The Difference between Content Selling, and Content Marketing

Over the last decade, it’s safe to say that both the sales and marketing spheres have changed somewhat drastically following the introduction of new information-sharing technology, and content production. One of the things that many individuals, both professional and non-professional fail to understand, is that content marketing and content selling practices are not synonymous with each other. Rather, it is important to consider how appropriately tested content marketing tactics can actually be used to boost content selling.

The Thoughts of Salespeople and Marketers

In general, most marketers will need to spend their time considering things like the ideal customer, the best possible prospects, fantastic selling or value propositions, or unique marketing concepts. On the other hand, salespeople will need to consider ideas like personalized information, building relationships with their customers, and engaging with new forms of traffic.

Although the two areas are quite different, it’s easy to see how they would benefit from sharing some of the same thought processes.

What is Content Marketing?

The concept of content marketing has altered the way that businesses sell themselves, their services, and their products to consumers and other businesses. The requirement to produce content in the marketing sector today has grown drastically, as businesses

The Difference between Content Selling, and Content Marketing

ses rely more than ever on the ability to be found by potential customers and prospects. People want their consumers to come to them, rather than having to go out and track potential traffic themselves. If you’re interested in successful marketing (And who isn’t?) you can’t avoid content marketing.

In simple terms, content marketing is the creation of valuable and free content that is relevant to your business and has a purpose. The purpose is usually awareness, building understanding with your customers to the extent that they feel comfortable doing business with you.

Content Selling

Content is not only important for marketing purposes – but for selling as well. The key difference between the two applications is that while marketing content is broadly delivered towards an ideal client persona or prospect, content selling focuses on individual customer needs, and is often utilized on a far more personal level.

Another key difference to be aware of is that content selling is used based on the idea that your prospective buyer has identified the same issue that needs to be fixed or solved.

Conclusion

Any business that wants to be found online, differentiate its organization, and attract new customers, needs to get serious about content marketing, and content selling strategies. Although there may be nothing new about content as a business strategy today, it seems that a lot of organizations still have trouble when it comes to figuring out what they should be doing – and how they should be doing it, for the most successful results.