After great enthusiasm in the first decade of the 2000s, company owners and brands are taking a second look at the subject of marketing content - in which cases is it a gold mine that promotes sales, and when is it nothing more than a high-budget smoke screen that will not necessarily generate profits? These are the 3 common mistakes that decide between the two:

Although different versions of shack content also existed in the pre-internet world (sponsorship, hidden advertising, etc.), a significant boom in the field of marketing content began in the first decade of the 2000s. The Internet - a limitless arena, along with online websites of major media corporations that are based exclusively on advertising profits, have created fertile ground for articles, sections and dedicated complexes that promote everything - from venture capital funds, to toilet paper - through content. The logic is simple: the contemporary consumer has developed indifference to traditional advertising to the point that even if exposed to it - he no longer remembers it. At the same time, many studies have emphasized that attention is at its peak when consuming content - a unit of information that viewers perceive as relevant and interesting for them. Hence, any product that is inserted into a content unit in the right way will gain a much greater prominence in the consumer's attention and will gain an effective level of awareness.

Want an example? Please: legumes. Sound interested? Not really. And what about an article about the 10 secrets to longevity, click? Probably so. One of the secrets by the way is reducing eating meat and increasing eating legumes which are rich in natural antioxidants. So the short answer is that indeed, smart marketing content touches consumers much more deeply in the mind than advertising. The long answer is that it is not that simple to produce smart marketing content. Here are the 3 golden rules that we at Maximedia believe in when working with our firm's clients when it comes to content creation

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long term strategy
The most common mistake of many customers is the expectation that just like an advertisement that promotes a sale, a new collection or a benefit - and brings about an immediate effect, marketing content will also lead to an increase in the sales of the products that it promotes directly and immediately. Although there are times when this does happen, we do not recommend looking at marketing content as a direct sales promoter, but as a fertile ground for emphasizing the brand's story and as a strategy for increasing its awareness, and positioning it as innovative, young, or exclusive - each brand according to its chosen personal DNA. Investment in marketing content must be long-term, measured every period. It will return the investment in increasing consumer awareness of the brand, and its direct association with the world of content. When the brand will no longer be a generic brand, one of... but one associated with associations, colors, language and rich content worlds.

 

Marketing content should be as interesting as "real" content

​Another common mistake is the expectation of customers to receive marketing content similar to the product message page. Since in marketing content "the customer is always right" - the result is, many times, content that only the marketing VP of the brand finds the final content really interesting. In order to generate traffic to it, the content companies use "click baits" - intriguing titles that are not related to the actual content (And so a title like "You won't believe who Bar Refaeli found in her bed" often links to an article on mosquito killers.) We operate according to other standards - and examine marketing content according to the same standards as non-marketing content: the article must connect to the media agenda, offer New information, to be accompanied by research, to avoid excessive compliments on the product and many more rules that turn even a marketing content article into an article that readers perceive as real content.

Maintaining a uniform language

The third common mistake is non-uniformity in the brand language in all the different content channels. For example, when a brand that has a Facebook page with a witty and cynical humor, sends a generic holiday greeting with a floral drawing and blessings for love and growth before Rosh Hashanah. Something that happens when the manager of the Facebook page is a witty and cynical guy, while the Rosh Hashanah greeting was designed for the brand by a graphic designer. Our policy, as mentioned, advocates building a broad strategy of the brand's content worlds, through which a language is also created. Cynical sociable language appeals to a sophisticated male audience, professional and research language to a company that promotes paramedical products and so on. In order to maintain uniformity, we produce for the brands we work with diverse content units for different platforms (on a monthly plan in advance) - in order to maintain a uniform brand language, and to create an inclusive and uniform brand story on the various platforms on which it operates - one that will ultimately have an impact and achieve the goals that were defined.