In today’s competitive market, brands are increasingly leveraging content marketing and native advertising to grab consumer attention, with 70% of people preferring to learn about products through content rather than traditional ads. This raises an important question: which strategy effectively maximizes brand awareness and ROI?
To explore this, Fractl teamed up with Moz to survey over 30 agencies in the field. Here’s what we discovered:
Content Marketing: Agencies create captivating campaigns and pitch them to multiple top-tier publishers, which boosts backlinks, enhances organic search rankings, and drives traffic. A whopping 65% of agencies produce between 1 and 10 campaigns monthly, aiming for maximum media pickups. On average, campaigns earn about 27 media pickups, with top performers averaging 422 links!
Native Advertising: This approach relies on guaranteed placements by paying single publishers to present content, like partnerships seen with BuzzFeed. However, costs can be steep—up to $200,000 for prime publishers—averaging around $54,000 per campaign.
Analysis showed that Fractl’s content marketing campaigns significantly outperformed BuzzFeed’s native advertising in both engagement and reach. For instance, Fractl’s campaigns averaged 146 media pickups and over 17,900 social shares, while BuzzFeed managed only one pickup per campaign.
While native advertising can align brands with high-authority publishers, it often lacks the broader scale and SEO benefits compared to content marketing.
>> Takeaway
In summary, if your goal is to optimize reach and engagement on a budget, content marketing is likely your best bet. But if you aim to partner directly with established publishers, native advertising might be the way to go. Ultimately, assess your goals and resources to choose the best path for enhancing your brand visibility!
Source :: Harvard Business Review
“Comparing the ROI of Content Marketing and Native Advertising“
