Content Marketing vs. Ads: Lessons From a Financial Crossroads

Hitting Rock Bottom: A Catalyst for Change in Marketing Strategy

Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes, and I’m tapped out.

My finances, that is.

It’s been around three months since I’ve seen my last paycheck, and this is on the heels of a year spent in the red.

So I’m done.

The next stop for me is bankruptcy.

But alas, enough of the drama. What does this mean in my shift towards marketing?

Why Facebook Ads Aren’t Always the Answer

I’ve made a few runs at Facebook advertising.

Each time, I’ve definitely learned something.

If not the actual strategy of getting a campaign running and testing the various elements, then something pointing toward experimenting with the creative.

But it’s hard to be experimental when funds are diminished.

Further, it’s hard to justify sustaining a testing bill starting at $100 a day just to gather insight into what is appealing and what should be cut.

I’ve been racking my brain on what to do to get some funds so that I can add some fuel to the fire of Facebook advertising, but I just can’t see myself spending money on ads and then trying to scale that right now.

What Is Content Marketing? A Game-Changing Alternative

So what is the alternative to this? Content marketing.

What is content marketing?

It is the distribution of useful and valuable content to actual or potential customers, which builds both trust and awareness over time to gain or retain a customer.

The easiest way to think about it is the infomercial on TV, which is pitching a product the entire time, and to contrast that with the programming block sponsored by a company.

The infomercial’s entire content is based around pitching something, whereas the sponsorship is framing the content the customer is already seeking.

One is a direct appeal in the here and now, and the other is trying to build trust so that if and when the customer decides to purchase, they will choose that brand over another.

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Learning From Failure: My Journey With Digital Content Marketing

That is the traditional way to view advertising: if you keep hitting the customer with a Coke-is-better-than-Pepsi advertisement over and over again, eventually they will choose Coke over Pepsi in the soda aisle during grocery shopping.

Without that type of big budget or if you’re focused on more of a niche than soda, creating valuable actionable content on social media or a white paper or emails is a way to build trust over time.

For instance, this blog is content marketing. I am still unsure of what this is exactly, but I know that building an audience is a valuable thing that will pay off over time.

The only other time I have tried to do content marketing was when I bought that viral Digital Wealth Academy, which took the digital marketing world by storm in 2022 or 2023.

It was the first time I had heard about master resell rights, which essentially means that you can buy the rights to the product and then sell the product as your own.

It’s a brilliant idea to build a course on how to market a course and then sell it as a total done-for-you solution in a box.

Among other things, that course focuses on building a brand-new account on Instagram and using that to scale and sell the course.

So I tried it and started an account around digital marketing and followed all these other accounts based on digital marketing and started posting content based on digital marketing.

That sounds pretty insular, doesn’t it?

In almost two days of posting reels, I had like 80 followers and tons of DMs asking me how everything was going and if we could be friends.

Not once did someone view my sales funnel or opt in to my free lead gen.

It hit me that this was what it was going to be from here on out, so I shut down the account.

I’m not saying that people don’t make money doing that, but it’s a weird thing to be building a new account selling something that your only followers are also selling.

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Trust the Process: Patience in Building Content Marketing Success

But the idea resurfaced when I hit this financial snag.

Why not just take this latest course idea and put it to the test with content marketing through Instagram?

So I built an account and started posting reels—and nothing.

After two days, I was able to grab one follower. I immediately thought I had failed.

Obviously, my idea wasn’t good enough, or my offer is terrible, or my content isn’t engaging enough, or my branding is off.

Or it could be none of that.

What if my only other experience with digital content marketing on social media has been tainted by the milieu with which I was involved in?

If I’m marketing a digital marketing course to other digital marketers sitting on their social media all day trying to drum up engagement, aren’t they themselves, as the audience, incentivized to try to engage with follows and likes and messages?

I feel like I am verging into meta territory here: meta-marketing.

What if my target audience isn’t sitting around all day on social media trying to build engagement?

What if they are out living their life, and when they have the time, they zone out on reels?

What if nothing in my marketing strategy is off or faulty or broken, and I am merely comparing apples and oranges with regards to my target audience?

That thought struck me today as I was comparing my day-two results.

What if enough time hasn’t passed for the algorithm to take effect?

What if nothing is wrong and I am so used to immediate results and feedback that I simply haven’t yet paid the price to see the tipping point?

I’ll check back in with you and keep you posted, but for now, stay the course.

Just trust the process.

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