Until recently, the businesses tended to rely largely on paid advertising and traditional public relations to spread the word about their products. Today, a growing number of companies are spending a growing chunk of their marketing budgets on internet “content” designed to educate, entertain and inspire – and, if everything goes as planned, turn consumers of that content into loyal customers.
“Content marketing has been around for hundreds of years, but now it has taken off because the barriers to entry are gone,” says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Cleveland-based Contenting Marketing Institute. Thanks to the internet, “traditional brands are trying to figure out how to be media companies.”
That’s good news for Newport Beach, Calif.-based creative agency Column Five Media, which has made a name for itself with clever and timely infographics. Here’s a page of graphics Column Five created for the professional content sharing community Slideshare — about the value of content marketing itself.
Click to enlarge