example.

That's why I'll show you 15 great examples of content marketing in all categories.  Then, you can model them, tweak them and apply them for your own business.

Putting age before beauty, we'll start with offline first.

Offline

While the comic book industry is even more on fire today, than it was in the 80s, that can't be said for all of the offline channels where brands used to tell stories.

But, all of the lessons learned from them can be translated to today, in one way or another.

I'll walk you through 3 examples from content marketing history and then show you their modern day equivalents.

Offline Example #1 – Comic books and blogs

Stan Lee and his crew created Marvel, as we know it, in the 1960s. They tried to tell the best stories that they could. Their initial comics have consistently sold millions of copies each month.

Marvel still dominates the comic book space today, with not only a crazy market share of about 30%, but also sky high order numbers for individual comic book issues:

marvel

And, even though the comic book industry made a whopping $540 million last year, it absolutely pales when compared to the sales of merchandise around those books.

Last year alone, Disney, who bought Marvel in 2009, recorded sales of $40 billion dollars, just from merchandise.

Again: They made $40 billion from selling mugs, plastic figures and t-shirts.

This number doesn't include any money generated from movies or theme park entrance fees. Just merchandise.

Mind-blowing.

That means:

Good storytelling alone = a crapload of money, but…

Good storytelling + great products = 80 craploads of money

In Marvel's case, the story was the product and then additional merchandise came along the way.  Even today, the story should come long before the product.

By far, the easiest way to tell great stories, around which you can build great products, is with blogs.

You don't need drawers, painters and a printing press to put out comics any longer. If you're talented at drawing or creating witty stories, you can outsource the other part for as little as five bucks and create a blog that attracts hundreds of thousands of readers each month.

All you have to do is release a strip a day.

Aggregating news around comics is just as valuable.

Remember, the content has to be valuable and relevant to the target customer group.

That's why brands, like Excedrin, celebrate major successes, by developing a content strategy for their headache pills.

migraines

On their migraine blog, Excedrin provides helpful advice for all migraine sufferers, free software to help track the source of the problem and coupons for loyal customers and readers.

But, this kind of marketing isn't just for big brands. Single individuals can create huge audiences this way.

James Altucher is a great example. After blogging for 5 years and telling stories every week, his blog posts now routinely get thousands of shares.
his 200,000 person email list.