Wildfire has just launched a shiny new website, the development of which involved thinking about how we set out our integrated service offering in a way that shows its relevance to the 21^st century marketer.

But we have gone out on a limb a little bit. We decided to remove content marketing as an element of our service offering. Shock, horror, I hear you exclaim.

Is that because we don’t believe in content? Absolutely not, digital content has been at the heart of our PR campaigns for at least a decade and will be even more important in the future.

So why have we abandoned the content marketing label?

We simply don’t think that content marketing deserves a category of its own. We tend to agree with Samuel Scott (whose recent article is well worth a read) that it’s largely a buzz word created by digital marketers and suppliers of marketing automation systems.

Ultimately content is just content. And it is produced by all forms of marketing.

Wildfire focuses on producing content that audiences find entertaining or valuable, or both. This is what PR has always been about; the difference now is that the internet and mobile devices provide a greater opportunity to engage users directly with a greater variety of content channels.

And that means that PR can directly influence sales. In fact, because we generate awareness and attract new prospects into the sales funnel, we deliver a benefit that content marketing conveniently ignores. We also help our clients nurture those prospects throughout the sales journey by serving up the right content at the right time in the process.

Wildfire is still a tech PR agency and proud to be such. And we are very serious about ensuring PR adds value to every aspect of the marketing communications mix, to deliver measurable business impacts. But content is only one element of our integrated approach.  And we believe that gives our clients an advantage.

photo credit: ARRÊT \\\ STOP