An Exploratory Analysis of Essential Elements of Content Marketing
Du Plessis, Charmaine
The term “content marketing” has been used for many years and is still evolving. The idea of creating valuable, relevant and compelling brand content to share in online media, especially social media, as part of the marketing mix, is generally considered to be a pull strategy in branding and other related disciplines to attract consumer attention. In response to the rising interest in content marketing and lack of a theoretical foundation, an analysis of definitions and related explanations was done to delineate its elements by studying similarities and differences. The purpose of the study was to understand how content marketing is defined and explained in existing literature. Definitions are important and can serve as impetus for changing practices and for moving forward. In addition, a better academic understanding of this concept can also influence how it is practised. The study is guided by literature on content marketing that also included umbrella terms, which reflect conflict about the nature of the field. In order to capture a snapshot idea of definitions and explanations of content marketing which are varied, this study has set the intention to explore rather than to conclude. The attempt was thus made to document the area currently covered by content marketers to provide a better understanding of the concept. The research method applied for this study consisted of different steps. First, the researcher gathered definitions and explanations of content marketing and its various umbrella terms through a rigorous literature review. Second, elements were identified after a thematic inductive analysis using qualitative computer software. Based on this analysis an overview was obtained of how these definitions and explanations relate to the elements which was also triangulated with practitioners’ viewpoints. Six essential elements that encapsulate the field of content marketing became evident to support the proposal of an academic definition. The proposal of a more academic definition can help facilitate a better universal answer to what content marketing constitutes and how it should or could be applied by practitioners in various social media.
The term “content marketing” has not only raised the interest of marketing practitioners in recent years, but also of marketing scholars. Numerous definitions and explanations of content marketing abound but mostly from a practitioner’s point of view while there is still a general lack of a more scholarly definition. In addition to its many definitions and related perspectives, content marketing is also referred to under a number of umbrella terms, which impede a more universal understanding of what it entails as well as how it should be practised. However, not all sharing of content constitutes content marketing (Carragee 2014), which renders many of the existing definitions as potentially theoretically unsound adding to the current confusion.
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