By Dylan Morley
In recent years, we have seen a shift away from traditional marketing and toward digital marketing. There are many new marketing techniques, with content marketing (CM) becoming one of the most important. CM is starting to replace traditional marketing, as customers become more and more aware of traditional advertising and expect new approaches from businesses to catch their attention and entice them to purchase.
According to the Content Marketing Institute: “CM is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Within the context of digital marketing, CM refers to the creation of entertaining and/or informative content that does not explicitly advertise a company’s products or services. When we talk about CM, we can refer to anything from a simple video, blog or article to larger content such as webinars. With this type of content, educational value is also important to consider.
Given that it is free, this information service differs from traditional information institutions or settings. This is because it occurs online and online content consumers expect information to be free – this is the internet’s central allure for many. When you walk into a store and choose a product to buy, the only information often available to us is located on the product/packaging or, if we’re lucky, an employee who can provide us with further information. However, these specifics may only include information such as the price, technical specifications and so on. What content marketing allows companies to do, is to provide additional information like how to use the product, where to use it, etc.
One company that provides entertaining content marketing to its customers is Footaslyum. The UK high-street retailer specialises in sports trainers and apparel for men, women and children. However, their target audience is young people, especially men, between 18 and 25. Footasylum targeted this audience by creating content with social media influencers ‘Chunkz’ and ‘Young Filly’ who are hugely popular figures among their core demographic.
The content marketing strategy was simple; a 10-15 min YouTube show starring Chunkz and Young Filly called ‘Does The Shoe Fit?’. The premise of the show is that the duo would go on a series of speed dates with attractive women that would often lead to humorous outcomes. However, while on these dates, the other show presenters can watch live and commentate on their co-hosts dating performance. Guests also formed a major part of the show as Chunkz and Young Filly would often be joined by other high profile influencers including former Love Island contestants.
Footasylum’s content marketing strategy was a major success with some episodes of the show racking up over 7 million views on YouTube. The online show went on for five seasons and while it came to end in late 2021, funny snippets still appear across social media feeds especially on TikTok, giving the content even further marketing longevity.
The success of ‘Does The Shoe Fit?’ is a lesson to brands and companies that audiences are tired of the hard sell. Nowadays, marketing should and can be about more than just your product or service. If content marketing is not currently part of your marketing strategy, then you are almost certainly missing out.
Dylan Morley is an Account Executive at Fuzion Communications, full service marketing and PR agency, with offices in Cork and Dublin.
