The world of internet marketing has significantly changed over the past 20 years. The digital ecosystem is rapidly evolving, with new forms and strategies of online promotion being coined and actively used by experts. Native advertising and content marketing are the two content formats that some businesses erroneously use interchangeably. Though the two terms are closely related, these are two different concepts. While native advertising refers to a specific way for marketers to distribute content, content marketing is a larger practice of content distribution. Understanding the difference between these two content formats is vital for planning successful digital marketing campaigns. Our article aims to help you differentiate content marketing vs native advertising, along with the pros and cons of each for better promotion of digital marketing designs. 

What is content marketing?

Content marketing involves promoting a company or a brand without directly advertising the product. The latter is extremely important. If you use content marketing to promote your best website designs, you need to consider a different approach than writing, “Our marketing website designs are simply the best!” Readers should see it by themselves that the things you promote are better than what competitors offer. 

Content marketing aims to answer questions your ideal customers wonder about or search for by sharing relevant pieces of content with target keywords people use to find your data. If we refer to the best marketing website designs example, a company might consider producing content as follows: 

• Should you work independently or rely on professional help to create the best marketing website designs? 
• Free vs premium templates to create the best marketing website designs.
• Best trends for building competitive marketing website designs. 

These are some of the content marketing approaches used by the leading developers of quality web design assets, like TemplateMonster. If your company also belongs to the website development field, you can follow their example of promoting the best marketing website designs. 

Pros of content marketing

• It lets you target a wider community of users. You can also promote your content on social media. SEO helps you drive more traffic to your website or blog. Well-written and properly optimized content helps you attract larger groups of targeted audiences. 
• You can generate more leads and increase conversions because high-quality content appeals to a wider range of people to whom it can potentially appeal. When people find the content they like, they start sharing it through email and social media. 
• It’s simple and cost-effective. Every person with good writing and photography skills can start practicing content writing.
• You can build trust and better relationships with customers and increase customer loyalty and goodwill of your brand. 
• It is a better alternative to traditional marketing. Most people are irritated by standard ads and use ad blockers to eliminate such advertisements. Content marketing is a good alternative to reach those clients who do not want to see display ads. 

Cons of content marketing

• Some may find it time-consuming to create good content and master content writing skills. You may also need web development and SEO skills to promote content for maximum efficiency. It may also take more time to reach target audiences. 
• It takes time to see results. It takes time to create and promote content through different media channels. It also takes some time to start getting benefits from your work. 
• Content writing requires good writing and other skills, including web development, SEO, social media handling, etc. 
• Content writing is not suitable for all businesses. It won’t bring the desired results to the companies offering taxi services, beauty parlors, hair salons, etc. 

What is native advertising?

Although native advertising may seem similar to content marketing, it’s not the same. Unlike content marketing, native advertising is a form of content that a business pays money to have produced on another business’s website. Native advertising aims to generate new leads for a business by working with another company that already appeals to your target audience.  A vivid example is by putting native advertising of image stock companies on the website promoting the best marketing website designs. 

Studies show that consumers find native ads easier to understand than banner ads. Besides, people trust native ads more than other forms of advertising, with 44% of customers being more likely to trust ads on news websites rather than social media platforms. 27% of users are more likely to trust native ads than social media ads. 

Pros of native advertising

• Native ads are viewed 53% more often than display ads. People commonly ignore traditional marketing ads they see here and there. Because native ads look different from traditional pushy ads, people pay more attention to consuming their content. 
• Native advertising campaigns bring more click-through rates and higher conversions than display ads. 
• Higher credibility. People hate ads and don’t trust brands. Native advertising gives companies more space to convince their audience they want to offer useable and empowering information. 
• You get the most relevant audience with native ads. Those people who take certain actions upon seeing your advertisement are already interested in the particular niche and are more likely to buy from you. 

Cons of native advertising

• You may find it difficult to choose the right platform to achieve your marketing goals. When you go with paid search campaigns, you commonly start with Google Ads. On social media, you go with Facebook and Instagram ads. When choosing native advertising, you need to find platforms best suited for your campaigns and business. 
• It takes time to create effective native advertising and run A/B tests. 
• You may find it troublesome to measure native ads’ performance. Measuring ROI is an issue for many brands. One may find it complicated to measure native ads performance, especially if several campaigns run simultaneously. 

Final words on content marketing vs native advertising for the best marketing website designs promo

Let’s begin with similarities. Many businesses confuse content marketing and native ads because they are closely related. Still, the two are not the same. Both content marketing and native ads provide a tangible value to customers. They are not solely focused on the promotion of certain deals. Besides, both forms do not solely rely on one form of media. Content marketing and native advertising use reach out to their target audiences through blog posts, social media, and video content for running their campaigns.

Despite a series of similarities, there are two distinct practices making content marketing different from native ads:

• Whether a company pays for posting content or not; 
• Whether the content is produced with the rest of a company’s content.

While content marketing is produced by the same company benefiting from it, they do not have to pay for posting it because it’s shared on their blogs or websites. Native advertising is published on the website of another business. The company benefiting from it should pay for the publication. 

Author Bio

Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English. Meet him on Facebook and Twitter.