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In today’s computer-mediated world, consumers are continually exposed to digital messaging. For this reason, value-rich content is more likely to make a lasting impression by breaking through the noise clutter. This practice of “content marketing” has been in existence since the earliest days of advertising. For example, the tire company, Michelin, has been creating and distributing travel planning guides annually since 1900 (with the exception of during WWI). This practice promoted the Michelin brand to tire consumers via its provision of alternative yet useful information (Miller, 2016). The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) defines content marketing as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customers action” (Content Marketing Institute, 2018a). Drawing on empirical evidence, Holliman and Rowley (2014) defined digital content marketing as “the activity associated with creating, communicating, distributing, and exchanging digital content that has value for customers, clients, partners, and the firm and its brands” (p. 287).
While content marketing may share the same defining goal as advertising, it differs in its approach (Neff, 2015). Advertising adopts persuasive tactics to sell products, whereas content marketing intends to educate (impart knowledge on specific topics), to expose (opinion sharing) and to entertain (provide enjoyment) (Harad, 2013). Branded content marketing is considered an offshoot of traditional advertising, despite it not exhibiting the same explicit selling intentions (Content Marketing Institute, 2018a). Different from advertising’s clear persuasive intents, content marketing aims to produce relevant, valuable content that meets customer needs (Holliman and Rowley, 2014; Schultz, 2016).
By continually offering valuable content, brands can generate electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), build trust and credibility and achieve significant reach and impact (du Plessis, 2017; Muntinga et al., 2011), as well as mold engaged and loyal customers (Walters, 2015). Specifically, content marketing can be seen as an open conversation between a brand and its customers (Pulizzi, 2012). As such, this new phenomenon warrants new research on its mechanisms and effectiveness.
Prior literature on digital content marketing primarily offered theoretical assumptions, or descriptive analyses, concerning the correlations between the key factors of content marketing, including content strategies, brand health, consumer learning and brand building (Ahmad et al., 2016; du Plessis, 2015, 2017;...