Traditional Publicity vs. Content Marketing Which delivers?

September 2024 · 3 minute read

The world of overpriced offline advertising is dying — there really isn’t much of a need for expensive TV commercials, print advertising and newspapers. There’s always going to be individuals who prefer to get their advertising and information this way, but the numbers don’t justify the results and ROI for advertisers anymore.

With that said, in this article we are going to look at some of the differences between traditional publicity and content marketing.

At first, they both might sound similar, but as we will see from the stats and information provided through the infographic below — they are actually quite different.

Traditional Publicity

Before we jump into the stats of traditional publicity, I want you to first think about the last set of advertising and promotions you saw offline. They were probably more like interruptions and not specifically targeted towards your interests as well. More importantly… did you act upon these promotions? (did you end up buying or taking action based off seeing these interruptions)

As stated, traditional publicity is more of an interruption to the client rather than providing value. Methods such as TV commercials, radio ads, magazine ads, posters and billboards will only capture your attention for a short period of time. In most cases you will see the ad and move on.

There are also three major flaws to traditional publicity, which are:

  • The inability to hold one’s attention for a long period of time
  • Usually delivered through interruption, rather than providing value
  • Traditional advertising also tends to be very expensive and offers limitations on the ability to track performance and ROI

    • Content Marketing

    Now, just like we did with traditional publicity, I want you to think about the last time you saw content marketing that either grabbed your interest and made you click, or interrupted your online browsing. No matter how you got there, what was your thought process while reading the content and how did you act after reading it? (did you make a purchase, click a relevant link or simply close it out and move on?)

    More often then not, we find content marketing as a result of our own actions and we are looking for information or value. This is a huge difference in comparison to traditional advertising, which is usually seen as an interruption and often doesn’t provide any value.

    See how the article in the screenshot below focused on providing value and ended up getting over 3,660 social shares from individuals who read it, then did their part to take it viral based on their own will. This is a perfect example of content marketing, and something you really wouldn’t see happen with a print ad campaign.

    SEJ Article

    While we could point out several flaws within traditional publicity, we can actually highlight the many benefits of content marketing:

  • Provide valuable content to your client or audience while building loyalty to your brand in the process
  • Create blogs, videos and online content to educate your clients, which may increase the chances of them buying from you in the future
  • Through the use of social networks you can build out your content, grow an audience and also use the power of viral marketing
  • Unlike traditional advertising, content marketing offers the ability to split test, update content and target your demographic audience based on your demands and customer needs.

    • No matter which method you prefer to use for your business and marketing, there is always going to be audience for each — though the possibilities that lie within the world of online marketing are quickly outweighing the old world of traditional marketing.

    Special thanks to AttachMedia for the creation of the infographic below.

    content-marketing-traditional-marketing-chart

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