Content Marketing Vs Copywriting: What’s the Difference?

With the rise of digital marketing, the line of difference between content marketing and copywriting has become blurred. Even a lot of businesses use both content marketing and copywriting interchangeably.

However, there are differences between the two. This blog will list out the differences and then show how you can combine the two for a better marketing effort.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating, publishing, and distributing content with the goal to build a relationship with customers. It focuses on engaging customers through content so that over time, they take desired actions, such as buying the company’s products and advocating for the brand.

Content can take any of the following forms:

• Blog
• Video
• Photo
• Infographic
• Webinar
• Podcast

Content marketers will work with one or more of the above-mentioned forms of content. They will use these forms to attract prospective customers who are interested in a product or service the company offers. The customers will then gradually buy those products or services while interacting with the content.

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting is the process of writing persuasive messages in order to make the intended audience take the desired action. The desired action is usually buying the product or service the copyright is promoting. Sometimes, it might mean responding to the call-to-action.

Copywriting takes the following forms:

• Landing pages
• Direct mail campaigns
• Email campaigns
• Advertising
• Sales pages
• Infomercials

Copywriters use persuasive writing with the above-mentioned forms. The goal is to hook the intended audience to take the immediate decision to buy the product or service.

What are the core differences between them?

The aforementioned definitions must have informed you about the difference between content marketing and copywriting. Often confused as one, however, these two differ in their goals and style.

The goal of content marketing is to build customer relationships. This is a long-term and slow process. On the other hand, the goal of copywriting is to make sales. The goals of copywriting are thus short term and immediate.

Although content marketing involves the use of persuasive techniques, it is developed in a way to tell a story to the audience. The writing can be creative and often in an informal conversational tone.

Meanwhile, copywriting is developed in a way to motivate the audience. Instead of telling a story, the copywriter mentions the facts. The writing is thus more objective and in a salesman-like pitch.

Problems with content marketing and copywriting

Despite their differences, content marketing and copywriting share some common problems that harm their effectiveness. Be careful to avoid these problems as it might lead to customers not visiting your content and/or copy.

• No strong headlines: The headlines in both the content and the copy are not attention-grabbing. Using click-bait can be harmful as sites like Facebook penalize such tactics.
• No call-to-action: Both the aim of content marketing and copywriting is for their audience to take action. If you do not make a call-to-action, you are going to create confusion among your customers.
• Low-quality writing: The content and the copy are of poor quality- monotonous phrasing, inconsistency in writing, and sentences that are too lengthy.
• Keyword stuffing: You must incorporate keywords in order for your content and/or copy to appear in search engine results. However, overuse of keywords can be detected by search algorithms as unnatural and will be penalized.
• Not audience-centric: The content does not help the audience in any way and the copy does not promote any benefit to the customer. If such is the case, why waste time reading your content/copy?

Why should you use both of them together?

One famous blogger has quoted, “Copywriting without content is a waste of good copy,” and “content without copywriting is a waste of good content.”

Both copywriting and content marketing ultimately have the same aim, which is to attract the audience and convert them into customers. What differs between the two are their methods of attracting and their duration.

Since content marketing is a long process, it might be helpful to utilize some copywriting techniques in order to attract the audience at the top of the sales funnel. Some copywriting techniques you can use are:

• Use strong headlines to attract the audience to your content
• Research keywords so that your content appears on top of search engine results
• Optimize for search engines by making sure the content is readable, comprehensive, and indicate high quality.
• A strong call to action

In the end, you should use both content marketing and copywriting to attract your target audience and then turn them into customers. It’s a win-win!

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