Often, in the field of digital marketing, the terms content marketing and copywriting tend to be used interchangeably. Although even today it is easy to confuse and not have a clear understanding of the particularities that differentiate the two strategies, they cannot be identified as superimposable.
Content marketing and copywriting are not the same thing. Although both terminologies are part of the web marketing universe, they identify two very different, albeit complementary, spheres of communication.
Both strategic approaches are therefore essential for the elaboration and subsequent definition of a digital marketing strategy: both content marketing and copywriting allow for greater online visibility and are to be considered one of the main key activities for promoting the presence of one's brand on the web.
Content Marketing vs Copywriting: Two fundamental strategies for obtaining visibility and engagement, but they are based on different logics.
The first focuses on the creation of informative content essential for attracting and subsequently transforming potential users into loyal customers. The second supports writing persuasive texts capable of attracting and inducing the public to perform certain actions, thus generating a real conversion.
Content marketing is a strategic approach that consists in the creation and sharing of valuable content, with the aim of making yourself known to a well-defined audience, thus acquiring brand awareness.
Content writers must therefore know how to create useful content, with informative and well-written purposes. To obtain a good positioning on search engines, a thorough knowledge of SEO techniques is also essential.
Content created within the content marketing sphere includes articles for blogs, texts, videos and images for social media, press releases, case studies and ebooks.
Unlike content marketing, copywriting is not exclusively linked to the digital world: the copywriter also works outside of it, designing promotional material useful for directing and influencing users' actions both through traditional and purely digital channels.
Its function is to create immediate and impactful texts, consisting sometimes of just a few words, which in addition to being informative, must be persuasive. Copywriting therefore has the goal of pushing the user to take a specific action, thus achieving the pre-set marketing objectives.
Otherwise, copywriting focuses on writing texts intended to advertise products or services, or on their sale both online and offline. Among the examples of typical texts to be attributed to copywriting cannot be missing both online and offline advertisements, slogans, payoffs, landing pages and sales web pages, contents for catalogs and descriptions for products, e-mail campaigns, brochures, and booklets.
Content marketing and copywriting are not distinguished solely and exclusively by the type of content they produce. They also differ in:
Where the goal of content marketing is to engage and build loyalty, that of copywriting is to get a conversion in terms of leads or sales.
If content marketing can be considered multidirectional, involving, and containing multiple sources, points of view and calls to action within its contents, copywriting should be identified as unidirectional. It produces content that revolves around a single call to action.
The knowledge and application of SEO techniques are essential for the content writer as the purpose of the latter is to improve brand awareness. As far as the copywriter is concerned, however, optimization from an SEO perspective is not of capital importance as the contents created do not have the purpose of reaching the greatest number of users, but of directing their actions.
Content marketing allows a measurement of results in the medium to long term, while copywriting allows an evaluation of insights in the short term.
On the one hand, content marketing drives organic search traffic to a well-defined page, on the other hand, copywriting converts it into leads or sales.
Although content marketing and copywriting are two different strategies, it is good that they integrate with each other in the digital world to obtain advantageous results. The two techniques are to be considered complementary since, content marketing guarantees informative and loyalty-building content, whereas copywriting provides for the creation of calls to action capable of generating conversions in terms of leads and/or sales.
The combined use of the two strategies entails a series of essential advantages to make the brand competitive. Content marketing and copywriting together lead to an increase in trust in the brand, product or service offered by users, allow the creation of brand awareness strategies and allow the creation of content aimed at defined and identifiable target users.
Content marketing and copywriting are therefore necessary and inseparable: the first, without an adequately designed copy, and the second, without good content to accompany it, may not guarantee the expected effectiveness. You cannot base your communication plan only on content, nor exclusively on conversions.
The best solution therefore turns out to be a digital marketing strategy capable of integrating the best of both techniques, since only in this way will it be possible to obtain certain advantages, such as producing effective and functional content, attracting the right target and increasing the user's trust in of the brand.
Content marketing and copywriting therefore represent two different ways of designing and producing materials for the web and beyond. Their combined use makes it possible to offer users a plethora of content suitable for every need and thus obtain optimal results.
They turn out to be two essential strategies for a brand that wants to stand out and emerge from the competition.
If you want to build a strong online presence with an integrated content marketing and copywriting strategy, contact Ekeria, a digital marketing agency. Request a free consultation now!