What are the pros and cons of using different channels and formats for content marketing and advertising?

And the great thing about content marketing, especially when building your brand? It's an unlimited well from which you can control your own narrative and tell your own story. Free from ad budget restrictions, you can share as openly or in as targeted a way as you'd like -- and sometimes, the content itself becomes a stream of business, alongside the additional business opportunities which grow from it. Better yet, at scale -- content marketing can mature into a program which not only enriches your brand message, but can also serve to nurture the personal branding of your team. You've likely heard the line before: your employees are your best advocates. Content marketing creates an efficient vehicle to let that advocacy shine.

Great points made in @Adam Conner perspective. Done right, content marketing creates an opportunity to build a highly rewarding media channel, alongside your other offerings. Content marketing is powerful at creating demand, over time, for your product AND your people. Over the past seven years, I've used content marketing to build credibility, trust and demand for my own podcast, and my own personal brand in the process. I've employed this strategy with my employer and helped create significant demand for our range of products and people, mostly with video and podcast content. Our content marketing strategy has significantly increased our brand's awareness, engagement, and lead to more opportunities to convert happy customers.

Whilst advertising is a generic term used to promote a message, product or service it's also important to remember that different channels provide different results. Display advertising for example will gain lots of impressions and awareness of your brand or message it is unlikely to give a profitable return on investment. Whereas a direct advertising channel like Paid Search is mainly judged on the return of advertising spend because you are asking the customer to buy.

Advertising involves paying to display your message to a targeted audience on a third-party platform. Paid social is an effective advertising strategy that targets audiences on social media platforms based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. To succeed with paid social, set clear goals, choose the right platforms, create relevant and visually appealing ad content, and test different options to find the most effective combination for your campaign.

One way I have found it helpful to view content marketing is as a way to convey authority and remain top of mind with (potential) clients. In other words, no one piece of content will lead to a direct sale, but the content overall will create awareness so that when a situation arises where a potential client can benefit from my services, they will recognize that and immediately think of me as the best option to use.

Content marketing can serve as a wonderfully-effective, if double-edged, weapon in your brand arsenal. For example, consider a world in which you're a SaaS company, co-creating content with industry C-level executives. If done correctly, you can drive outsized authority and adjacency for your business, and build high-stakes relationships in an authentic way. But, winning that attention takes a great deal of upfront effort, and assumed production time on the backend. That can be a daunting mountain to look up, especially if you're new to it. Content marketing, thus, is often a long-tail, long-term effort -- and its power compounds over time, like interest in a bank account.

Ads, by definition of being 'pay to play', tend to earn results quickly but are more expensive in the long-term than building organic owned channels such as a website content moat or large audiences on rented channels such as social media followings. Inevitably marketers will face competition between short and long-term goals and need time in a role to achieve the long-term success - deploying ads can be a great way to buy time and clout with the executive leadership team while you lay the foundation for more impactful long-term initiatives.

It may be helpful when planning to consider the strength of trust and relationship needed to win engagement. For example, a niche widget likely presents less barrier to buy than a six-figure SaaS solution. For the former, it may be advantageous to invest into awareness advertising around resource-saving benefits to attract manager-level buyers. For the latter, you'll likely need to win the attention of CXOs -- and content marketing could be your literal golden ticket. Either way: consider a co-creative approach. Got a happy customer for your email tool? Great! Create ads around their story. Know a few CXOs with whom you can build a podcast or video series, to snowball relationships with their peers? If so, build content together with them.

Also worth giving thought to is the life expectancy of your content over the long term. When will you need to update or archive that content asset? It might be worth setting a plan in place, for you or your team, to do a periodic content audit to review what content is active, and define a plan for what to keep, update or delete.