A recent study into the power of content marketing discovered that content marketing is far more effective in improving SEO value and boosting rankings when compared with native advertising.
The study, largely based on HubSpot’s ‘State of Inbound 2014-2015’ report, found that companies with the highest returns on investment were heavily focused on content marketing, which includes blogging, content amplification and organic search. As companies continue to focus on these three areas, so too do they continue to experience an increase in revenues as a result.
On the other hand, native advertising, which involves working with a publisher to create and distribute content, is not as effective when it comes to driving SEO value or increasing organic rankings. In addition, native advertising has a much more limited reach as it is restricted to the number of paid publisher partnerships, which are not allowed to pass value, as they are sponsored links.
The findings also suggest that articles and infographics represent more than 50% of the content produced by content marketing agencies. Leading content marketing firm, Fractl, teamed up with Moz to perform research into the effectiveness of content marketing versus native advertising. The research discovered that top-tier publishers primarily prefer articles, infographics and case studies, followed by additional data visualisations and mixed-media content.
Articles Most Requested form of Content
The findings also found that content marketing agencies are mostly producing articles, with 35% of requests being article-based, 24% being infographic based and 11% being requests for case studies. The least requested product was motion graphics, followed by apps and flip books (1% respectively). On average, 65% of content marketing agencies produce between one and 10 content campaigns per client on a monthly basis.
On a per-campaign basis, content marketing gains an average of 27 links, whereas native advertising only secures one. Each agency’s most successful campaign also generated an average of 422 links.
Higher Returns on Investment Reported
Further to the above, the return on investment for content marketing work was also found to be the highest. In order to secure this level of publicity, many companies are paying for a monthly retainer fee, which is something that 70% of content marketing agencies offer. These retainer fees cost anywhere between $1,000 and $100,000, depending on the type of campaign in question as well as the size. The greater the cost of the campaign, the more press mentions and social engagement it will receive.
Research-driven, interactive campaigns costing between $10,000 and $50,000 were found to generate the highest number of links (600+), whereas those campaigns costing $500 or less generated a much smaller number of links (less than 100).
Additional findings found that the average cost of launching a native advertising campaign with a high-tier news publisher was $54,014.29, while the average cost to launch a native advertising campaign with a major publisher such as National Geographic is around $200,000. The findings suggest that the cost of native advertising is primarily associated with the authority of a publisher, and therefore with their reach.
In Summary
To conclude, it is evident that content marketing is incredibly powerful in improving SEO value and boosting rankings when compared with native advertising. As such, any company should consider investing in a content marketing campaign that will increase organic rankings, drive brand awareness and boost conversions.
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