7 Content Marketing Resources for Mastering Advertorials

Content marketing is more than advertorials, but they’re certainly a big part.

When you think of content marketing, you probably think of blogging. Blogging is certainly a big part of content marketing (hence the word “content”) however there’s more to it than that.

First of all, in order to turn content into marketing, your content must be designed to convert a reader into a lead of some sort. Maybe it’s an immediate sale, but in most instances it’s an email subscriber. Converting a blog reader that came in through search into a buyer is a feat even kings of content have a hard time conquering. But you can certainly give something away for free, like an eBook, and convince them to purchase later  through email.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about this process in the past, so you can read up on how we convert blog readers into email subscribers through 3C Conversion Architecture and Freemiums.

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If you’re doing a good job at content marketing, the results are these:

• Your customers look forward to receiving your content
• Your customers spend 5-45 minutes with it
• Your customers actually share your marketing content

Content marketing with advertorials

A rose by any other name, right? Advertorials may to refer to everything above, or they may be paid – like native ads.

We’ve all used an “advertorial” in our business, whether free or paid. Content marketing really is about mastering this type of promotion. When creating an advertorial, your goal is to get it spread, and we all know that a flat-out promotion isn’t going to spread unless we’re offering a 99% off sale.

Below are a few of our resources that will help guide you to the advertorial light.

• What is an Advertorial? and What is Native Advertising Content?

• Successful Advertorial Examples You Can Learn From

• Different Types of Native Advertising

• Native Advertising Rules and Regulations

• What is Native Advertising’s Impact on Consumers?

• Two New Web Advertising Revenue Models (skip to the part about web magazine native ads)

And here are a few tips for creating an advertorial that gets spread:

• An advertorial is a story that sells a product – focus on the content first, and the benefit-driven promotion second.
• Plant the seed of a potential buy, but don’t give up the sell too early in your advertorial.
• Make sure your story has a beginning, middle and an end – don’t sell out mid-story.
• An advertorial entertains as it explains, so when describing your product, keep this in mind.
• Within the storyline, try to implement case studies or testimonials that will eventually support your sell.
• Don’t include the price of your product, slogans or anything else “hypey” in your advertorial – focus on the editorial.
• In fact, if you’re placing an advertorial as a native ad on someone else’s site, there will be enough banners saying it’s sponsored by you, that you won’t need to sell at all. Sell yourself as the expert, instead.

Ready to write a good advertorial? What did we leave out?