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Content marketing has become a definable marketing strategy in the corporate world, and something that most arts organizations should do regularly. If you’re unaware of the benefits of content marketing and/or are not doing it now, this post may jump-start your efforts.

Here’s how Wikipedia defines content marketing (the words in bold below are my takeaways):

Content marketing means attracting and transforming prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content. The content should be relevant to the business area and category so that the audience will remember and make a selection. The purpose of content marketing is to help the company to create sustainable brand loyalty and provide valuable information to impressed consumers, as well as let them be willing to purchase their products in the future. This relatively new form of marketing usually does not involve direct sales. Instead, it encourages the audience to make a purchase from the company when they are ready.

Many corporations are still pretty challenged to do content marketing as you’ll see from this infographic from Hubspot.

My sense is that content marketing in the corporate world is hard. After all, how can you reliably and sustainably produce content for months and years talking about socks, peanut butter, or faucets?

We in the arts, however, have it so easy! We have actors, directors, dramaturgs, playwrights, and new shows/exhibits all the time. We have an endless stream of so-called content to engage with our audiences about. I see a lot of newsletters from arts organizations that do a fantastic job of embracing this — offering backstage interviews, preview shots of sets being built, and even live webinars.

The arts should own content marketing — we have so much opportunity to do so, and it’s so valuable. Next time you think you don’t have enough time to create a piece of content, consider how fortunate we are to have so much to talk to our audience about. Not doing content marketing seems unfathomable.

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