As more brands are putting their resources into native advertising, which consists of long-form articles related to their product or industry, it’s becoming harder to differentiate it from content marketing. Nevertheless, there are distinct definitions between content marketing and native advertising, and you can explore them right here.
Rock Content Writer
Content writer.
Apr 20 | 8 min read
April 2023 Google Reviews Update
Need content for your business? Find top writers on WriterAccess.
Try for free
When it comes to modern marketing principles, content marketing is one of the more reliable methods.
The basic gist is that a brand or company creates highly valuable content to appeal to a specific demographic.
The primary goal of this content is to drive traffic to landing pages and, ideally, convert leads into customers.
Recently, native advertising has slowly crept its way into sites and mainstream media.
Although native advertising wears the veneer of content marketing, it’s uniquely different.
Goals and Objectives
With native advertising, the primary goal is to promote and sell a specific brand or product. While this can be true of content marketing, the focus is often far more educational than Ws Number List selling with the latter.
For example, a content marketing piece may discuss broad SEO trends in the market and what brands can do to stay ahead. With a native advertising piece, the goal is to promote a specific SEO tool or service as the best option to take advantage of those trends.
Additionally, content marketing may go a bit broader and aim to establish a brand or website as an authority within an industry.
So, the purpose of the piece isn’t to promote any single product or service but to provide valuable insight to the customer. With native advertising, the end goal is a sale, although it doesn’t explicitly make a sales pitch.
Native Advertising – Provide context and insight to sell a product or service
Content Marketing – Provide value to the reader and establish authority within an industry (but may try to promote products or services, too)
Reach and Targeting
Here, the lines between the two content types can blur the most.
One of the advantages of native advertising is that it can blend in seamlessly with a brand’s usual content output. The goal is to make the advertising seem like a regular piece of content, just one that is promoting one specific item.
This way, content marketing, and native advertising may use the same reach and targeting methods. Since brands pay a website to host the advertising, they may try to reach the site’s built-in audience.
That said, native advertising still aims to promote a product or service for someone to purchase immediately (or sometime soon). So, rather than targeting people who are still in the research phase, a native advertisement is trying to appeal to those who are ready to purchase.
Native Advertising – Reach customers who are willing to buy ASAP.
Content Marketing – Reach leads and customers who want to know more or are potentially ready to buy.
Formats and Channels
As a rule, native advertising tends to run on the same channels as content marketing. Again, the objective is to create a seamless experience for the user so they don’t feel like it disrupts their regular interactions with a company or website.The format of both types of content can also be similar, Bulk Lead but native advertising focuses on a core product or service. In contrast, content marketing simply tries to provide valuable information to the reader.
