What Is the Difference Between Copywriting and Content Marketing

This article comes from the blog archive – figures and examples reflect the year it was published.

Content marketing and copywriting are often confused. Both are about creating content. Where they differ is in the rules and the types of content.

In layman’s terms, the situation could be compared to figure skating – while copywriting, like pairs skating, has certain firmly defined rules and prescribed elements, content marketing is more like ice dance – a freer discipline that’s more about grace and the experience.

A more precise marketing definition might go something like this:

The job of content marketing is to create valuable content and spread it to a target group. Its main task is to engage people and gradually turn them into customers. So the aim of content marketing is not an immediate sale, but gradually building a relationship with a potential client and maintaining relationships with existing ones. The classic tool of content marketing is a blog or a company magazine.

Copywriting creates content whose aim is to prompt a particular, specific action in the customer – a purchase, entering a competition, signing up for a newsletter and the like. What copywriting usually produces are landing pages, product descriptions, mailings or advertising slogans.

Picture a pair of twins. They look very much alike, but their personalities are different. You can think of content marketing and copywriting in a similar way. Both are about working with an audience. But the character, the creative process and the goals pursued are different. A few examples to speak for them all:

• If you’re preparing an advertising campaign and need copy for a billboard or a magazine advert, you should be looking for a copywriter
• If you’re preparing an advertising campaign and need to create a catchy slogan that will make the potential client you’re addressing click on a banner or an ad listing, you should be looking for a copywriter – the better the targeting and the copy, the higher the CTR
• If you want to increase the number of clicks on a particular button on a page, you need the services of a copywriter, ideally one who also has experience of user behaviour and knows how to use analytical tools such as heatmaps and the like.
• If you want to steadily increase the number of visits from various channels (Google, social networks), you should be looking for a content marketing specialist, who will define a content strategy together with you, draw up a publishing plan for you and help with creating the content
• If you want to steadily increase and build loyal traffic, you need to work with content marketing

Copywriting

Working with text *

• The aim is to prompt an immediate action (a click on an ad, a click on a button, a click on an article headline and so on)
• Main parameters: persuasiveness, creativity, courage, enthusiasm
• Formats it’s used in, e.g.: advertising, direct mail, landing page

Content Marketing

Working with various forms of content (text, video, audio...)

• The aim is to work with the target audience over the long term and build a relationship with them through the use of content
• Main parameters: usefulness, friendliness, credibility, added value, usability
• Formats it’s used in, e.g.: article, ebook, podcast, video

Working Together Is What Matters

Good copy won’t save your website in the long run if customers have no reason to come back. On the other hand, content marketing without a dash of punchy copy may not bring you the result you want in the form of the target conversion – whether that’s a contact or an order outright. That’s why, even when working with content marketing, it’s important to pay attention to the right wording and to the placement of the so-called call to action, i.e. the elements meant to steer the visitor towards the desired action.

One Doesn’t Work Without the Other

A good content marketer is, to a large extent, a copywriter. They may have a freer hand, but at the end of the day their job is to engage the audience and very unobtrusively steer it towards your products or services. Experience with content intended primarily to sell is priceless here – especially when it comes to writing punchy headlines that work.