You insure a lot of things. Your phone, your car, your house, your jewelry, your life. You do it even as you hope to never make the claim for it. You part with some money on a regular basis to keep this insurance alive for a time when you might need it. At the same time, you do everything in your power to not have to make the claim.

Brands should treat advertising in this manner. As an insurance for a time they hope will never arrive.

With so many established brands in every product/service segment, it is extremely difficult for any form of advertising to significantly affect short term sales. This is especially true about content marketing.

Discontinuing your content marketing efforts is like discontinuing your monthly payments towards your insurance. At the same time, it is no good if you take an insurance from a firm that will shut shop and leave town or file for bankruptcy in a few years. The effort you put into your content marketing must be of the same quality that you will expect your insurance company to have. Only then can you expect a payout when the time comes.

Just because you're promptly putting out remarkable content at regular intervals doesn't mean you're doing all you can. You still need to do everything in your power to keep your product competitive in terms of the value it offers to customers. Otherwise, even though you might get a bail out from your marketing efforts one fateful day, that will not sustain you long enough to bring your product up to the level of expectancy in the market. Let alone exceeding expectations.

With the right (and regular) marketing efforts, a few years (or months, depending on the product category) down the line, you will continue to enjoy good sales figures even though you haven't had a major new release and even though competing products offer better value. You'll still have to improve your product offering though, as the insurance will not be for ever. But the buffer period it offers is reason enough to take efforts to build your brand equity.

What are you doing to insure your brand?