Content marketing is the second most important skill for marketers and is worth investing in. The terms content marketing and copywriting are commonly used in the marketing scene. However, most people are not well aware of the difference between them. This can lead to a lot of confusion for you, especially if you are a novice in the world of marketing. Not getting your fundamentals right can hamper laying a strong foundation and stop you from getting a flying start in your career as a marketer. 

So, if you seek clarity on the difference between copywriting and content marketing, you are at the right place! In this blog, we will explore the differences between the two terms but first, let’s brush up on the basics, shall we?

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on the creation and distribution of valuable content that is capable of attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience to drive profitable customer action.

The purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant content with the intention of getting conversions. Its ultimate goal is to drive profits. 

The key to successful content marketing lies in its ability to offer value to customers or clients without appearing “salesy.” When done right, content marketing should feel like a natural extension of your brand and a helpful resource for your audience rather than a hard sell.

You can use content marketing to promote products or services and build brand awareness or drive traffic to a website.

Content marketing is often confused with advertising, but it is important to remember that content marketing is about creating informative or entertaining content, not about selling products or services. With a solid content marketing strategy, reaching and engaging customers effectively to achieve marketing goals is possible. It is essential to know about the content marketing funnel as well.

Why Is Content Marketing Important?

Content marketing helps improve your business’s online reputation. In a content marketing campaign, you provide a variety of content to the target audience. It includes blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media posts. This tactic not only entices the viewer but also helps build brand image. And as a result of all the guidance you give about making an educated buying decision, there is an increase in conversions.

It is an impressive SEO technique that also builds trust and increases conversions. By posting blogs consistently, search engines will recognize your website.

Overall, content marketing is important as it can help you build long-lasting relationships with customers, and content writing is a part of it. It is just that you have to follow the right content marketing process.

Here’s our content marketing guide.

What Is Copywriting?

Copywriting is the art of crafting persuasive, compelling, and interesting text that encourages readers to take a specific action. It can be used in a variety of ways, from ads and website content to email marketing and social media posts. A good copywriter understands how to craft a compelling message that caters to the audience’s needs and convinces them to take the desired action.

Copywriting is an excellent option to pitch to your ideal customer in the most effective way possible. The right copywriting techniques allow you to draft a compelling message that draws the audience’s attention and increases conversions. You have several copywriting formulas to help you with the same.

Take a look at our copywriting guide.

Copywriting vs Content Marketing: What Are the Major Differences?

You now know what copywriting and content marketing are. Without further ado, let’s get into the difference between them.

Copywriting vs Content Marketing: What Are the Major Differences-Copywriting vs Content Marketing

1. Style of writing

Content marketing most often uses a more informal tone along with being creative and fluid. You can call the content pieces more conversational as they aim to educate and inform the target audience about a topic. 

Copywriting, on the other hand, is straightforward as it aims to convey essential information to the target audience and encourages them to perform the desired action, which is usually to make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter.

2. Goal

The goal of copywriting is to persuade readers to take immediate action. The focus of copywriters is basically on promotion and advertising. They have to create copies that convert. On the other hand, content marketing aims to build long-term relationships with potential customers and not sell their product or service immediately. So, you can comfortably say that content marketing is for the longer term and copywriting is for instant action. 

3. Format

In the case of copywriting, the focus is on the written word alone as you use copies to persuade potential customers to convert. You may use different styles based on type of copy, for example, the style is different for copywriting for social media when compared to ad copywriting. However, with content marketing, there are different types of content formats, such as videos, infographics, images, podcasts and many other formats where the focus is not much on writing.

4. Tools 

As you have seen, there are a lot of differences between content marketing and copywriting. It is therefore essential to use different tools for each of them. Most content marketers use editorial calendars and tools that help them create a complete strategy. There is more use of tools to help them create content and expand their content pipeline in the most cost-effective way. On the contrary, copywriters need to churn out short pieces of text for advertising and promoting a business’s product or service. They may need tools that help them get better ideas to create compelling copies that are highly converting. 

5. Determination of success

You must monitor certain metrics to measure the success of copywriting and content marketing efforts. While getting your hands on data is easy, you have to understand which metric to monitor. The main metrics to focus on for content marketing are the number of clicks, traffic, and impressions. There are plenty of tools that will help you with providing the same so that you know the ROI. On the other hand, the copywriting metrics are different and may include the number of demos booked, sales made, phone calls made, and forms filled. 

How Is Copywriting Used In Content Marketing?

Good copywriting is the art of persuasion, and it is a key element of content marketing. With content marketing, you create and share relevant content with your audience to help you achieve your business goals. Whether you’re writing blog posts, creating infographics, or developing video content, you must promote your content if you want the target audience to see it. And to do that, you require copywriting skills.

Copywriting is used in content marketing to write headlines, add calls to action, and make content more persuasive. A good headline will make people want to read your article, and a strong call to action will encourage them to take the next step that can be subscribing to your newsletter, downloading a resource or making a purchase. 

Therefore, you can easily say that without copywriting, content marketing would be much less effective.

Copywriting vs Content Marketing – Problems

After understanding the difference between content marketing and copywriting, let’s first look at the problems of each. 

Problems with content marketing 

Problems with content marketing-Copywriting vs Content Marketing

Several problems can occur with content marketing and they include the following:

Inability to create engaging and relevant content

One of the biggest challenges content marketers face is creating interesting content that is relevant to their target audience. There can be an inability to build a content strategy that engages the target audience.

Difficulty in outshining the crowd

Also, with so much online content, it can be difficult to differentiate yourself from the crowd. The only way out is to find gaps in the existing content and fill them if you want to compete with top rankers.

Inability to pick the right channel

There’s always confusion when choosing channels. It might take trial and error to determine which channels are most effective for your business. 

Overall, addressing the problems involves ensuring that there is a clear strategy in place, that content is varied and interesting, and that the target audience is regularly engaged with the content. Additionally, as a content marketer, you must invest a lot of time and effort in constantly creating new content, promoting it across multiple channels, and monitoring its performance.  

Problems with copywriting

Problems with copywriting-Copywriting vs Content Marketing

There are a few potential problems that can arise when copywriting. 

Not understanding the needs of the audience 

One issue is that the copywriter may not clearly understand the target audience’s needs and objectives. This can lead to the copywriter creating copies that are not on point and that does not help you achieve the desired results. 

Missing brand voice 

Another problem is that the copywriter may not be able to capture the voice of the brand. And you know how important brand voice is! This can result in copy that sounds artificial or forced without reflecting the brand’s true identity.

Being too salesy

Overdoing the sales language may make the copy look too pushy, and potential customers will certainly turn away if that is the case. You see, an overdose of everything is bad. 

To avoid such problems, you must create your buyer persona to cater to their needs and ensure that every copy leaving the desk has the company’s brand voice in it.

Copywriting vs Content Marketing – Explained

People often mistake content marketing with copywriting. However, as you have seen, content marketing is about creating informative or entertaining content, not about selling products or services. On the contrary, copywriting focuses on pitching to your ideal customer in the most effective way possible.

While content marketing aims to build long-term relationships with potential customers, copywriting is the art of persuasion and is a key element of content marketing. Both have a close association and can work together. As we have seen, there are certain challenges with each of them, which you can fix if you know what to focus on. Both copywriting and content marketing are important parts of digital marketing and can help achieve business goals. 

We hope you have the concepts clear now and know the difference between content marketing, content creation vs copywriting. If yes, it is time to forge ahead!

FAQs

1. Are Copywriting and Content Writing the Same?

No, they are different from each other. The goal of copywriting is to persuade readers to take immediate action, whereas content marketing aims to build long-term relationships with potential customers & not just sell. 

2. Is Copywriting a Part of Content Marketing?

Copywriting is used in content marketing to write headlines, add calls to action, and make content more persuasive. So, in a way, content marketing would be much less effective without copywriting. 

3. What’s the relationship between copywriting and content marketing?

When you’re writing blog posts, creating infographics, or videos as per your content marketing strategy, you must promote them if you want the target audience to see them. And for that, you need copywriting skills.