Difference Between Native Advertising and Content Marketing

With the growing online social media engagement in society, it's very rare when one gets to see somebody engaging with full interest in a traditional market campaign/advertisement. The credibility of online content has increased vastly in the last two years as compared to what it was for the traditional marketing aspects earlier. This is because the end-users available online on social media platforms consume the content being displayed to them as not the sponsored one, and thus it increases their trust in the brand provider comparatively. However, both strategies are equally important when it comes to promoting any business's products or services. To understand better, let us look at each term in detail one by one.

What Is Content Marketing?

When we say that we are promoting our business using only content marketing strategies, then we are implying that we promote and advertise our products and services using self-generated content across different social media platforms. In this method, as a business owner, you are not paying a third party any amount for advertising your services or brand. Rather you are your boss and create digital content for promotional purposes.

Benefits Of Content Marketing

Opting for content marketing protocol for increasing your brand name reach out to the maximum can :

1. Allows you to deliver the ideology behind your services/products to the target audience in a much clearer way as it is you, the business owner, who has well-researched and created the content for your end customer to consume.
2. Builds a relationship of loyalty between you and your customers.
3. Provides you with the opportunities to build a community of like-minded people.
4. Allows your target audience to witness the challenges you face and fight to deliver the best possible products/services from your end.

Types Of Content Marketing

There are different kinds possible in which you can create and deliver your brand-related content to your end customer network. These are:

1. Social Media Content Marketing

A larger and more significant part of everyday routine, people spend their bandwidth over social media platforms. Whether it be on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Snapchat, posting your content for brand promotions can get you a highly positive response that could generate positive potential customer conversion leads.

Different algorithms developed and used by these social media platforms to promote your content can sometimes become a huge turning point in the success path of your business as it makes your content reach the right set of people in the right amount of time, sometimes overnight as well!

2. Infographic Content Marketing

Infographics are nothing but a combination of various graphic images and short sentences or one-word self-descriptive words. These are usually communicated to give the target audience a complete understanding or demonstration of the products and services being offered by your business.

3. Blog Content Marketing

Content Marketing through blogs allows you to share internal and external links and promote complementary product ranges simultaneously. It also allows you to give the reader the privilege to share your blogs with their extended friends or family network. This is known to be the most successful inbound content marketing strategy.

4. Podcast Content Marketing

This type of content marketing technique is useful for businesses that are in the educational domain or domains where you are providing your services via directly interacting with your target audience. Podcast content marketing allows you to share your knowledge with a vast network of like-minded people through a series of various short episodes.

5. Video Content Marketing

Video content marketing is the most intimate technique of having a direct virtual connection built with your end customer chain. You can do this by posting video content over your social media business accounts. You can also have your own YouTube channel created where you can post informative content about your business and get to know potential customers' opinions with the help of comment box section availability.

What Is Native Advertising?

Native advertising is nothing but an extension of the above-discussed strategy, i.e., content marketing. It allows you to place your content over different paid and unobstructed platforms as sponsored ads. This helps businesses to reach a wider audience group that can help them generate positive conversion leads. One common example of such platforms that work on the model of native advertising is media agencies. They play an important role in delivering the right amount of ads and content between the publishers and the consumers.

Different Channels Where Native Ads Are Supported

1. Google Search Engine

Many of you might have noticed this whenever you go for any kind of search on Google. It brings back a lot of ad links related to your searched keywords. This is one way of placing and publishing your content over the Google ads "native" window.

Social Media Platforms

Some popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram use carousel format posts to display ads for your business.

Which is Better?

After understanding the technical meaning of both terms, one can drill down the definitions for the two owned media (content marketing) and the paid media (native advertising).

In the battle of Native advertising vs Content marketing, it would be not wise to pinpoint a winner as both of the said techniques are essential for a business to grow. If content marketing allows you to convey your content published to the target audience, giving a sense of responsibility and customer loyalty, then, on the other hand, native advertising enables you to deliver your content across a wide range of already established communities which can help you to take your business to great heights in terms of generating positive purchase leads.

However, you might come across some business models where the professionals make use of only native advertising techniques and are still able to achieve the desired credibility. This is possible only when one makes use of the right advertising channels based on their business requirements and suitability.

Also Read: Content Marketing Tools