Vol. 3, No.

2, 2020

A Conceptual Review of Digital Content Marketing Strategy as an Effective Practice

Rahma Alzaanin
M.A. in Language Sciences at Faculty of Letters and Languages University of Tlemcen, Algeria.
[email protected]

ABSTRACT

We live in an era where everything is digitized. Nowadays, marketplace is showing an increasing number of online
users and online applications due to technological inventions and rapid networks. Therefore, these advances is the
driving force for the adoption of innovative business strategies. Free access and wide spread of digital platforms, social
media and blogs encourage individuals to start small businesses. Accordingly, owners look for effective methods to
reach out consumers and to market out their products or services which rise the possibility of business success and
gradually lead to business growth. Digital marketing is the broad concept that includes various approaches, strategies
and techniques. So that, this paper aims at discussing digital content marketing strategy as one of commonly used
approach among small business by conducting a conceptual review that shad the lights on some theoretical researches
and empirical studies of digital content.

Keywords: digital content, business strategy, small business, business growth.

Copyright © 2020, International Journal of Economics, Business and Entrepreneurship | IJEBE | FEB-UNILA

INTRODUCTION
Investigations over decades lead to emphasize on one main idea about marketing which
is catching the attention of target clients. Its principle rounds about how to convince customers
to buy the product or the service by delivering them the maximum values. Marketing is constantly
evolving and developing since it has a close link with technology, internet, digital channels, and
applications. Digital marketing is the new way in approaching customers which is entirely
different from the traditional methods and techniques. Due to the fast development of
information and technologies, digital marketing becomes a dominant approach in current world.
It is a broad concept that seeks to reach customers by using internet, social media platforms,
mobile applications, email, video games and search engines. The goal is to create a
communication channel with consumers. These new practices assist in understanding clients'
behaviors, preferences and they tell a lot about their impression. This is also helps marketers to
direct their advertisements to the audience via various digital systems that match their inquiries.
According to Kee and Yazdanifard (2015) online users are more interested and involve in online
content as it turns to be a part of their daily life. Moreover, they state that based on a survey about
48% of user's age from 18 to 34 who have a Facebook account confirmed this habit. Online users
constitute a chance for a marketers where they have connections with huge number of buyers
comparing with traditional methods of marketing like magazines, television, radio and
newspaper. Additionally, digital systems provide credible options for companies especially for
small business owners.
These systems enable them to speak directly to their customers and respond to them
quickly. As a small business, it is easy to handle comments from customers which enhance their
trust and appreciation. Therefore, marketing managers and firm's directors utilize much of the
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flexibility in the mechanism of digital platforms by adopting content strategy. Pulizzi and Barrett
(2009) refers to content marketing as a technique of creating and distributing relevant and
valuable content to attract, keep, and engage a clearly defined target audience in order to achieve
profitable customer action. The strategy of content marketing looks for providing customers with
useful information and high quality content in precise time that help them in purchase decisions.
This strategy also aims at educating and informing target market about the firm's products.
Furthermore, it is considered one of the effective approaches in growing small enterprises,
retaining existing consumers and increasing new ones.

METHODS
This article aims at conducting a conceptual review to explain some aspects of digital
content marketing strategy. Along with, it tries to illustrate the link between the former strategy
and small business growth by reviewing theoretical studies and discussing some of empirical
findings in the context of content marketing investigations.
Five Reasons Why Small Business Owners Should Shift to Use Digital Content Marketing
Small business like any other enterprises seeks to gain profits and establish good
reputation among customers. Certainly, there are different criteria to identify a small business.
Size, number of employees, annual revenues and sales can provide a clear definition. Robbins and
Coulter (2018:344) refer to “a small business as an organization that is independently owned,
operated, and financed; has fewer than 100 employees”. People tend to create their own business
in first place to get rid of unemployment. Alongside, they turn their idea into a real business in
order to satisfy the demands and needs of customers. Since small businesses struggle to survive
in the market. They can utilize from free digital platforms to reach shoppers and to grow their
business. Here are five reasons that motivate firms to adopt digital content marketing to enhance
their performance.
First, content is a powerful tool in driving and engaging audience with a company business
and activities. The more the content is formative, clear and valuable, the more it attracts
customers. A good content creates a good reputation of the firm and increases client's awareness
which then lead to build trust in its products and services and eventually they become loyal
clients. For any small business owner, digital content is an opportunity to invest in the market
and to start enterprise since, online users spend most of their time using and exploring websites,
social media platforms and blogs. According to Rowley (2008) information is integral to
marketing since most of products and services contain information that affect customer's
behavior. She points out (2008:523) that digital content can be used both as an attractor in
marketing communication, and as a product at the heart of the marketing exchange.
Second, digital content is a strategy that provides small business owners with different
choices to reach customers via multi digital channels. They can create videos and posts in
addition, they can upload photos and add info graphics. Accordingly, owners stimulate clients and
engage them with day to day advertisements of their products and services which makes
customers know more about their business and they keep visiting their digital chancel or website.
Therefore, good communication channel can be established through where owners get more
aware about customers preference, interests and desires. Precisely, mastering content strategies
and techniques is a key success of marketing a business.
Third: As an owner of small business you may not have enough budget to pay for
expensive traditional advertising. So that, content strategy is the solution. A quality content helps
to grow business gradually and sustainably. The owner have to be intelligent enough to decide on
the types of the content and the included information by focusing on attracting the target
audience.
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 Fourth, owners can receive feedback about their products and services directly from
customers. For example, if they are using social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram they
can notice customer's comments on posts relating to their products. Moreover, they can elicit if
their marketing strategy work or not. These feedbacks can assist to improve products or services
in a way that fulfills clients inquires which increases sales.
Fifth, investing on digital content gives a small business a chance to compete with other
businesses and companies in the market. As mentioned previously, cohesive, formative and
quality content attract and drive more customers as well as, it generates sales and leads to create
brand awareness. Such a strategy is the best approach to reach target audience in perfect times
which also enhance the company performance (Lieb, 2011).

DISCUSSION
In recent years, digital content as a new marketing strategy draws the attention of
researchers and marketers especially with technological inventions and online applications
which evokes needs to investigate the nature of digital content in relation to business growth.
The first part of this section will consider some theories of literature review in digital content
while the second part will address some of empirical findings. Rowley (2008) explains the nature
of digital content with reference to its inherent characteristics and the consequences for the
marketing of digital Content combined with fixing the notions of “value" in relation to digital
content. The researcher concludes that digital content has a number of characteristics that derive
from its essential nature as information.
Pulizzi and Barrett (2009) suggest that smart companies of every size utilize technology
in order to reach all important information and details of customers including their email address.
Online applications provide customers with valuable content that enable them to make smart
buying decisions. Moreover, the writers state that smaller companies used to rely on media
companies to deliver their message to their targeted buyers. But, now the matter is changed with
technologies and online applications 10-person company may be able to market out a10, 000-
person company. It has been mentioned that there are three core criteria underlying the shift in
the technological balance of power away from media giants and toward companies of all sizes.
Frist, the ability to create sophisticated online publications such as Web sites, digital magazines,
and e-newsletters. Second, the ability to manage huge amounts of data relating to current and
future customers. Third, the ability to do both of these simply and inexpensively.
Halttunen et. al (2010) conduct a literature study to illustrate the general view of digital
content markets (DCMs) based on three perspectives: technology, business and consumer
behavior. They discuss online businesses based on digital content, such as music and videos. The
researchers adopt a research model depends on the three former perspectives and by considering
technology as its main factor. Thus, Utilization of technologies has been viewed as a process
where both people and firms use it in a beneficial way. According, technologies affect business
models and consumer behavior. From a communicational perspective, it has been observed that
the emergence of efficient and inexpensive broadband access to the internet is a turn point for
the presentation of digital content. As a result, the content is provided without the need to
download it. Additionally, a new way is introduced to search and share digital content which is
networks. These improvements make digital content accessible for a wide audience. Moving to
the business view, the current research analyzes a business model by referring to the value
networks, the barriers to entry and new digital distribution channels. A business model is a
representation of a strategic choices for creating company’s underlying core logic and capturing
value within a value network. Along with, a consumer perspective which brings a clear
understanding of how consumers behavior and reaction have changed. Customers are more

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interested in online marketing rather than traditional one. The investigators point out that online
businesses will have links with information and communication technologies. Computer and
mobile networks as well as television will have a common base. This is a crucial factor when
developing sustainable solutions for DCMs.
Elisa and Gordini (2014) in their study discuss a literature review of content marketing.
They analyze different views. Accordingly, the researchers reach to identify three pillars that
characterize CM: the first is contents; the second is customer's engagement and the third is goals.
They also summarize CM metrics. They point out to four categories: consumption, sharing, lead
generation and sales metrics. These categories are integrated and they help firms to achieve their
goals such as measuring the contribution of the three pillars of CM to value creation. Consumption
metrics help the marketing manager measure brand awareness and website traffic generated by
the content, thus measuring the effect of the first pillar of CM. Sharing metrics measures the level
of content sharing by consumers with their network of people with a direct and significant impact
on the engagement. Thus, these metrics are a useful tool for the measurement of the second pillar
of the CM. Lead generation metrics measure how often content consumption results in a lead.
Thus, lead generation is often an emphatic goal for content creation, especially in B2B. Sales
metrics help to identify the impact of CM on firm performance. Thus, these metrics help marketers
to find out how CM impacts customer acquisition and sales goals.
The importance of digital content can be seen in the number of the empirical conducted
studies which indicates the dynamicity of marketing in providing solutions and suggestions for
better marketing processes. The following are some of these empirical researches. Nuseir and
Aljumah (2020) investigate the role of digital marketing on business performance in the small
and medium enterprises sector of the United Arab Emirates. The goal of their research is to
determine the empirical relationship between digital marketing and business performance
among SMEs of UAE. The study was conducted on marketing managers and IT managers of SMEs.
It is mentioned that 70% residents of United Arab Emirates take advice from social media before
purchase. Therefore, it has been noticed that social media applications provide information to
customers. The results have showed that digital marketing efforts made by applications influence
the performance among SEMs of UAE, and that the utilization of the latest technology enables
firms to approach customers remotely. Moreover, it has been observed that the adoption of digital
marketing applications takes place due to external competitive pressure that influences business
performance. It is suggested that businesses must utilize latest technological advancements for
marketing efforts to approach customers effectively and efficiently in order to grow in a highly
competitive environment.
Sharma and Thakur (2020) conduct a study about the impact of digital marketing on
consumers purchase. The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of digital marketing
on customer's buying behavior. The investigators seek to discover whether digital marketing is
an imperative tool for both marketers and consumers. The study takes place in India and the
sample is 100 respondents who buy goods or services via digital platforms. A quantitative
questionnaire for the analysis of primary data is used to examine the effect of digital marketing
on various criteria. The results have shown that customer behavior is crucial to commercial
performance. Yet, those consumers adopted the usage of the Internet and online applications and
many of them were satisfied with the items that they bought by Digital network. A business will
grow and increase as marketers know customer's needs and desires.
Febrian et.al (2021) investigate content marketing communication that uses two
different theories which are the use and generation theory (UGT) that delivers customers value
and the user-generated content (UGC) from the direct customers who deliver it. The main
objective of their research is to test whether digital content marketing using UGT and UGC affect

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customer engagement and purchase intention. The study takes place in Indonesia and the sample
is 267 participants. The findings have showed that digital marketing content has a positive impact
on customer engagement and purchase intentions. The study has also mentioned that customers
play a significant role in marketing process of communication. This enhances customer
engagement which increase customer purchase intentions for online shopping in e-commerce.
The study accounts for the content that focuses on customers' needs and which solves their
problems.

CONCLUSION
Digital content marketing is a strategy that is used to create, publish and distribute
valuable and useful content for a target audience online. The goal of digital content strategy is to
help a business of every size to establish a relationship with clients by building brand awareness
and providing them a content that is attractive. Consequently, digital content is regarded a great
practice for small business to grow and to increase its sales and profits. Owners should promote
their business by being able to create a content that keep and engage customers. Using online
platforms is free and accessible however, it is not an easy task. Marketers must be aware which
platform is suitable to market out their products or services for example, Pinterest is more used
by women, Instagram is based on photos and Snapchat is more used by youngsters. The wide
spread of online applications makes the marketplace is a very competitive environment which
requires small businesses to struggle. Therefore, digital content practice is the opportunity to
survive especially, it doesn’t ask for a high budget. Customers always search for new products or
services online therefore, a smart firm which has online presence at different websites and social
media platforms can easily catch customers.

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