If there’s one thing about any industry that always holds true, it’s that people love their buzzwords. And while such industry parlance can make things easier for someone who’s been around for a while, it can be downright overwhelming for newcomers to the field. That’s why we intend to keep doing our part to clear the air—to walk people through all the definitions bandied about by marketing professionals.
To that end, today we’re going to discuss the difference between horizontal content and vertical content. As you’ve probably guessed, these two phrases have a lot in common with business markets, at least in that they define scope in a very similar manner.
What Is Vertical Content?
The clue is in the name—vertical content is, quite fittingly, a catch-all term for any piece of content targeted at a specific industry, market, or niche. Typically, when someone discusses vertical content, they’re specifically focused on business to business marketing. However, this need not always be the case.
A vertical is any specialized niche with a highly-defined audience. A healthcare cybersecurity publication and a Portland-based craft brewing business will both publish vertical content as part of their inbound marketing efforts. The thing that defines vertical content is specificity.
Its audience is incredibly well-defined, and it’s incredibly unlikely that anyone outside of that demographic will have any interest in a vertical-focused business or its content.
What Is Horizontal Content?
While vertical content is highly specific, horizontal content is a little more generalized. Rather than targeting an exclusive market or sector, horizontal content focuses on broader problems or needs. Again, although horizontal content is frequently targeted at the consumer sector, there are plenty of business audiences for which this content is beneficial, as well.
With that said, since horizontal content is by its nature a bit more nebulous than vertical content, we’ll offer up a few examples of topics that might typically have a horizontal focus:
- General cybersecurity.
- Consumer electronics.
- Grocery.
- Renovations.
- Home decor.
- Health and wellness.
- Productivity.
Choose the Best Content for Your Needs
It’s important to understand that neither of these content types is superior to the other. Some businesses are far better suited for horizontal content, while others, by their nature, will see the most success with vertical content. It’s also worth noting that in most cases, you can take a horizontal topic and narrow it down to a particular vertical and vice-versa.
The best advice we can give you here is to first define your customer base and their needs. Once you understand who you’re marketing to and what their interests are, it will be a far simpler matter to figure out what time of content to publish. Just remember that at the end of the day, what truly matters is that you provide value to your audience—everything else is secondary to that.
